Professor Brian D Smith has worked in the life sciences sector for 40 years as research chemist, marketing leader, research academic and advisor to many leading pharma and medtech companies. He uniquely combines first-hand understanding of the industry with rigorous, world leading research. He is the author of over 300 publications, including ‘The Future of Pharma’ and ‘Darwin’s Medicine’.
A former award-winning journalist, Mark has built a reputation as a leader with a 20-year career at the heart of the global B2B marketing and communications arena.
He’s been the ‘media’, the ‘agency’ and the ‘brand’; has operated within large corporates and startups alike and has raised investment to found and run a successful business.
Mark was editor of Marketing Week magazine and earlier, B2B-focused marketing titles Precision Marketing and Data Strategy and was a business correspondent on newspaper The Sunday Telegraph.
Quitting journalism in search of adventure, Mark went to an agency where he worked alongside genuine advertising legends to create stuff that helped grow some of the world’s greatest brands.
A successful small business owner himself, Phil Teasdale has spent the last 20 years working with over 6,000 small businesses in the UK, US and Australia, identifying and developing growth opportunities.
Recognising that most small businesses and small business owners do not fit the tradition myth of the high-growth start-up ‘unicorn’, he is much more interested in working with ‘blue whales’: businesses with a longer gestation, who choose a different, more sustainable route to growth.
Phil has worked with a range of Enterprise Educators and growth specialist across the globe for the last five years, developing the Blue Whale plan and identifying the key practical solutions and business lessons that small business owners can implement to become true Blue Whales themselves. The result is an innovative but practical and sustainable solution for small business owners everywhere.
Gillian runs her own executive coaching and consultancy business, drawing on her extensive experience on boards in the private and public sector, including roles as the senior independent director at Wessex Water, a member the General Medical Council (GMC) and as the first lay chair of the Fitness to Practise Committee. She has also served as Chair of the Leadership Foundation for Higher Education and as Chair of the Board of Governors of the University of the West of England. In these roles, she has been actively involved in working with investors, regulators, and consumer groups, and in reviewing and re-developing systems of governance. For example, she led a review of governance of the GMC following the Shipman Inquiry and of university governance in Wales culminating in the publication of the Camm Review in 2019. She has also written for the Journal of General Management and The Financial Times
From desk-bound corporate to wild adventurer and women’s coach, Jen Le Marinel has spent a decade exploring how ‘traditional’ personal development can be enhanced by remembering that we are all innately wild beings. Founder of coaching, training and retreat business Wildfire Walks, she has helped hundreds of professional women through more than 60 wild retreats and multi-day trainings, online programmes and hundreds of hours of 1-1 and group coaching.
A keen adventurer, in 2017 Jen walked solo from Land’s End to John O’Groats – a journey of 1400 miles over 103 days. Jen has also lived off-grid in a yurt in the woods, hung out with wolves and lived and worked with the indigenous San Bushmen in the Kalahari Desert. She can regularly be found hiking and camping out in the wild, pottering on her allotment, or diving into a hedgerow to forage wild greens.
Mike Porteous is the founder and Director of sports coaching business ZigZag Alive and founder of Confidence-Centred Coaching: a resource for coaches across all sports with an interest in confidence and self-belief. A highly qualified coach who has represented his country as a triathlete, he is now a coach mentor for British Triathlon.
Andrew Saffron is one of the world’s leading culture change practitioners, whose high-challenge but engaging style has won him acclaim and awards. He’s worked with many global organizations, Government departments and not-for-profits to rapidly change their cultures. Some of these organizations had been in a flat spin, some had a performance level that was starting to plateau, and others had been performing well and wanted to get even better.
He has led many culture programmes and has turned an often mystifying and unfathomable subject into a practical approach to changing culture in any organization, fast.
Claire Rason is a graduate of Cambridge University and Henley Business School (Coaching and Behavioural Change). She has held a number of senior roles in the legal sector and now runs her own professional development consultancy. She brings a unique combination of professional expertise, lived experience and research to the topic of decision-making.
An executive coach since 2019, Claire is an accredited Senior Practitioner with the European Mentoring and Coaching Counsel. She has worked with many clients to navigate complex choices, helping them to uncover and understand the unconscious influences that shape their decisions. Her research, The Class of 2002, showed the impact of unconscious narratives on career progression in the legal sector. Her coaching practice has given her deep insight into the patterns, narratives, and systemic factors that impact critical life and career choices.
After a successful career in teaching and school management, Terri Bourne fulfilled her ambition to set up her own business. Enjoying the challenge of starting a business from scratch, she went on to set up 7 different ventures over a 10-year period, all running concurrently, one of which had 16 branches.
Terri focused on building good staff teams, developing bespoke staff training and devising business systems to take each company forward. An advocate and practitioner of life-long learning, she gained a Masters in Human Resource Management to further understand successful team management, her research speciality on the work-life balance of entrepreneurs.
Experienced in running more than one business herself, Terri later researched portfolio entrepreneurship whilst gaining a Doctorate in Business and is still an expert in this niche academic field.
Terri has been a guest speaker at business groups in the north west, covering a variety of topics, including systemizing your business for growth, work-life balance, and portfolio entrepreneurship.
More recently, Terri has turned her attention to look at exit planning, retirement and beyond. Her current research has shown that many business owners concentrate their efforts on building and running their businesses but fail to look at how to exit them in the best possible way.
Timothy Bradshaw has never won the Olympics or sold a multimillion-dollar business. He went to a reasonable school and attended the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. Since then, he has served as a covert human intelligence officer, attempted to climb Mount Everest, summited the Matterhorn, completed a 70.3 ironman, cycled L’Etape du Tour, raced downhill on skis, ridden the Cresta Run and set up an international business training consultancy, all #BecauseICan.
As a director of Sandstone Communications Tim delivers keynote speaking and leadership training in over 14 different countries and to a global audience in excess of 5000 people annually. He has been listed as a leadership influencer by Linked In and LETG (Legal, Education and Training Group). His client base includes major global brands such as Knight Frank, Mercedes-Benz Middle East, Gateley PLC and Jaguar Land Rover. He has contributed to global in-house leadership development for Daimler Global and Gateley Plc.
He also sponsors aspiring young people striving to achieve their dreams, with 10% of all #BecauseICan profits going towards the cause.’