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With over thirty years’ experience of working in and with the public, corporate, and charitable sectors, Claire has expertise in providing strategic, analytical, emotionally intelligent solutions that engender, inform, facilitate and embed growth through compassionate leadership.

Extending from post-doctoral studies on neurology, specifically the link between emotional intelligence and cognitive intelligence, Claire has written, presented, and worked at a national, European, and international level and has published several research papers and books.

In her previous time as a CEO of various charities, she has practical experience in the art of compassionate leadership and has developed a real passion for helping individuals and organisations to optimise their growth potential.

In addition to her work as a facilitator, delivering sessions and presenting, Claire also works as an independent consultant providing emotionally intelligent strategic solutions, embedding compassionate leadership and maximising growth.

In her spare time, Claire runs for mental health and wellbeing, including running marathons and ultra marathons.

Dr David Bryon is an established keynote speaker and conference presenter with an impressive business background. Most notably, David was part of the senior management team that setup and ran the low-cost airline bmibaby in the early 2000’s. He served as both Commercial Director and then Managing Director, overseeing the growth of the airline to an annual turnover in excess of £200m carrying over 4.5m passengers. The airline was sold in 2012 to IAG (British Airways), along with the other divisions of the BMI Group.

David has subsequently been involved with other commercial projects and also works as a consultant supporting businesses on a range of areas including revenue management, ancillary revenue opportunities, and customer service performance. He also works as a business speaker, after-dinner speaker, and conference chair. He is represented by all the leading speaker agencies and has an impressive client list including ACCA, Accenture, Barclays Bank, BP, Sun MicroSystems, Chevron, The Football Association, Deutsche Bank, Robert Walters, Highways England, United Technologies (Otis and Chubb), and BT.

David has a degree and PhD in Earth Sciences from the University of Liverpool. He is based in Burton on Trent and is a Fellow of Burton & South Derbyshire College.

Mark Weston has run his own law firm, Weston Legal, since 1 January 2024. He is also a consultant at Hill Dickinson LLP where he joined in February 2016 as a partner and Head of its Commercial, TMT & IP Practice. Before that, he was a partner and Head of the Commercial/IP/IT Team at Matthew Arnold & Baldwin LLP and before that, he spent several years at Baker & McKenzie in London and Chicago and has also previously been seconded to Hewlett Packard and other technology businesses. He changed role to become a consultant in Hill Dickinson’s London office in January 2024.

Expertise: Mark’s practice covers both non-contentious and contentious matters in all areas of commercial law, intellectual property law, information technology law, Internet, electronic commerce and on-line services law. He specialises in commercial and Tech issues. Mark is used as a ‘trusted adviser’ by many clients in all sorts of businesses and often acts as ‘private practice in-house counsel’ for many clients. He specialises in tech and internet businesses.

Clients: Just some of Mark’s more well-known clients include Elstree Film Studios, RTL Group S.A., Sykes Cottages, Retailcorp Brands LLC, The Gulf Marketing Group, Moneynetint Limited and the BBC.

Some detail: Mark has extensive experience in advising clients on all manner of commercial matters (such as business planning and solutions, franchising, distribution, agency and marketing) through branding and intellectual property exploitation and licensing, to advice and documentation regarding hardware and software issues (such as development, licensing, maintenance and distribution, SaaS and cloud, Internet transactional solutioning, B2B, B2C and B2G electronic commerce, S-commerce and M-Commerce, social media, outsourcing, facilities management, procurement, IT policies, data protection (privacy), GDPR and freedom of information issues as well as artificial intelligence (AI)). He has a particular expertise in new digital business and revenue streams. He is also experienced in dealing with software disputes and IT litigation. The increasingly extensive media side of his practice relates primarily to publishing (both real world and digital content), to games and gaming platforms (and particularly transmedia technologies), advising companies about their advertising onscreen, online and in print and managing their public communications strategies generally (dealing with the CMA and ASA in the process) – and also a smattering of television, film and music exploitation. Recently he has been very active in AI advice.

More unusual: 

Mark has previously spent several months on secondment to Hewlett Packard and he has also been seconded to assist in the legal problems arising in new technology companies such as Symbian. From 2000 to 2001, Mark was resident in the Chicago office of Baker & McKenzie advising US clients on European and UK aspects of IT and electronic commerce law and practice.

Mark is the author of the Legal Practice Companion, a parallel text book used at several law schools, the editor of the IP and Media Law Companion as well as the rest of the Companion series of books published by Bloomsbury Professional, Tottels, Cavendish Publishing and Oxford University Press. He has noted numerous reports for the IT Law Reports and is widely published in Computing, Computers & Law, Computer Law & Security Report, IT Law Today, Intellectual Property World, Solicitors Journal and many other journals both online and offline. Mark has also authored articles syndicated in the national and trade press and is regularly quoted in national newspapers and is heard on radio as an expert in his fields. Mark is the author of the Business Names on the Internet chapter in the PLC Ecommerce Manual as well as numerous other articles on various Commercial & IT law topics.

Mark lectures regularly on all Commercial, IP and IT law topics, including at the IBC IT ‘Summer School’ Programme in Cambridge, England; the Falconbury and MBL two-day and three-day Commercial Contracts seminars (run several times a year) and IT Contracts seminars (run three times a year) in London; and he has previously lectured at the Annual On-line & Internet Commerce Law Institute seminar in Chicago and tutored at University College London.  He also runs a programme of bespoke training schemes on commercial law, IP law, IT law, AI law and data law as well as soft skills programmes such as negotiation skills and presentation skills.

Finally, you may have seen that Mark likes blogging and writing books, which are available at all good bookshops! He also appears regularly on BBC1 (usually providing advice on-screen to BBC Watchdog) and also on Sky News as a legal commentator, as well as trying to avoid the huge quantity of pink powder the TV make-up girls want to apply to his increasingly receding hairline.

Sue Spencer BSc (Hons) is Head IVD, Principal Consultant and UK Country Manager.

Sue leads Qserve’s IVD service, she has over 37 years’ experience in the Medical Device and IVD industries including extensive notified body experience.

Key areas of expertise include

·         IVDD and IVDR regulations and transitions

·         UKCA

·         QMS implementation

·         Internal, supplier and compliance audits

·         Risk Management

·         CDx

·         Training

·         Working with small start-up and multinationals

·         Notified Body interaction

Sue has worked for several IVD companies ranging from start up to large multinationals, where she has held positions in R&D, manufacturing, and quality assurance. Sue worked for 3 notified bodies establishing two from scratch. 

Sue has worked for Qserve for 4 years helping manufacturers transition to the IVD Regulation and leading a team specialising in both European and FDA submission and quality systems, with special interests in CDx.

Hélène Russell, founder of The Knowledge Business, is a UK solicitor (non-practising) and specialist in Knowledge, Learning and Innovation. After 8 years in practice, primarily in clinical negligence litigation defence, she has worked as a self-employed knowledge management consultant for 13 years. Hélène specialises in practical tools to improve the efficiency and profitability of real-life law firms.

Hélène has extensive experience in business strategy, project management and teaching leadership skills. She runs a popular 'KM Strategy + coaching' course in UK and has written short form and lengthy strategies for a variety of law firms, as well, of course, as writing her own business’s strategy. Hélène has spoken at various events, including Ark’s KM Legal, Lexpo-18, for UWE, St Andrew’s University, BLS and Allice, and chaired international conferences.

She runs a global online KM training and networking group and is a core committee member organising the annual UK Knowledge Mobilisation Conference and Chair of CILIP’s Knowledge and Information Management Special Interest Group. Hélène has an executive MBA with distinction (which included a strategy module), and she is the sole author of two textbooks, contributor to five of Ark’s multi-author books and is currently contracted to Facet Publishing to write a handbook on KM Strategy.

Craig Evans is a chemist with over 13 years experience in the veterinary medicines field, working on everything from initial registrations to post-approval activities including change controls captured with variations. Craig works directly with multiple pharmaceutical companies, providing expert knowledge relating to a variety of areas of veterinary medicines. Craig has in depth knowledge of CMC activities, and has an excellent working understanding of Regulatory Guidelines in the EU.

Norah Lightowler is a partner in Lightowler Associates, an independent consultancy offering regulatory advice and support to pharmaceutical companies in or proposing to enter the European market for human pharmaceuticals. They are in their twenty fourth year of successful business. She has wide experience in the pharmaceutical and related nutraceutical, herbal and devices industries as a pharmaceutical assessor with the UK regulatory authority and as associate director of European regulatory affairs with an international pharmaceutical company. She is experienced in organising and presenting courses on European regulatory control systems, including requirements, procedures and strategy.

Dr. Amanda Murphy is a Partner in Finnegan’s Washington, DC Office and focuses her practice on strategic client counseling, portfolio management, and patent prosecution for a range of clients, including small startup companies, research foundations, and large biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies.
Amanda provides patentability opinions, prepares new patent applications, prosecutes U.S. and foreign applications, and represents appellants before the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). She has experience in prosecuting inter partes and ex parte reexamination applications, reissue applications, and patent term extension applications for approved pharmaceuticals, including obtaining supplemental protection certificates in Europe. In addition to her patent counseling and prosecution practice, Amanda also routinely represents petitioners and patent owners in inter partes review (IPR) and post grant review (PGR) proceedings before the PTAB. As part of that practice, Amanda works with experts to develop technical and legal bases for challenging or defending issued patents, and manages the preparation of substantive written submissions. She also provides strategic advice and pre-litigation analysis and prepares freedom-to-operate, enforceability, and infringement opinions.

Graham Boyd, Founder & CEO Evolutesix, is CEO, serial entrepreneur, particle physicist, disruptive innovator and author of Rebuild. Graham has 15 years experience in adaptive organisation and adaptive leadership practice. He innovates and transforms business systems so as to create antifragile, regenerative businesses using his methodology. He also consults to multinationals and startups on harnessing conflict to drive their own regeneration. 

Jason Brown brings a wealth of knowledge and practical experience to his role as Senior Analytical Sciences Manager at Adare Pharma Solutions, where he serves as the global nitrosamine subject matter expert. He has led Adare’s innovative approaches to understanding nitrosamine formation, measurement, and mitigation to ensure regulatory compliance internally and for our customers. Jason has led numerous dialogues on the subject of nitrosamines through panel discussions, webinars, posters, articles, and regular contributions to the USP Nitrosamine Forum. Jason has a BS in Chemistry from George Fox University.