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Robert Hersowitz has established an international reputation as a management and management development consultant. He has spent the past thirty years designing and delivering programmes and workshops to a wide variety of organisations in Europe, the USA, the Middle East and Africa. His expertise is broadly based, working with middle and senior management in the private and public sector. He has trained and coached over 30,000 managers and executives.
Other assignments include long-standing projects with clients in the airports, industrial gases, information technology, financial services, pharmaceutical industries, govt., military and voluntary sectors.
He is a regular contributor to conferences as a keynote speaker and seminar leader both in the UK and abroad. He has written and published several articles and has contributed to a number of books on themes of Human Resource Development, Virtual Teams and Self Managing Teams for Prentice Hall and HRD Associates

Janette Benaddi was born in Leeds, Yorkshire. After leaving school at the age of 16 without many formal qualifications, Janette went straight to work as a receptionist in a local doctor’s surgery. It was there she decided she wanted to be a nurse, so whilst working full time, she re-entered education to gain the qualifications she needed and was then able to train at York District Hospital and qualified as a registered nurse in 1988. She worked as a nurse for some years before moving into teaching and then counselling and subsequently the pharmaceutical and medical technology industries in sales and marketing roles. She progressed very quickly to senior positions in global organisations and FTSE 100 companies. After a successful career in sales and marketing and regulatory roles, Janette moved to Paris and became an Associate at a respected French consulting group. When Janette came back to the UK she set up her first company, a clinical research organisation and consultancy offering services to the medical device and pharmaceutical industry. Five years later, she set up a training company and a recruitment company as part of the group. All three companies she grew and retained full ownership of until she successfully sold the companies with the aim of retirement. She spent two years on integration of the businesses and then instead of retiring, set off to row across the Atlantic Ocean as the Skipper of ‘Yorkshire Rows’, gaining a Guinness world record in the process. Together with 3 other women rowers, she raised over £100,000 for two charities in Yorkshire. The adventure which attracted worldwide media attention has inspired thousands to go out and have adventures and fulfil their dreams. Janette is co-author of the Sunday Times bestselling book ‘Four Mums in a Boat’ and is currently writing a book about her business adventures. She is passionate about helping SMEs to flourish and grow as well as enjoying her work with several companies as business mentor/coach and non-executive director. Still not feeling quite ready to fully retire, Janette runs a successful property business with her husband too! Janette’s formal qualifications include BSc in Management studies, Diploma in Company Direction, Further Education Teachers Certificate, Certificate in Counselling Skills, Certificate in Spiritual Coaching. She is also a Chartered Director and Fellow of the IOD and an honorary doctorate in Health Sciences from York St John University. 

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.

After obtaining a degree in Natural Sciences (Genetics) from Cambridge University (UK) and a PhD in molecular biology from Warwick University (UK), Philip joined Dehns in 1992. He is a qualified UK and European patent attorney, and a partner in Dehns’ Biotechnology and Life Sciences Group.

Philip’s work is largely with start-ups, small/medium size companies and universities with inventions in the pharmaceutical or biotechnological fields. He has over 30 years’ experience in dealing with the issues which are important to such entities, such as the financial constraints of start-ups, the need to develop IP strategies for a company’s products and the pressures upon academics to publish their work.

Philip’s work involves writing and filing patent applications, and getting them granted for his clients all around the world. He has particular expertise in obtaining European patents (including dealing with EPO Opposition and Appeal procedures) and US patents. He also provides advice on IP landscapes and Freedom to Operate (FTO) advice on competitors’ patents.

Using his background in molecular biology, Philip deals with patents and formulates IP strategies in all pharmaceutical and biotechnological fields, including recombinant DNA and protein products, antibodies, biosimilars, transgenic plants and animals, bioinformatics, stem cells, biofuels, diagnostics assays, therapeutic treatments, virology and vaccines.

Philip was a member of the Life Sciences Committee of the UK Chartered Institute of Patent Attorneys (CIPA) from 2001-2016. His work on that Committee included reviewing proposed changes to UK and EPO patent legislation, and keeping UK patent attorneys updated on changes to biotech patent law and practice worldwide.

Oguz is a strategy consultant in PwC’s Strategy& practice, leading large, complex and international transformations across the Pharma and Life Sciences sector. He has over 10 years of consulting experience in the sector having worked across various functions in Biotech, Pharma and Consumer Health as well as Pharmaceutical Wholesale.

Leela Barham is a freelancer with a background in health economics and now works in academia, as a journalist and with all stakeholders in the health care system conducting research on the economics of health and pharmaceuticals. She has over 20 years of experience and has been published in both peer reviewed journals and the specialist pharmaceutical press. She also worked to support the UK government as it agreed the 2019 voluntary scheme for branded medicines pricing and access. 

Dr Adekunle Onadipe is an Associate Research Fellow in Bioprocess R&D, Cell Line Development at Pfizer Inc. USA. He leads a group of scientists responsible for the construction, development and characterization of mammalian and microbial cell lines for biotherapeutics and vaccines production. His group is also involved in the scale-up of bioprocesses from bench top to pilot scale bioreactors and process development for the establishment of cell banks to support the manufacture of biopharmaceutical products for early phase clinical trials.

Kunle joined Pfizer Limited in the UK in 2005 in Discovery Biology with responsibility for optimizing cell culture processes for the production of cell-based assay reagents. Prior to this he worked for 15 years at Lonza Biologics plc., in Slough UK where, as a Principal Group Leader in cell culture process development, he was responsible for constructing and developing production mammalian cell lines and culture processes, subsequently transferring them to full-scale production for clinical trials.

A microbiologist by training, Kunle has been involved in the production of biopharmaceuticals for more than 30 years and has a broad experience of microbial and mammalian cell culture methods. He obtained his PhD in Microbiology from the University of Surrey, Guildford UK.

Rhydian Howells, associate director of regulatory affairs at Diamond Pharma services a Propharma group company. 20 years’ experience in the industry, 10 years at a large contract manufacturer developing manufacturing processes and analytical offerings for biological products followed by 10 years in regulatory CMC roles supporting clients with clinical development and marketing authorisation activities for large molecules and advanced therapies.

Dr Suzanne Aldington is a Senior Principal Scientist at Lonza Biologics. 

She has spent 22 years at Lonza, working on purification process development, scale up and technology transfer to GMP manufacturing facilities within the Lonza network.  She has also led process validation activities at the Slough site, working with multiple biopharmaceutical companies.  She has supported many regulatory submissions and also on-site inspections by the FDA and other Health Agencies.  

Her current role at Lonza is within the Global Process Development team, working on harmonisation of activities across the global network in particular relating to purification, as well as troubleshooting and mentoring.

Suzanne also spent some time at Orchard Therapeutics, a Cell and Gene Therapy company which focuses on treatments for rare genetic diseases. Whilst there, she led the cell process and viral vector MSAT teams, supporting several clinical stage projects at different CDMO sites, with oversight of process development, manufacturing activities and process performance qualification batches as well as MAA and BLA submissions.  

A microbiologist by training, she has over 30 years’ experience in academia and in the biotechnology industry. She received a microbiology degree from Imperial College and a Ph.D in biochemical engineering from the University of Birmingham.

Lekan Daramola is an independent consultant who specialises in supporting biotech companies during the critical early drug development activities, enabling successful preclinical and clinical decisions as they develop new drugs for patients.

Lekan has extensive experience working in the biopharmaceutical industry, with over 26 years contribution to different areas of biologics drug development. Lekan’s experience spans lead drug molecule selection to regulatory submission. His expertise includes molecular biology, mammalian recombinant protein expression technologies, cell line development and early CMC support. In addition, he also has expertise in the development of novel drug modalities like nucleic acid drugs/vaccine (RNA, DNA) as well as AAV (viral vector) production platform development.

Prior to his current role, Lekan was a Senior Director at AstraZeneca, managing mammalian expression activities, the development of nucleic acid and AAV production capabilities to deliver preclinical and clinical drug development goals. Lekan hold a M.Sc. in Medical Microbiology from the University of Surrey.