Our presenters

Seema Malhotra was elected Labour and Co-Operative Member of Parliament for Feltham and Heston in December 2011, and re-elected with an enhanced majority in both 2015 and 2017. Her most recent role has been as a member of the Parliamentary Select Committee on Exiting the European Union. Seema recently served as Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury and continues to keep an interest in economic affairs, productivity, how we grow and share prosperity and youth education achievement.

From 2014-2015, she served as Shadow Home Office Minister for Preventing Violence against Women and Girls where she led on aspects of the Serious Crime Bill for Labour. She has also been an Opposition Whip and Parliamentary Private Secretary to Rt Hon Yvette Cooper MP, who is now the Chair of the Home Affairs Select Committee. Prior to entering Parliament, Seema was a freelance business and public service adviser working with the video game and film industries. She has over ten years’ experience with leading firms Accenture and Price Waterhouse Coopers working in strategy and IT systems development. Seema has worked across Whitehall with justice agencies and creative industries.She is a founding member of the Cross Party Group for West London.

Simon is Lead Partner the Business Rates Consultancy at Vail Williams LLP.    A general practice surveyor he can advise occupiers and landlords on general Landlord and Tenant matters such as rent reviews, lease renewals and re-gearing of leases and he also has commercial property and land for owner occupiers clients in West London.   Simon is a Fellow of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (“FRICS”), a member of the Institute of Revenues, Rating and Valuation (“IRRV”), an Associate Member of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators (“ACIArb”) and a Fellow of the Institution of Commercial and Business Agents (“FICBA”). He is an appointed RICS Quality Assurance Auditor for the Assessment of Professional Competence (APC) Governance and Membership, an RICS Appeal Panel adjudicator and a RICS APC Chairman for graduate assessment at interview.  Simon was an external examiner for the University of Westminster’s Architecture and Built Environment course up to June 2015

Simon is a Principal Transport Planner with thirteen years of experience working in both the public and private sectors.  He is currently on a part-time secondment at the Old Oak and Park Royal Development Corporation (OPDC) from Transport for London, providing transport planning input to the Park Royal and Old Oak masterplans as well as to the design development of the HS2 Station at Old Oak Common.  At TfL, he is the Surface Transport Interface Lead for Crossrail 2.  Prior to that he was TfL’s lead sponsor for HS2.

Retired from the NHS in 2016, I joined the Council in 2010, my initial role was Chair of Overview & Scrutiny Committee, 2010-2011. I then joined Cabinet in 2012, holding various portfolios including Housing and Education. I was elected Leader of the Council in 2014, during this time I have held the Corporate Strategy, Planning & Regeneration portfolio. I am committed to meeting our 5000 affordable housing pledge for this current administration, in addition, we are building a further 1000 council homes.

 We have developed a close working relationship with the Mayor of London, the GLA and local businesses and we are committed to making Hounslow one of the most attractive boroughs in London for development and business opportunities. We work closely with our main employers; BSKYB, Smithkline, Heathrow Airport Ltd, etc. We have also worked collaboratively with Brentford Football Club to secure their new stadium which is due to open in September 2020. We have strong relationships with our Chamber of Commerce and West London Business, we see SMEs as the backbone for providing sustainable jobs, apprenticeships and training opportunities for our residents.

Stuart is Head of Planning at GL Hearn and has been with the company for 10 years. A specialist in Planning and Regeneration, he coordinates a team of 40+ town planning professionals in the London Office and coordinates a range of multidisciplinary consultancy teams on projects across a range of sectors.  Having spent his entire professional life in London, Stuart worked in the public sector for the Government Office for London and then Newham Council prior to moving into consultancy in 2003.  Stuart oversees a wide range of GL Hearn projects including tall buildings from Tower Hamlets to Ealing, Southwark to Croydon.

Sukhi Jutla is an award-winning entrepreneur and author of 3 books. She is the co-founder of MarketOrders, an online B2B platform for the gold and diamond jewellery industry. She is a leading international speaker, influencer and thought leader in tech and a qualified IBM Blockchain Foundation Developer. She is recognized by a number of industry awards including the Asian Women of Achievement Awards, Management Todays ’35 Women Under 35′ and named a Top 100 European Digital Pioneer by The Financial Times and Google. In April 2018 Sukhi made global headlines when she became the World’s First #1 Bestselling ‘Blockchain’ Author.

DEGREES AWARDED

• PhD Napier University
• Research-engineer degree Belarusian State University of Informatics and Radio-electronics, Minsk, Belarus
• MSc (distinction) Belarusian State University of Informatics and Radio-electronics, Minsk, Belarus

ACADEMIC POSTS

• 2000-present Lecturer Brunel University London
• 2003-2011 Business Fellow London Technology Network, LTN Link between research activities at Brunel University London and industry
• 1997-2000 PhD student Napier University
• 1994-1997 Research Assistant Belarusian State University of Informatics and Radio-electronics

Responsibility

NATIONAL-LEVEL EXTERNAL ACTIVITIES

• Referee of funding proposals Brunel Research Initiative and Enterprise Fund (BRIEF).
• Program committee member, session chair, reviewer for national conferences on the 22nd British National Conf. on Databases, 2005, BNCOD’2005, UK; Annual Brunel University London Research Student Conference, 2007-2014.

Organiser or member of local organising committees: weekly research seminars at School of Engineering and Design, Electronic and Computer Engineering starting from Autumn 2004 till June 2006; evening networking industry-academia event on “Communications and Network” at School of Engineering and Design, Brunel University London, 2005; weekly research seminars at Electronic and Computer Engineering Department. Spring 2002- Spring 2004; annual School’s research student conference, ResCon’2014.

Tom is Interim Director of Planning for the Old Oak and Park Royal Development Corporation. Tom is responsible for OPDC’s plan-making and decision taking local planning authority functions and his portfolio also includes socio-economic regeneration, transport, design and the delivery of OPDC’s ‘In the Making’ programme – a package of projects funded through the Heritage Lottery Fund’s Great Place Scheme and the Mayor of London’s Good Growth fund. Tom has been working with OPDC since OPDC’s inception in 2015. Before that, he worked for the Greater London Authority and London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham, where he worked on other large-scale regeneration projects including White City and Earl’s Court.

Tom Oliver – Head of Business Development London and South East

Ilke Homes

Tom leads the development of partnerships with RP’s and Local Authorities across London and the South East. His belief that modular will assist partners to increase the efficiency of delivery and the consistency of quality for tenants led him to make the switch to Ilke after a decade working across the public and housing association sectors. Passionate about increasing of all forms of housing delivery, particularly affordable homes, Tom believes the alignment of technological advances, public policy and underlying demand means modular can now play a role in providing the homes that London needs. 

Tommaso Franzolini (AA Dipl – RIBA) is an Associate for the Advanced Technologies team at Scott Brownrigg leading the masterplanning and architectural design of corporate & technology projects in cities globally including smart urban logistics and advanced manufacturing facilities, Tier IV data centres and clean energy production. As a participant of the Executive MSc in Cities (EMC) by the London School of Economics and Political Science, Tommaso is currently engaged on the latest cities research to improve the way we analyse, strategise and deliver transformative urban projects and policies.