Our presenters

Ashley Braganza is Professor of Organisational Transformation Change at Brunel Business School. He is teaching on Undergraduate and Postgraduate taught programmes. His research interests encompass big data, change management, strategy implementation, process and knowledge management and transformation enabled information systems. He has published over 100 papers in prestigious academic and practitioner journals and three books. He is the Founder and Chair of the British Academy of Management Special Interest Group in Transformation, Change and Development. He has carried out over 50 consultancy assignments with large global organisations.

Beverley Archer manages Old Oak and Park Royal Development Corporation’s (OPDC’s) socio-economic regeneration programme for Park Royal Industrial Estate. The programme is designed to help OPDC achieve its 20-year vision for the industrial estate and includes projects to improve the transport network, digital connectivity, energy capacity, employment and skills provision and engagement with businesses.

Beverley Archer has over fifteen year’s project and programme management experience in the public and private sector which ranges from a tech start-up in Bristol to preparing the Mayor of London for public scrutiny meetings.

Bosco joined WilkinsonEyre in 1998, initially working on cultural projects before forming the Hong Kong office on the Guangzhou International Finance Center and moving onto Singapore for Gardens by the Bay. Now based in the London office, Bosco’s contribution has resulted in significant expansion and leadership of WilkinsonEyre’s successful Transport Portfolio. This includes current projects such as Crossrail Liverpool Street, Bank Underground Station and oversite development, and HS2 Old Oak Common.

Brian began his career with Xerox and subsequently worked in Senior Executive/VP roles at IBM, Crosfield Electronics, Madge Networks, Dell Computers and as Managing Director of T-Mobile (UK). He was Managing Director of Amazon.co.uk from January 2006 to September 2011, having led the company through its high growth period. He was appointed Chairman of ASOS PLC, the leading on-line fashion retailer, in October 2012.

He is also a Non-Executive Director on the BBC's Executive Board, Senior Non-Executive Director at Computacenter PLC, Non-Executive Director of Monitise PLC, a company specialising in mobile payments infrastructure, and is Senior Adviser with Scottish Equity Partners. Brian is also a member of the Advisory Board of Huawei UK and of the Advisory Board of Numis PLC, the leading Investment bankers and stockbrokers. He is also a member of the UK Government’s Digital Advisory Board, established in April 2012 to help steer the digital delivery of Government services to citizens in the UK, and a member of the Court of the University of Glasgow. He has been a Non-Executive Director of Celtic Football Club PLC, SThree PLC, and the British Retail Consortium. Brian has an MA (Hons) in Economic History from the University of Glasgow.

Private Business leader, PwC United Kingdom

Chris Maw leads PwC’s private company practice for the South East and is the Senior Partner at PwC’s Uxbridge, West London office. Chris has many years' experience of working with privately owned companies across a range of sectors and encompassing start-up ventures through to large, long established family owned businesses.  In a voluntary capacity Chris is Chair of West London Business’ board of directors and also a Founder director of the Uxbridge Business Improvement District (BID).

Christine Telyan is the co-founder of UENI, a Hammersmith-based start-up that provides an innovative do-it-for-me solution to get small businesses online. UENI operates across 11 European countries and has built over 400,000 SMB websites thus far. The company's mission is to give millions of micro businesses, sole traders, and small businesses access to customers searching online.

Prior to UENI, Christine worked as an oil trader and built new business in the European and Asian markets.

Christine graduated from Harvard College before continuing her studies at the London School of Economics and Harvard Business School. She hails from New York originally, but now lives with her husband co-founder in West London. 

Cllr Stephen Cowan was first elected as a councillor in 1998.   He has served as Leader of the Council since Labour took control of the authority in 2014.   

Under Stephen’s leadership the borough has developed Upstream which has evolved from thought leadership cocreated with local business people into a joint venture between Imperial College and Hammersmith & Fulham Council. Its focus is on the biotech, digital and creative industries.  In 2017 the local authority published ‘Economic growth for everyone – An industrial strategy for Hammersmith & Fulham’.

In January 2018 Hammersmith & Fulham Council became the first local authority in the country to formally call on the government to halt plans for a Hard Brexit and give the British people a second EU vote.

Stephen blog’s at www.thecowanreport.com and tweets at www.twitter.com/stephencowan

Leader of the Council

London Borough of Hounslow

Ward: Heston West

Dan Epstein has spent 30 years working as an engineer on major projects specialising in sustainable development. Project he has worked on include 7 years on road and water infrastructure projects in Nepal where he worked on landslide prevention and rehabilitation projects, new Eco-town developments in the UK, the master plan for 50,000 new homes and supporting infrastructure in Ashford Kent.

Dan was also Head of Regeneration and Sustainability on the London Olympics and  was responsible for developing the sustainability strategy for the Rio Olympic Games.

Most recently Dan has worked as a consultant developing circular economy plans for the Oil and Gas sector in Scotland, a bio-economy plan for the Orkney islands and other related projects. He is currently working to develop environmental policies, strategies and standards for OPDC and is also a consultant on a number of projects with the Useful Simple Trust.

David has been working in the further education sector for nearly 22 years. Starting his career at Richmond College teaching Business before moving to management roles in Sport, IT, Business and Travel. After a short break to work on the ‘Get Set’ education programme for the London Olympics, he has managed Apprenticeships and employer training for the last 10 years, first at East Surrey College and then Bromley College. David took up a Vice Principal role at the newly merged London South East Colleges and oversaw both College and employer preparations for the introduction of the Apprenticeship reforms and Levy in May 2017. He has been a Director of three local Chamber of Commerce Boards and a Director of a Business Improvement District.  David is now the new Managing Director of the Evolve Learning Group, the Apprenticeship and commercial arm of West London College.