Our presenters

Jason is senior vice president and chief operating officer of Starbucks Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA). He is responsible for all aspects of the brand’s retail operations across the 2,750 stores and 41 countries that comprise the company’s EMEA business, as well as Starbucks relationships with its many licensed operators in the region. Since joining Starbucks in the summer of 2016, he has worked to revolutionize the company’s regional retail strategy, bringing a centralized, rigorous and partner-first approach – all with a keen eye toward delivering a consistent, elevated Starbucks Experience to customers in EMEA.

Baroness Valentine joined London First in 1997 as Managing Director, becoming Chief Executive in 2003. Her role centres on representing to national and local government the most pressing issues affecting London’s leading businesses.

Prior to London First, Jo Valentine worked in corporate finance and planning at Barings and BOC Group. She established and ran ‘The Blackburn Partnership’ a public-private regeneration partnership in 1988 and the Central London Partnership (CLP) in 1995. She was a National Lottery Commissioner from 2000 to 2005.

She became a Crossbench Peer in October 2005 and contributes frequently to debates, mainly on economic and competitiveness issues. She sits on the House of Lords Committee which provides prelegislative scrutiny of European infrastructure proposals. Baroness Valentine is a Non-Executive Director of TP70 2008(ii) VCT plc, a Non-Executive Director of Peabody, and an Honorary Fellow of St Hugh’s College Oxford.

Jo Williams joined Mencap as chief executive in March 2003. Mencap is the UK’s leading learning disability charity, working with people with a learning disability and their families and carers. Jo has spent over 30 years in local government, the last 10 as a Director of Social Services. In 2005, Community Care magazine named Jo as the most influential person in social care, and in 2007, Jo was awarded a D.B.E. in the Queen’s New Year Honours list.

One of the best-known faces on television, John Sergeant was the BBC's chief political correspondent from 1992-2000. After leaving the BBC to join ITV News, he was voted the Best Individual Television Contributor of the Year at the Voice of the Listener and Viewer Awards for 1999. He joined the corporation as a radio reporter in 1970 and covered stories in more than 25 countries. John worked as a war correspondent in Vietnam, Cyprus, Israel, and Rhodesia. He also regularly reported from Northern Ireland (he reported the first British soldier killed during the Troubles) and has also been an acting correspondent in Washington, Paris and Dublin. For two years he covered European affairs and the first sessions of the directly elected European Parliament. In 1981 he became a political correspondent for television and radio.

He wrote and presented a BBC TV documentary series called The Europe We Joined. He has also, at times, presented all the main current affairs programmes on Radio 4, including Today and The World at One. In 1966, Alan Bennett chose him from the cast of the Oxford University comedy revue at the Edinburgh Festival to appear in the award-winning BBC TV comedy series On the Margin with Alan Bennett. John had already been accepted as a news trainee with Reuters but gave that up to work with Bennett. He went back to journalism the year after and spent three years as a reporter on the Liverpool Echo before coming to London to join the BBC in 1970. John Sergeant's career in light entertainment lay dormant for many years while he built up his image as a serious political correspondent. Among his notable journalistic achievements was his encounter with Margaret Thatcher at the Paris Embassy days before she resigned as Prime Minister in 1990. The way he was pushed aside by Lady Thatcher's press secretary, Sir Bernard Ingham,

has become one of the most famous live broadcasts of recent times. Many saw it as a metaphor for the end of her regime. He won a British Press Guild award for the most memorable broadcast of the year, beating the footballer, Paul Gascoigne who was nominated for bursting into tears during a vital match in Italy. Among John's major scoops was the only interview with the Welsh secretary, Ron Davies, after he was forced to resign over the incident on Clapham Common. John has frequently reported on Prime Ministerial visits abroad in countries including the United States, Japan, and India. There was another famous encounter with Margaret Thatcher in Moscow in 1987 when he suggested she had begun the election campaign... "I am serving my country," she snapped, implying that John was not. His long-adjourned career in comedy was revived in 1998 when he appeared in an edition of Have I Got News For You on BBC 2. Ian Hislop said he had been one of the funniest guests in the history of the programme. Other

comedy successes followed, including a memorable encounter with Paul Merton in Room 101 on BBC2 when John listed his pet hates, including the BBC TV programme, Casualty. On Radio 4 he has been a guest on the News Quiz and many other programmes including A Good Read. He has also presented Pick of the Year. His book published by Macmillan, Give Me Ten Seconds, was described as "An all-time rip-roaring read" by the Independent on Sunday.

Joyce Macfarlane has 25+ years’ experience of business and education management. She has steered multi-disciplinary teams to build their effectiveness, organisational and personal.  She has in-depth knowledge and understanding of leadership and organisation change within complex organisations in education, public, voluntary and private sectors. 

A qualified coach and competent leader of people and processes her forte is ‘partnering’ strategic teams to tackle the key challenges of improving provision, raising quality and strengthening partnership working by developing leadership capacity.  Joyce has developed a highly effective coaching process to assist senior leaders and their work teams achieve their goals.

Her specialtiesare: Organisation Development & Education Consultancy; Inclusion & Diversity; Leadership Coaching/Mentoring; Advanced Training Skills; and support to internal Human Resource teams.

 Drawn to activities and projects that make the workplace a fulfilling and rewarding experience for all involved, Joyce has been a volunteer Director of West London Business, specialising in Human Resources and SMEs, since 1997.

As head of Grant Thornton Talent solutions offering, Justin's role is to work with employers to engage, manage and develop their talent to keep pace and remain successful in an environment which is evolving at an unprecedented rate. From a personal perspective he shares Grant Thornton’s passion for supporting initiatives aimed at providing opportunities for young people from diverse backgrounds.

As an ambassador in the cornerstone partnership with the Peter Jones Enterprise Academy, Justin works with this fantastic charitable foundation established to help equip a future generation of entrepreneurs develop the skills and mind-set to run their own businesses. He also supports the ‘Ladder for London’ campaign, an apprenticeship programme for 16- to 24-year-olds in East London who are not in full time education, employment or training as well as being actively involved in working with schools and local authorities as part of the school leaver programme.

Kathryn is the Head of Corporate Social Responsibility for Cisco UK & Ireland, leading and enabling innovative CSR initiatives across the organisation: engaging employees, benefiting the business and supporting Cisco’s not for profit partners.   Kathryn joined Cisco in 1997 and prior to her current role led marketing communications teams in Australia and the UK as well as leading the global web marketing team managing a team spread from China to the west coast of the US publishing Cisco’s 86 global websites in 40 languages.   

Kathryn is vice-Chair of the board of trustees of Berkshir Womens Aid and seeks to use her professional experience to support BWA.  Kathryn is a trained mental health first aider and has recently joined the advisory board of Brighter Berkshire, which aims to help reduce stigma about mental health & improve local opportunities through engaging people locally in conversations about mental health, helping to normalise and give parity to mental health issues.

Katie Hobbs founded KatchUp following a conversation around the kitchen table with her family. They wanted an easier way to share photos that could be used by all generations, but they didn’t want to compromise on privacy or image quality.

Aged 23, Katie won a government grant to prototype the idea for KatchUp and went on to build and grow the technical team she needed to take her product to the market. Katie loves collaborating with like-minded entrepreneurs and is passionate about supporting and promoting women in tech. She founded Link West in April 2015, which is a community for tech and creative entrepreneurs in West London. 

Kelvin Campbell runs the Smart Urbanism social network and Massive Small, a compendium of ‘bottom up’ change projects. He is visiting professor at University College London’s Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis and visiting lecturer in Sustainable Urban Development at Oxford University. His team did also policy work - The London Popular Home Initiative - a few years back for the Mayor of London on optimum home sizes / densities.