SPEAKERS

Lisa Byfield-Green, Research Director, Retail Week

Lisa is responsible for data insight, analyst content and advisory research at Retail Week. Previously, she worked as a senior retail analyst for online and digital, leading research at IGD and Planet Retail (now Edge by Ascential) in the UK and more recently LZ Retailytics in Germany.

Lisa regularly provides commentary on the retail industry and presents at briefings, conferences and workshops.

Mei Chen, Head of Fashion and Luxury for UK, Spain and Northern Europe and Head of US Luxury, Alibaba

Mei Chen joined the Alibaba Group four years ago. In the past two years, Mei has primarily focused on helping global luxury brands and fashion businesses understand and seize the opportunity that lies for foreign brands in China by leveraging the innovations and technologies on Alibaba Group’s ecosystem.

Mei is also leading various innovations projects across Alibaba Group’s ecosystem. Additionally, Mei is the international lead for Alibaba's flagship fashion shows Tmall Collection, Taobao maker festival's West Lake show, and Tmall China Cool, among others.

Mei brings extensive knowledge of the retail and technology industries to the role, having spent over four years at Google.

In her free time, Mei advises and helps start-ups and companies with areas such as online marketing strategies, monetisation, international expansion and supporting CXOs. Mei holds a bachelor’s degree in business management and finance from Carlos III University of Madrid (Spain) and studied at HEC Paris (France).

Helena Chermet Di Favro, EMEA Presales, Workato

Helena is a veteran of the international retail technology sector, having held various roles at leading software companies, including Microsoft, over the past 25 years before joining Workato in 2021.

She has worked closely with the full spectrum of retail clients from traditional bricks-and-mortar chains to pureplays at the forefront of ecommerce across the world. She has advised clients across fashion, beauty, jewellery, telecoms and mobile, and the luxury sector.

She is passionate about the transformative potential of technology for all retail businesses and focused on helping clients to use it to unlock new growth.

Isobel Chillman, Relationships Director, Retail Week

As Relationships Director, Isobel builds connections with global retailers and non-retail partners alike.

An avid podcaster and presenter – on stage, TV and radio – Isobel has interviewed some of the UK’s leading retail CEOs.

Chris Conway, Ecommerce Director, the Co-op

Chris currently leads ecommerce at the Co-op, having joined the business in early 2018.  His brief was to build new digital businesses and grow incremental sales for the business. He designed and built the on-demand ecommerce business, which now picks online orders from more than 1,600 sites across the UK.

Before joining the Co-op, Chris spent two years at Morrisons, heading up online and supporting its partnership with Ocado and the launch of its store-pick proposition. He is also a former Senior Director for Ecommerce at Asda.

Alex Cresswell, Director, Tableau

Alex leads the retail, travel, transport and hospitality teams for Tableau. He is a veteran of the technology industry, having held leadership positions at Microsoft and LinkedIn, and built go-to-market teams in two HR tech start-ups. An engineer by training, he is passionate about using technology to make business better.

Outside of work, Alex lives in Berkshire with his family, plays the guitar (badly), is a fan of Wolves football team and has become quite addicted to the Peloton bike he bought during lockdown.

Ella d’Amato, Managing Director and Chief Marketing Officer, True Capital

Ella is Managing Director of Investment and CMO at True, a consumer-focused investment and innovation firm. Ella helps all of True’s portfolio businesses to grow and also sits on the board of sustainable and ethical kidswear brand Frugi.

Ella’s atypical career path started at 15 when she left school to work. By 29, she was Managing Director of content and social agency Drum and became its CEO at 33. She then took on her dream role nurturing independent businesses at Notonthehighstreet as CMO.

Ella is a passionate advocate for social mobility as well as an executive coach, lover of fashion (the slow kind) and mother of two.

Jon Davies, Digital Director, Three

Jon was appointed Digital Director at Three UK in April 2021, responsible for developing the company’s omnichannel and digital strategy and ensuring maximum customer benefit for investment in new IT infrastructure. He joined Three UK following six years at Vodafone where he led digital and transformation in the UK. Prior to that, Jon held senior digital leadership positions at Adobe, Orange/France Télécom and Eurostar.

Amrit Dhami, Associate Analyst for Thematic Research, GlobalData

Amrit Dhami joined the Thematic Research team at GlobalData in September 2021. As an Associate Analyst, she contributes to the quantitative and qualitative analysis of the technology, retail and insurance sectors through a thematic research methodology. 

Amri takes a keen interest in themes such as fintech, the metaverse, NFTs, ecommerce and social media. She has co-authored two flagship reports for GlobalData: Tech, Media, & Telecom Predictions 2022 and Tech, Media, & Telecom Themes 2022. She is looking forward to publishing her upcoming solo report Augmented Reality in Insurance.

Megan Dunsby, Senior Commercial Content Editor, Retail Week

Megan is Retail Week’s Senior Commercial Content Editor. A former journalist and features editor, she joined Retail Week in January 2019 to help brands leverage content to reach the people that matter in retail. Megan also works on Be Inspired, Retail Week’s events and content programme that promotes inclusivity across the sector.

In 2018 she was named among The Drum’s 50 Under 30 Top Women in Digital, and in 2016 she was recognised with the Silver Rising Star accolade at the British Media Awards.

Rob Feldmann, Chief Executive, BrandAlley

Rosie Hartman, Strategy Lead, Hirestreet

Rosie Hartman is Hirestreet's new Strategy Lead, having previously held senior positions at disruptive fashion retailers Zalando, Depop and Otrium.

Matt Hopkins, Director, Retail and Consumer, Faculty

Matt is a seasoned retail technology executive with a career spanning 25 years in merchandising and supply chain optimisation. He has first-hand experience working with leading retailers to deploy ERP, CRM, cloud and AI solutions, having held senior leadership roles at BlueYonder, Oracle Retail, AWS and many more.

In his current role at Faculty – one of Europe’s leading applied AI technology companies – Matt focuses on helping retailers to build intelligent organisations through data science and machine-learning solutions.

Paul Hornby, Digital Customer Experience Director, The Very Group

Martin James, UK Director for Retail, Precisely

While working at some of the most prominent consumer and data analytics firms over the past 15-plus years, Martin has had the fortune to support many of the best-known retail and leisure brands to better leverage, analyse, contextualise and ultimately operationalise their data.

At Precisely, Martin collaborates with many of the biggest brands in UK retail, helping them to harness data to develop best-in-class customer marketing, optimise channel selection and better evaluate the competition.

Robert Kent, Chief Data Officer, Pets at Home

Robert joined Pets at Home in November 2018 as Chief Data Officer. With a career spanning 30 years in technology functions from consulting to in-house big brand organisations, Robert is a leading expert on proving value with data and analytics. He has held senior leadership roles for over a decade, including with Royal Mail and Carphone Warehouse, and is a specialist in building data capability from a blank sheet of paper. Since joining Pets at Home, Robert has helped put data at the heart of decision-making within the organisation and has expanded the data team into a high-performing department that works cross-functionally with teams right across the business.

James Knowles, Head of Content Innovation, Retail Week

James Knowles is Head of Content Innovation for the Retail Week commercial projects team.

He has spent 10 years as a journalist, working across both consumer celebrity and lifestyle magazines and business trade titles, including Retail Jeweller and Drapers, before joining Retail Week in July 2017.

Peter Lorant, Chief Operating Officer EMEA, Zendesk

Peter Lorant joined Zendesk in 2020 as the company’s first Chief Operating Officer in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA). In his role, Peter is a key architect for Zendesk’s growth in the region, leading the company’s go-to-market strategy and operations. 

Prior to Zendesk, Peter was International COO at Workday, covering the EMEA, Asia-Pacific and Japan markets. With more than 30 years of experience in sales, marketing and operations, he has also held roles at companies including Google, Business Objects and IBM. 

He has a strong track record in helping companies scale their international operations, build entirely new SaaS partner ecosystems, open new markets, launch new products and build world-class distributed teams. 

Ian Lowe, Director of Solutions Marketing EMEA, Okta

Ian Lowe is Okta’s Director of Solutions Marketing for EMEA. In his 19-year career, Ian has become a recognised product marketing and sales enablement leader having created and launched successful cloud-based identity and access management solutions that are used by top technology firms, financial services organisations and governments around the world.

Genia Mineeva, Founder and Creative Director, Been London

Jean-Philippe Nier, Head of Ecommerce UK and Ireland, The Kraft Heinz Company

Hilmar V. Pétursson, Chief Executive, CCP Games

Hilmar has been leading CCP Games’ ongoing success and growth since his appointment as Chief Executive in 2004. 

Under Hilmar’s management, CCP’s critically acclaimed science-fiction game EVE Online pioneered concepts like player-driven digital economies, democratically elected community governments and free-to-play mechanics long before they became commonplace in the industry. EVE Online, as the largest living work of science fiction, has been celebrating more than 17 consecutive years of continuous growth in subscriber engagement. 

Hilmar put CCP into pole position in the VR revolution by embracing the new technology early and releasing spearheading VR games such as arcade shooter Gunjack, its sequel Gunjack 2,  EVE: Valkyrie and Sparc, a groundbreaking full-body virtual sport.  

He is also active on several boards and committees relating to Icelandic information technology and innovation.

Will Rose, Technology Director, Unbound Group

Will Rose is a highly experienced Technology Director, having spent 20 years working in retail ecommerce and IT for some of the UK’s largest retailers. As the UK’s largest specialist footwear brand, Hotter Shoes, part of Unbound Group, sells more than 1 million pairs of shoes a year to more than 4 million customers around the world. Will is responsible for maintaining and developing the ecommerce platforms to maintain continued digital growth, ensuring Hotter Shoes remains a major player in the ecommerce space.  

Will has a focus on delivery, having worked as an Ecommerce Consultant Project and Programme Manager for 10 years. Six of those were spent at software house Wunderman Thompson Commerce, where he delivered large-scale ecommerce re-platforms for the likes of DFS and Yoox Net-a-Porter.  Will was also responsible for implementing the routing software for AO in 2010 to enable next-day delivery of white goods.

Jeremy Schwartz, Non-Executive Director, Revolution Beauty

Jeremy Schwartz is Non-Executive Director at the newly AIM-listed PLC Revolution Beauty, supporting the founders and management to continue the expansion and growth of the burgeoning beauty brand.

Jeremy is a digital turnaround expert; he helped to turn around Pandora as former interim CEO, The Body Shop as former chair and CEO, and Sainsbury’s as former director of brand marketing. He has also helped to transform a number of brands including Coca-Cola, where he headed up the launch of Coke Zero, and L’Oréal with its ‘Because I’m Worth It’ Elvive haircare range.  

Jeremy is a senior adviser at McKinsey’s Transformation practice and chair at Kantar’s Sustainability and Inclusion practice, advising companies on how to turn around their position on sustainability.

Rosie Shepard, Reporter, Retail Week

As Reporter for Retail Week, Rosie covers fashion, home and DIY, electricals, general merchandise, sustainability and ethics.

She also has experience in writing commercial content and organising events for the Retail Week audience.

Jack Smith, Digital Director, British Airways

Joe Tinston, Chief Product Officer, Bloom & Wild

Joe leads the digital product and data function at Bloom & Wild, the leading UK florist offering a range of flowers and gifts through the letterbox. He is responsible for creating digital experiences that enable the business to scale profitably and nurture the lifetime loyalty of customers.  

Prior to joining Bloom & Wild, Joe was Director of Ecommerce and Digital Marketing at Onefinestay (acquired by Accor Hotels) and has previously worked for Tesco and eBay.

Celia Wilson, Director of Data and Insights, Moonpig

Celia is a marketing and data science leader specialising in commercial and consumer marketing optimisation, deep analytics and econometrics.

Our speaker line-up will include retail leaders, digital pioneers and industry experts. Watch this space for more names to be announced shortly.

Are you a retailer who wants to share your insights? Contact Retail Week senior commercial content editor Megan Dunsby to discuss speaking opportunities at megan.dunsby@retail-week.com.