Annual Conference

Tom Athron is the Chief Executive Officer of Fortnum & Mason and has been in the role since joining the business on 1st December 2020. Tom is a highly accomplished and experienced retail and strategic executive who joined Fortnum & Mason from his previous role at Matchesfashion, where for three years, he held the position of Chief Operating Officer.

Prior to this, Tom spent 13 years at the John Lewis Partnership, where he held several senior roles including Buying Director at John Lewis and Chief Financial Officer at the Partnership’s supermarket arm, Waitrose.

In 2015, Tom was appointed to the main board of the John Lewis Partnership Plc where he founded the Partnership’s innovation unit, JLP Ventures. This unit’s main aim was to identify and drive new growth opportunities and creative partnerships across the group’s operations.

Martin Rees is the UK’s Astronomer Royal: he is based at Cambridge University, where he is a Fellow (and Former Master) of Trinity College. He is also a former President of the Royal Society and a member of many foreign academies.

His research interests include space exploration, astrophysics, and cosmology. He is co-founder of the Centre for the Study of Existential Risks at Cambridge University (CSER), and has served on many bodies connected with education, space research, arms control and international collaboration in science. In addition to his research publications he has written many general articles and ten books, including, most recently ‘On the Future: Prospects for Humanity’, ‘The End of Astronauts’ (with Don Goldsmith), and ‘If Science is to Save Us’.

Aileen leads Google’s AI Product Partnerships team in Europe, Middle East, and Africa. Her team enables innovations in artificial intelligence & natural language processing that impact over 3bn+ users across Google platforms and services, such as Search, Bard, Assistant, Maps and many more.

Since joining Google in 2013, she has held various Sales and Business Development leadership roles across Europe and Asia Pacific, pioneering brand strategies that drive digital transformation across a range of industries. Prior to Google, Aileen was Managing Director for Omnicom’s digital specialist Tribal DDB and has built businesses from the ground up across nascent & high growth domains such as mobile, digital marketing, and AI.

Andrew was appointed Chief Executive of Motability Operations Group on 1 January 2021. An accountant by training, he has led organisations through periods of rapid technological change and has extensive experience of successful digital transformation in consumer-facing industries.

His experience covers strategic, operational and finance roles at a number of companies across many sectors. Most recently, Andrew was the CEO of McDonalds in the Nordics and prior to that, CEO of Guardian Media Group, where he reshaped the Guardian’s portfolio of businesses to support its transformation into one of the world’s leading digital organisations.

He is a member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland qualifying in 1991, and trained with Price Waterhouse after completing his law degree at Edinburgh University.

Nicola McQueen is CEO of NHS Professionals, leading the largest flexible staffing provider to the National Health Service (NHS). McQueen has more than 20 years’ experience creating effective staffing strategies across both private and public sectors.

During the pandemic, she oversaw the recruitment of tens of thousands of healthcare professionals to the NHS. McQueen is passionate about innovative workforce solutions and staff well-being and recently initiated a technology-driven transformation program to elevate customer experience at NHS Professionals.

Under her leadership, the company has earned several accolades in the past year. Including APSCo’s Recruitment Company of the Year and MSP of the Year, as well as the Recruiter award for Large Recruitment Company of the Year.