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Latest - IT Sector: Internet and world wide web

Nicholas (Nic) Birtles

Nic Birtles left university after a boring year for more exciting work in the emerging IT industry.  He programmed a LEO machine; successor to the first business computer.  Like many who led the growth of the 20th century industry, he soon moved into sales and thence senior management with some of the iconic names of the early industry, including Burroughs in Canada and then ComShare, selling its computer power over telephone lines.

He was headhunted by Ingres, the innovative relational database competitor to Oracle.  He was in Silicon Valley for the dotcom boom and bust.  Since 2002, Nic has held a portfolio of non-executive roles with growth companies, most recently fundraising for an innovative aircraft design from Aeralis.  Nic is a Past Master of the City of London IT Livery Company (WCIT) , where he actively supports their charitable initiatives.

Professor Michael Mainelli

Professor Michael Mainelli’s life story is a fascinating journey from 1958 Seattle to Alderman and Sheriff of the City of London.  His Irish mother and Italian father came from lines of engineers and his experience spans computer scientist, accountant, and management consultant.  His education reflects expansive interests, including a Doctorate as a mature student, alongside his busy professional assignments. 

He established City think tank and venture firm Z/Yen in 1994 and Michael has advised on and managed a host of challenging projects, for a multitude of clients from the first complete digital map of the world; to the UK Ministry of Defence commercialising its £100M technology business; and setting up City indices. He recommends small teams to solve big problems and his mass of publications includes bestselling books.

Lisa Powis

Lisa Powis was enthralled by IT when at 11 she saw her father use an early computer in his insurance business. Since then she has been an advocate of the use of IT in business. She has tried to use IT in all of her roles in the insurance sector, sometimes asking IT to do more than it could given her enthusiasm. Powis is one of the users of IT who have pushed IT’s boundaries and challenged IT suppliers to give business what it needs. She is now launching a crowd-funded investment platform for companies developing IT of the insurance sector.

Edwina Dunn OBE

Edwina Dunn OBE has spent her 40 years in the IT industry analysing great globs of data and turning it into useful business information to guide businesses. We call that today the analysis of big data. She started at the US CACI company which used census data to help customers such as banks and building societies. She left with her husband after nine years and they formed their own consultancy focusing on analysing customer data. Their big breakthrough was launching the Clubcard customer service for Tesco which catapulted Tesco to the front rank of UK grocery marketing. They sold the business to Tesco and formed another company. She is concerned about the ethics of using data and about the role of women in IT.

Eva Pascoe

Eva Pascoe was co-founder of Cyberia, the first Internet café in London, in1994. During her career, Eva pioneered women’s participation in online business, online secure payments, e-commerce fashion solutions, and electronic customer relationship management. She is currently the chair of Cybersalon.org, a non-profit digital think tank she co-founded in 1997. She works with a retail practice, developing strategies for large and small international retail companies supporting young fashion brands with women founders, like Bluebella.com and Thefoldlondon.com. In 1995, jointly with Gene Teare, she was awarded the Sunday Times Technology Award.

Sarah Bond

Sarah Bond leads Microsoft’s gaming business development team. She and her team are responsible for cultivating and managing Microsoft’s gaming partnerships, crafting and executing deals and negotiations and shaping strategy and M&A. Sarah’s organization is global with presence in Redmond, Tokyo, Seoul, Shanghai and London.

Prior to Microsoft Sarah held a variety of senior roles at T-Mobile, including leading the Corporate Strategy and Development team, responsible for cross-functional strategic initiatives, major investments, partnerships, mergers and acquisitions. She was a member of the team that led T-Mobile’s turnaround.
Sarah started her career at McKinsey & Company, where she was an Associate Partner in the West Coast office focused on the consumer technology sector. Sarah holds a BA in Economics from Yale University and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

Lisa Goodchild

Lisa Goodchild’s experience in – and passion for – all things digital is unrivalled. For more than 20 years she has lived, loved and been a major player in the industry making waves in far-reaching arenas, from fashion, finance & tech to online advertising and non-profit.

Throughout her career, Lisa has brought excitement to her projects, making ‘it’ happen, with her agency social media consultancy Digiwoo, for the likes of Hewlett Packard, British Airways, Goldman Sachs, Panasonic & Ted Baker, & also in her capacity as an advisor to notable names such as PR guru Lynne Franks, June Sarpong MBE, Shaa Wasmund MBE & MOBO Awards founder Kanya King MBE. Lisa also mentors for Google & Virgin as well as being a Marketing Academy Alumni and a Marketing Academy Apprenticeship Charity Trustee.

Professor Yorick Wilks

Professor Yorick Wilks is a British computer scientist who has contributed to a wide range of academic fields, including philosophy, artificial intelligence, computational linguistics, natural language processing, and machine translation. He is Emeritus Professor of Artificial Intelligence at the University of Sheffield, and Visiting Professor of Artificial Intelligence at Gresham College in London, a position created for him. He is a Research Associate at the Oxford Internet Institute, Senior Scientist at the Florida Institute of Human and Machine Cognition, and a member of the Epiphany Philosophers. He is a Fellow of the British Computer Society, and of the Association for Computing Machinery. He is a Fellow of the European Association for Artificial Intelligence, and of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence. In 1997 he led the team that won the Loebner Prize for machine dialogue; in 2008 he got the Zampolli Prize of the European Languages Research Association; and the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Association for Computational Linguistics. In 2009 he got the Lovelace Medal of the British Computer Society for contributions to meaning-based understanding of natural language.

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David Barker

David Barker was one of the UK’s first internet entrepreneurs in 1994 and spent ten years working with global corporations including Intel, Cisco and Microsoft. In 2004 he became a social entrepreneur to tackle some of the issues facing society such as social mobility, unemployment and poverty.

Since 2005 David has been innovating new social enterprise start-ups using Tech for Good. In 2015 he founded Techcentre, The Social Innovation Agency, to work in partnership with clients to innovate new tech-enabled social enterprise start-ups.