Ruth Carter

CEO, UBM Conferences

Ruth was previously Managing Director of CMPi’s Conference Division from March 2007 until her appointment as CEO for Conferences in July 2008. She is responsible for conferences around the world, working closely with senior management, Publishers and Event Directors to create major launches from our unrivalled content and customer communities. Ruth has also held responsibility for CMPi’s Audience and Data Group.

Before joining CMPi, Ruth was Managing Director of Emap’s b2b conference business where she grew this enterprise from scratch to one of the most successful and highly respected conference business around. Prior to Emap, Ruth was with IIR for 5 years where she managed businesses in London and North America.

Nadim Chaudhry

Managing Director, Green Power Conferences

Nadim has 16 years experience in running global business to business conferences, firstly for the IBC/Informa Telecoms Division in the UK and Brazil. In 2003 he founded Green Power Conferences with a mission to help commercialise renewable energy technologies and fight climate change via event media.

GPC now runs over 50 leading events across 30+ countries including Europe’s largest biofuels congress and the previous speaker list includes Al Gore, Bob Geldof, Lord Browne amongst others. In 2009 he oversaw the launch of the Green Power Academy which has developed the capability to deliver a broad portfolio of renewable energy training course content and will see over 30 courses delivered in 2010.

Paul Colston

Managing Editor, Conference News

Paul Colston is managing editor at Mash Media, publisher of the broadest portfolio of UK events industry titles, including Conference News, Exhibition News and Conference + Meetings World.

Paul leads the growing editorial team at Mash Media and has overseen the recent launch of new websites across the portfolio, including www.conference-news.co.uk and
www.c-mw.net, the latest international addition to the group.

Paul has been a judge at both the Confex annual awards and Reed Travel Exhibitions’ EIBTM awards this year. Paul is a fluent Russian speaker and a committed supporter of Everton Football Club.

Mike Danson

CEO, Progressive Media

Mike Danson is a UK-based businessman. He founded Datamonitor, an online information company in 1987. He led it from his front room, through its listing on the London Stock Exchange to its sale to Informa for £502m in 2007. He now splits his time between his media and philanthropy interests.

Through his Progressive Media Group he owns a number of media companies ranging from magazines such as the New Statesman and Press Gazette to a number of online properties.

The Danson Foundation is a registered charity and was set up in 2007 and it focuses on education.

Jonathan Dewe

Director of Conferences, Economist Group

Jonathan Dewe is Director of Conferences and Events for The Economist Group in London. Jonathan has over 18 years experience of running high profile conferences in over 36 countries around the world. Prior to joining The Economist, Jonathan worked for an investor relations agency and headed Euromoney Conferences in both London and New York before leaving to earn an MBA from Cranfield School of Management.

Rachel Foley

Managing Director, Centaur Conferences

Rachel has been working at Centaur Media as Managing Director of the Conference business since 2005, growing both delegate and sponsorship revenues through building a portfolio of premium quality events, powered by some of the UK's most dominant B2B publication and online brands, including Marketing Week and The Lawyer.

Before joining Centaur, Rachel held various Director-level, P&L roles in Conference and Training businesses globally, including 11 years at IIR, based in both the UK and the US.

Rachel is an alumnus of Warwick University where she received a BSc in Engineering and Business Studies.  She lives in London and is married with twins.

Luke Gibson

Managing Director, Euromoney Seminars & Metal Bulletin Events, Euromoney Institutional Investor

Luke is Managing Director of Euromoney Seminars, Metal Bulletin Events and The Asia Business Forum. He has been with Euromoney for six years overseeing businesses in London, Singapore and Hong Kong. During his time with Euromoney he has been involved with the launch of over 100 new conferences. His teams run events in six continents on all aspects of banking and finance, metals and business management.

Greg Hitchen

Group Chief Executive Officer, Terrapinn

Greg Hitchen has enjoyed the global events industry for the last twenty two years.

In Australasia, USA, Latin America, Africa, Asia and Europe.

He has been CEO of Terrapinn since 1999.

Colin Hughes

Director, Business and Professional, Guardian News and Media

Colin Hughes is Director, Business & Professional of Guardian News and Media, the B2B division that focuses on services to the media, education and public service professionals.

Having started his career as a journalist at the Sheffield Star in 1979, he worked at the Press Association and The Times before joining the Independent in 1986 as a Political Correspondent. He went on to become Policy Editor, Education Editor, and US Correspondent, and spent his final six years at the Independent as Managing Editor of the Independent and Independent on Sunday, and Deputy Editor of the Independent.

He joined the Guardian in 1998, and founded Learnthings Ltd, the Guardian’s digital learning business, in February 2000. He was appointed MD of Guardian Professional in March 2006.

Colin attended Bulmershe Comprehensive school in Reading, Berkshire, and read English Literature and Language at Hertford College, Oxford. He is Deputy Chairman of Middlesex University governing body, and author of Labour Rebuilt: the New Model Party.

Tim Mann

Managing Director, WBR

Tim has been working within the commercial conference industry for 15 years, having started in the Sales function and having performed various Sales and General Management roles. Over this time he has been involved in conferences, summits, exchanges, training courses and online products and services. He has operated in leadership roles in the UK, the US and Asia Pacific and has been based in the UK in recent years.

For the last 7 years Tim has been employed by the PLS group of companies, originally joining the group to lead and grow the Exchange / Summit business. He was appointed MD of WBR’s European operation in 2007 and is currently focused on expanding and launching events in multiple formats in Europe, the Middle East and the US.

Barbara McManus

General Manager, Management Forum

Barbara has over twenty years experience in the conference industry; five years with ICM as researcher, marketing assistant and marketing manager and three more years as marketing manager when the company was bought by Marcus Evans. In 1998 Barbara joined Management Forum as Business Development Manager, followed by Head of Business Development and Marketing and finally General Manager in 2007.

Barbara’s experience covers conferences in many sectors including manufacturing, telecoms and financial markets and more recently at Management Forum life sciences and intellectual property.  

Fiona Miller

Head of Conferences, Lexis Nexis

Fiona Miller is responsible for conferences & training at LexisNexis®, the leading global provider of world-class content, information analytics and workflow solutions for professionals in the legal, risk management, corporate, government, law enforcement, accounting and academic markets.  

Working closely with customers to deliver new learning solutions such as Lexis® Learning, a component of Lexis® Legal Intelligence and Tax Intelligence, Fiona doesn’t like to sit still.  A pioneer of online training, Fiona last year built an in-house multi-media studio to support Lexis’s fast growing webinars portfolio, which in 2009 attracted over 25,000 fee paying viewers.

Previously Fiona worked at Emap for 3 years and Informa for 6 years where she was responsible for driving significant growth in F2F conferences in a broad range of large conference divisions including the public sector, retail, fashion, media, plastics, construction and pensions. www.conferencesandtraining.co.uk

Ros Oxley

Managing Director, ICBI

Rosalind Oxley has been in the conference business for 25 years. She started when the IIR London office first opened in 1985 and has held a wide range of positions within IIR. In 2005 IIR was sold to Informa and Rosalind has stayed with the group, responsible for an ever increasing number of businesses within Informa.

She is currently responsible for 7 business groups within Informa – ICBI (large scale events); IFF (financial training events); Adam Smith (Russian events), IIR UK Finance (finance, tax and legal events), Informa Maritime & Energy; Infoline (compliance events); Maritime, Trade & Energy Distance Learning. During her career in IIR/Informa she has launched new businesses, acquired and managed new businesses and turned around failing operations, and achieved a significant dominance in all the areas of her businesses.

Peter Rigby

CEO, Informa Group

Peter Rigby, aged 54 is Chief Executive of Informa plc. After qualifying as an accountant, he worked for Metal Box and Book Club Associates before he joined Stonehart Publications in 1983.  Stonehart was acquired by IBC in May 1986 and he became IBC’s Finance Director shortly thereafter.  He became Deputy Chief Executive in 1988 and Chief Executive in 1990.

Following the 1998 merger of IBC Group Plc and LLP Group Plc he became Executive Chairman.   Following the merger in May 2004 of Informa Group Plc, the international information provider, and Taylor & Francis Group Plc, the UK quoted STM publisher, Peter became CEO of the combined group. In 2005 Informa acquired IIR. Its current market capitalization is over £2 billion.

Rory Ross Russell

Managing Director, R3 Events

Rory joined International Business Communications (IBC) Ltd in 1989 and worked in various roles before becoming Marketing Director of IBC USA in Boston in the late 1990’s. He returned to the UK in 2001 to take up the role of Group Marketing Director of the recently formed Informa Group. He later started and became MD of a new division called Informa Alliances which specialised in partnerships with third parties.

He set up his own business called R3 Ltd in 2008 which runs joint venture conferences with publishers, exhibition organisers and associations who are in a strong position to run conferences but do not possess the in-house expertise. Rory is one of the founding partners of the Conference Awards.

Neil Stewart

CEO, Neil Stewart Associates

Neil is a former Director of Communications for the Royal College of Nursing, a post he held between 1984 and 1989.  From 1989-1992 he was Political Secretary to the then Labour leader, Rt Hon Neil Kinnock MP.  He established Neil Stewart Associates in 1992.  Neil Stewart is a former President of the National Union of Students.  He has a postgraduate qualification in Communications, Advertising and Marketing and is a member of the Institute of Public Relations.

He is Chairman and Chief Executive of Neil Stewart Associates.  Was the founder and chair of Stewart Productions Limited, 1995-1998, Worked for Informa PLC from 1998—2001 to whom he had sold Stewart Productions Ltd. Facilitated a buyout and was a Director of Parliamentary Communications Ltd, publisher of the House Magazine and Holyrood Magazine 2001-2002.  Bought out NSA from PCL in 2002 .  He is Chairman of Policy Review TV Ltd, an online TV company.  He is publisher of Policy Review Magazine, a Director and Shareholder of Editorial Intelligence Ltd and a board member of the King’s Fund subsidiary KEHF Limited.

Neil Thomas

Founder, Hawksmere and Falconbury

Neil Thomas was first involved with conferences as a speaker in the late 1970s (with IBC). He then set up Longman Seminars which was merged with Crown Eagle Communications before becoming Hawksmere plc on a management buy-out from Longman Group (part of Pearson) in 1988. He sold Hawksmere to Wolters Kluwer Ltd in 1998, staying on for a short time to merge the business with the conference divisions of Croner and CCH.

He then set up Falconbury Ltd (www.falconbury.co.uk), which now also owns a publishing company, Thorogood Publishing Ltd (www.thorogoodpublishing.co.uk),  which he had set up some years before (although he sold off its regional magazine business in 2004).

His experience of conferences, seminars, training and publishing has been in the UK, the rest of Europe, Bermuda, USA, Hong Kong, Singapore, India, Dubai, Saudi Arabia and Australia. He pioneered short-course mini-MBAs over twenty-five ago and more recently developed the sector-specific mini-MBA concept. He has been behind large-scale events with the British Standards Institute, with Tom Peters and the BBC as well as smaller scale specialist events for a range of different industries and professions.

Tim Weller

Chief Executive and Founder, Incisive Media

Tim Weller is Group Chief Executive and founder of Incisive Media a leading B2B information provider serving the financial and professional services markets.   Tim floated Incisive Media on the main market of the London Stock Exchange in December 2000 and then took the company private again in December 2006 in a £275m deal backed by private equity house Apax.

Tim is a Non Executive Chairmen of The Polestar Group and also of RDF Media. He is a recipient of the Marcus Morris award and was Ernst and Young’s Entrepreneur of the Year 2001. Tim is a member of The Shadow Cabinet New Enterprise Council which meets monthly and advises George Osborne on business and enterprise.

Claire Wormsley

Managing Director, The Media House

Claire joined IIR in 1991 and her roles included heading up the legal and tax division before moving to Risk Magazine where she set up and ran their conferences, large-scale events, training and book publishing. She was a board director at Risk. Claire was responsible for the development of their conference and training business in Europe, Asia and the US.

Claire set up The Media House in 1997. It provides training, coaching and roundtables to the conference and events industry. In the last three years over 200 conference companies, publishing houses and associations have received training from The Media House. Claire is one of the founding partners of the Conference Awards.