Venturi's Voice: Technology | Leadership | Staffing | Career | Innovation

Brendon is the Head of Data at Shawbrook Bank Brendon’s journey into data isn’t your typical one. He hasn’t risen through the ranks to his current position from a technical background. Brendon was originally an accountant. He worked for a while as an auditor. He learned a lot in that position but was happy when he was able to move on. He spent a long time working at RBS and Credit Swiss undertaking large-scale financial transformation pieces. These experiences let Brendon see the insides of tier one banks very well. After this, he moved into the consulting space and led some of the business intelligence offerings at a construction firm and after that built out the international analytics function for a movie company. This was probably Brendon’s first introduction to the data space. He’s now head of data at Shawbrook.

Jules is the CTO at Equals Group With a keen interest in computers from an early age, Jules has been constantly coding since childhood. His undergraduate degree in Mathematics and his Ph.D. in Computer Science saw him secure a role as a research assistant and teacher at Queen Mary, University of London. Once he was done with university Jules moved to FairFX and has been with the company for 13 years. In that time he’s seen two major acquisitions and a restructuring of the company into Equals Group. This transformation and its challenges are the subjects of this show.

Bryan is the Head of Technology at Forestreet First and foremost Bryan is a data strategist. His background is in building data systems, he’s been doing that for around twenty years. Around ten years ago he transitioned to data strategy where he now supports business strategies with data strategies. Bryan joined Forestreet a couple of years ago. Before Forestreet Bryan was building an AI and automation solution that tracked every IT company in the world. The idea behind that was: as a technology advisor Bryan could know exactly which companies he could recommend to solve a company’s business problem. He now does this for Forestreet.

Ross is the chief strategy officer at Somo Global In the past 25 years, Ross has been a founding member of 6 digital media companies. Currently working at the digital product accelerator Somo he is specialised in C level business, financial and marketing strategy. He was also voted for three years as one of the Top 100 Digital Media Digerati and Top 50 Most Influential People in Mobile by the Drum.

Ryan is the Senior Director of Talent at Pendo.io Ryan went to university at Brigham Young in Utah where he studied history whilst working as a systems administrator. His job at uni gave him experiences fixing computers and maintaining networks etc. After his bachelor's, he got a Masters in Business and he started working in HR where he worked at American Express. American Express took Ryan to England and he worked in their Brighton HR office. He realised he wasn’t a big company person he wanted to work for smaller businesses. From there he moved careers and went to work at LinkedIn as their HR lead. As LinkedIn got bigger he left HR and became a salesperson for a year. After this, he moved to a startup called Mobile Iron where he was the Head of Recruiting. It was in this role, he found that recruiting was his true passion. Ryan spent a few more years working as the Head of Recruiting at various Startups before landing at Pendo.io.

Renna is the Engineering Manager at iTech media Renna is a developer, entrepreneur, cat lover, planner & dreamer. She has taken part in a number of hackathons a couple of years ago, and her teams mostly end up in awarded positions. She enjoys the energy, creativity, and ideas flowing around in such events.

Giles is the CEO & Co-founder of Ksubaka Giles is a serial entrepreneur in mobile games, mobile advertising and global OTT platforms. He has over 20 years experience advising, leading, growing, acquiring and investing in companies from start-ups to multinationals. Prior to his current role as CEO and Co-Founder of Ksubaka, he was the Founder and Head of Libon, a skunk-works operation within the Orange Group. Here he built an award-winning mobile/OTT platform with over 4 million active users in 100 countries. Giles has also served as an advisor to BBC Mobile, CEO of mobile virtual network operator Echosphere and led the building (and sale to Microsoft) of France’s first mobile ad platform. Giles founded Ksubaka with his brother Julian initially as a new way for brands to advertise to shoppers in stores at mass scale. But working with retailers, they came to understand the need to improve the in-store experience and so shifted their focus to help physical retailers revitalise by providing in-store digi

Curran is the Head of Marketing at Feast It Curran is currently the Head of Marketing at Feast It. He and his team do lots of things to rapidly grow their customer base, build a memorable brand and improve their product so that clients love the experience they have.

Shweta is the CPO at Machinemax. Product management has been at the core of Shweta’s career journey. She has two decades of experience working for companies like; Thomas Cook, Deloitte & Tesco. She started her career in eCommerce creating products for the eCommerce sector. Then she moved into mobile and worked on apps as a product manager too. Whilst working at Lego, Shweta started creating hardware products. She built a platform for them that let Lego showcase what they’ve currently been working on. It was here Shweta got really interested in IoT and how technology was making everything more connected. This interest led her to Machinemax.

Niall is the Head of Engineering at Butternut Box Niall started working in Dublin 7 years ago at a company called Web Summit which is a technology conference. Since then he’s worked in New York for a while for a company called Plated which is similar to Hello Fresh. Niall joined Butternut Box two years ago. Butternut Box is a dog food company but better. They believe in delivering health and happiness to dogs and humans all around the world. They achieve this mission by using really high-quality ingredients and using algorithms to ensure the portion control is correct. And then delivering the food to your door with a quick and efficient service.

Catherine is the Data & Analytics Practice Area Lead at Slalom Consulting. With a background in theoretical particle physics, Catherine did a Ph.D. at the University of Liverpool before moving into the corporate world. Catherine chose to go into physics because she enjoyed the subject and it was a subject that came very naturally to her. She also knew the degree would give her great career options in the longer term. When she was doing her PhD she realised that working at such detail on one specific problem wasn't for her. Catherine found she preferred working in larger teams where they were tackling bigger more business orientated problems. When she left university and had decided against a career in physics a company called Detica came forward and offered Catherine a job as a data consultant. It was here that her physics background clicked with a career in data After working at Detica for a number of years she moved to PwC and now she’s at Slalom.

Head of Science and Development at Recordsure Anthony has been at Recordsure for a month. His goal at the company is to expand its data science capabilities in the areas of AI, speech to text technology & language processing. His aim is to bring these technologies closer to Recordsure’s development functions. Been at Recordsure for a month. Was brought onto the team to expand its science capabilities around AI, speech to text & language processing and bring these closer to their development functions. Prior to this role, Anthony was the head of data science at TUI. Before working at TUI, Anthony worked in consulting at BAE systems. He’s been a post-doctoral research fellow and he’s worked at the Ministry of Defence as a data analyst.

Simon is the director of engineering at Advanced Analytics As the Director of Engineering at Advancing Analytics, Simon’s passion is helping companies achieve their analytics goals using the best of data engineering know-how, coaching their data leadership and educating their teams around the latest and greatest Azure analytics technologies. Simon is a big believer in the wider data community. He regularly presents on cloud analytics architectures and was the original founder of the Surrey Data Platform Group. He now organises the Microsoft Data London UG. Simon can generally be found at data conferences worldwide, sharing his experiences and learning from as many people as possible!

Diego is the Lead Data Scientist at FutureLearn With a background in Astrophysics Diego has worked as a professional researcher in Astrophysics for more than 8 years. In that time he undertook post-doctoral research. He was also part of one of the largest collaboration of astrophysicists in the world which was called the dark energy survey. After his academic career, he moved into a role in data science and found that the work was very similar. The principles and problems he faced in data science were similar to his science career. It was the setting that he found the most different. He now works as a Lead Data Scientist at FutureLearn and he works on identifying and solving problems in a data-driven fashion.

Moritz is the Co-founder and Managing Director at DiscoEat One of the three co-founders of DiscoEat, Moritz helped create the app that allows restaurants to fill empty spaces on their tables at quiet times. Moritz has traveled extensively and has a degree in international management and finance. After university, he started his career in management consulting. After three and a half years he joined the startup world and he became the managing director of food panda then several other startups before founding DiscoEats.

Garuka is the CTO at Intellimorph Before working at Intellimorph, Garuka worked at a big four consultancy. His role focused on property process automation and artificial intelligence where he led large projects on automation. Areas Garuka has worked in include: banking, pharmaceuticals, government & healthcare.

Charles is the Lead Senior Data Architect at RS Components Charles has over 20 years of experience in IT, of which over 15 years specializing in database technologies. He has spent most of his career designing databases, SQL and report development, and managing database servers. Charles believes that data requires great attention to detail and an understanding of definitions.

Rob is the lead technologist and blockchain DLT at Digital Catapult A Trained medical doctor, Robert worked in the NHS for 6-years. He really enjoyed the role but always had a desire to ‘invent stuff’. So he went back to university to study a degree that would allow him to do that. Robert first took an interest in blockchain whilst doing his Ph.D and the bitcoin phenomenon exploded in 2012. He knew then Bitcoin was something he needed to be part of. In that time he also co-founded the research center for cryptocurrency research & engineering at Imperial College. After this Rob moved out of the research world and into Digital Catapult so he could make a broader economic impact on society. Rob’s driving force is discussing and understanding where blockchain technology is heading and where can it be applied to make a real impact.

Greg is the founder and CEO at Octopus Energy After a short sojourn in the video game industry when he finished his GCSE’s Greg returned to university to do a degree in Economics. He landed his first professional role in the marketing department at Proctor & Gamble. When Greg started at P&G the concept of technology and marketing being closely entwined was very alien. But with the advent of the consumer-facing internet that all changed and the two disciplines began gelling together. Greg seized on the developing digital marketing industry by creating a product we’d now identify as a cloud-based Saas CRM. He was one of the first individuals in the world to produce a type of technology like this. The product was reasonably successful and let Greg sold it for a tidy profit. Selling this product gave Greg enough capital to build a big business in an area that really matters. Not long after he founded Octopus Energy. He started Octopus Energy because he is passionate about bringing fairer practice

Juan is the VP of Engineering at Splice. Moving to America in 2007 Juan initially worked as a chef after studying culinary arts. After the financial crisis of 2008, he found himself moving away from cheffing and started building websites for people. He initially learned his computer skills from building myspace pages for his friend's bands. It wasn’t long until Juan moved into the startup scene in US. He moved from Florida to New York and began his role at Splice.