Sharon is a Senior Business Leader with a track record in driving sustainable revenue growth, restructuring businesses and developing iconic brands across global markets. She has honed her leadership and advisory skills in Board & Executive roles at the BBC and Microsoft Corporation, and through her work as a Chairman, Non-Executive Director and executive coach.

Sam Kingston is the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) at Mobica, a global digital software engineering provider delivering tailored, next generation technology solutions for many world’s leading brands, incorporating disruptive technologies like artificial intelligence, machine learning, computer vision, IoT, extended reality, and more.

With extensive leadership experience in developing, transforming, and expanding technology businesses, Sam is responsible for shaping and leading the company’s overall direction, as Mobica continues to provide clients with engineering expertise across established and emerging areas of digital technologies – delivering outcomes to unify businesses and technology initiatives which drive growth and increase competitiveness.

A proven leader within the software services sector, Sam previously held international executive roles with major technology organisations; Oracle, Unisys, Deutsche Telecom Group and latterly with Ciklum, a George Soros private equity software services company.

Lorna Davidson is Founder and CEO at redwigwam, the UKs no1 platform for flexible staffing.

Lorna is an entrepreneur with a history of successfully building, managing and exiting businesses.

Redwigwam, is a flexible work booking platform serving both workers and hirers. There are currently more than 108,000 workers registered, a number which is growing daily! The site matches workers to jobs in their area that require the skills they have and workers can book whichever jobs they wish.

As Northern Head of TMT at Barclays, Greg supports a portfolio of fast growing tech companies and a team of regional TMT bankers.

Prior to this Greg has had roles in business development and leadership across UK&I. During 2016 he led the Northern project team responsible for implementing the high growth and entrepreneur proposition at Barclays.

This proposition underpins Barclays support of the local tech ecosystem through Eagle Labs, a bespoke funding model and a team of start-up/scale up bankers in the region. Greg is also a director of Involve Northwest.

Virginia is a European Patent Attorney, Chartered Patent Attorney, European Trade Mark Attorney and Registered Trade Mark Attorney. With a degree in engineering science from Oxford, she has over twenty years of experience in the intellectual property profession and she has registered thousands of patents in a wide variety of scientific fields. Virginia specialises in designing and building patent portfolios as a business asset for companies. As outside counsel, she has been responsible for the development and growth of some very high profile portfolios, since acquired by major companies at significant values. Alignment of IP with business strategy played a key part in building the value of each portfolio.

Virginia is the former President of the Software Commission for the UNION of European Practitioners in Intellectual Property - a forum for discussing and influencing forthcoming draft laws and international agreements. In this capacity, she is familiar with intellectual property regimes across several European territories. 

Richard has been in charge of Leeds based Sky Betting & Gaming for eleven years and with the company for sixteen.

He holds a Masters degree in Engineering, Economics and Management from Oxford and a Masters in Public Policy from Harvard University, where he was a Fulbright scholar. He lives in Harrogate with his wife and two children but remains an Arsenal fan.

Paul is leading Entrepreneur, CEO and investor in the video games and tech space. He has founded, led and sold four companies and has invested in many more. Paul is currently, CEO of Playdemic, a video games developer and publisher he co-founded in 2010.

Prior to founding Playdemic, Paul was briefly an investment banker before starting his first games company, BattleMail, in 1999.

In 2010, Paul co-founded Playdemic, a free-to-play mobile games developer and publisher. Playdemic has enjoyed significant global success with its leading franchises reaching over 200m players and generating over $1Bn of sales. Playdemic’s biggest hit, Golf Clash, is currently one of the Top Grossing mobile games in the world.

Playdemic was acquired by Warner Bros in 2017 and subsequently by Electronic Arts in June 2021 for $1.4Bn.

Paul has also invested in a number of other games and technology businesses including Ironstone Partners (acquired by Eidos/Square Enix), Ideas Pad (acquired by Playdemic), Appatyze (acquired by Teddy Sagi’s private office), WithU, Nivo, Retro Games Ltd and Scene Group. Paul has a degree in Economics from Manchester University.

Danielle Haugedal-Wilson - Head of Engineering, Co-op

Experienced Head Of Architecture, Board Member & Non Exec Director.

Skilled in Digital Strategy, Strategy Mapping, and Enterprise Architecture.

Strong business development professional with extensive retail history & a Bachelor's degree focused in Financial Services from The Manchester Metropolitan University. 

Richard Law- Non-Executive Chairman, The Pebble Group 

Richard is former CEO of GBG plc. Under his leadership GBG gained first mover advantage and became a global leader in disruptive Identity Intelligence making online business easier, safer and compliant for household name businesses globally. During his tenure GBG increased its market capitalisation 100 fold from £5 million to over £500 million and acquired 10 businesses across Europe, the USA and Asia.

Richard is a passionate supporter and backer of North West technology businesses and took a stake in and became Chair of Vypr in September 2017. Richard also Chairs Manchester based Zuto and, is an active Angel Investor in the region and works closely with Tech Manchester

Will is a founding director of OBI Property, and specialises in advising fast growing tech occupiers on their real estate strategies across the UK and Europe.

Will was recently named Dealmaker of the Year by North West Business Insider and has delivered successful business relocations for the likes of AO.com, The Hut Group, NCC Group, Zuto, Rentalcars.com, UKFast and LADBible

Edie Lush, a British-American Journalist, is an Author, Executive Editor of Hub Culture, aCommunication Trainer and MC.

She is co-host for the CBS distributed Global Goals podcast,which is part of the ‘We Are All Human Foundation’, an organization devoted to promoting radical inclusion and diversity and fights racism and discrimination. Edie was the economics and political correspondent for Bloomberg Television. Before moving into journalism she was a political analyst for investment bank UBS. She’s been a political analyst for hedge fund Omega Advisors in New York, a speechwriter for the Secretary General of the Organization of American States in Washington, D.C. and an international relations expert for Hungarian political party SzDSz in Budapest.

Jane Haxby is the Managing Partner of the London office. Jane is the former European Managing Partner and prior to that, she was the co-head of our Global Corporate Practice Group, responsible for EMEA. She has over 25 years of experience advising public and private companies on all aspects of corporate finance generally with particular focus on mergers and acquisitions (including takeovers). Jane also advises on corporate governance, reorganizations and general corporate structuring.

David Moss, Co-founder of Blue Prism, is a thought leader and founding technologist in the Robotic Process Automation software sector.

David has over 20 years’ experience in the enterprise software space and a proven track record of delivering transformational technology products to global blue chip organisations.

Stephen is a Partner at ECI Partners, the UK’s leading growth-focused private equity firm.

ECI partners with UK growth companies within the business & financial services, consumer, and TMT sectors. For more than 40 years ECI has invested across the northern technology sector, gaining a wealth of experience in supporting high growth businesses, including NCC Group, LateRooms, Ascribe, Citation, Imagesound and Oaktree.

They typically invest £25m to £100m of equity in deals valued up to £200m. ECI believes in teamwork and collaboration, supporting ambitious management teams combining their knowledge and vision with our experience.

A consistent theme in Mark's career has been turning data and analytics into better business decisions. Initially working in retail location consultancy and then leading database marketing agency Marketing Databasics to an exit with the Indicia Group. He co-founded deltaDNA in 2010 and brought analytics and player management into the games industry for the first time leading it to an acquisition by Unity Technologies in 2019. His current role is running Marketing for the Unity Gaming Services platform

Mark Rothwell was a student of Business & Communication at Northumbria University, Since joining Pareto Law as a graduate he has achieved significant success in sales, management & leadership. He is now responsible for the sales function at Pareto law, a global market leading sales development and recruitment business.

After two decades of success, Pareto’s growth trajectory continues, with offices throughout the UK and New York, and a constantly expanding portfolio of services, including Sales Graduates, Sales Training, Executive Recruitment, Sales Apprenticeships & recently adding a Technical solution to find Project Managers & Business Analysts

Liz is Head of Entrepreneur Engagement at Tech Nation. She spent longer than she cares to admit in suits and corporate boardrooms before having her head turned by tech - and is now enjoying looking after the UK’s scaleup founders on a full time basis. She leads a national team across 11 different regions of the UK who are focused on finding and supporting tech founders to rapidly grow and scale their businesses. Liz's team are on a mission to make sure that the UK's scaling tech founders' huge ambitions are matched with ready access to a national and international network who can help them to make it happen.

She is a self-confessed tech fanatic with a particular soft-spot for B2B products with a beautifully crafted UI/UX and leadership teams with a relentless customer focus.

Liz sits on a number of Advisory Boards and Steering Committees all focused on driving ecosystem growth and supporting scaling businesses - including the Greater Manchester AI Foundry, The Digital City Festival, and the Business Action Council Net Zero Committee. In addition Liz is a proud member of the Princes' Trust North West Development Committee - supporting young people into entrepreneurship and growing the digital skills pipeline.

Stuart is the co-founder of Paceline marketing and PR consultancy, working with firms in the tech, professional services and arts sectors. His 20+ years corporate career saw him running marketing and corporate relationships departments for the likes of Alliance & Leicester, first direct and TD Bank of Canada. He is a non-executive director and adviser to a number of startups, including JigTalk, Synap and Soc, and has helped startups to raise funds, through crowdfunding, angels and VCs.

He is also the co-founder and the Festival Director of the Leeds Digital Festival, the largest tech event in the UK. In 2019, the Festival had 240 events and 25,000 attendees, with more tech events in Leeds than in San Francisco, Boston and New York. The annual Tech Nation report saw him named by startups as the most influential person in Leeds.

Deb Hetherington is an award winning facilitator of business support and growth consultancy with over 10 years experience supporting startup and scaling businesses. As Head of Innovation for Bruntwood SciTech in Leeds and Manchester, Deb leads the design and delivery of innovation services and business support to a wide range of disruptive digital and tech startups and scale ups at the ‘home of tech’ Platform in Leeds and at Manchester Science Park, Citylabs and Circle Square.

Deb is also on the boards of Leeds City Council Digital and Leeds Tech and a member of the steering groups for Leeds BID and the Leeds LEP innovation team.

Kirsty Macdonald is a Principal at JamJar Investments, the innocent drinks founders’ venture capital fund. They invest in exceptional founding teams to help them create, nurture and scale challenger consumer brands in the UK. Investments include Deliveroo, Bulb Energy, Propercorn and Tails.com. 

Prior to JamJar, Kirsty trained at consumer goods giant Unilever where she worked on marketing and customer analytics across a variety of brands within their personal care and food portfolios. She holds a BA in Economics and Management from the University of Oxford and an MSc in Global Politics from The London School of Economics.

Ed is a Vice President at GP Bullhound. Since joining in 2016, Ed has worked on over £1bn of successful M&A transactions and scale up rounds across Europe, the UK, Africa and the USA – additionally he has spent time in Hong Kong on secondment. He started his career at EY and Grant Thornton in their Corporate Finance departments.

Ed is a Chartered Accountant and a member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland, he holds a BA (Hons) from the University of Manchester.

Mae Salem is a Partner in the Corporate Practice Group in Leeds. Mae is experienced in advising corporates, private equity houses and individuals on private acquisitions and disposals, private equity investments and generally advising clients in a corporate setting.

Mae was shortlisted for the Yorkshire Insider Dealmakers Awards in 2020 in the Emerging Dealmaker category.

Thomas Bowie is an associate in the Financial Services Practice Group. He works on a diverse range of regulatory matters, and advises on compliance with the FCA/PRA rules and implementation of EU legislation in the UK (including MiFID II/R, EMIR, AIFMD, 4MLD, 5MLD, and PSD2). Tom acts for clients across EMEA, North America and Asia Pacific ranging from start-ups to international organisations, including banks, stockbrokers, investment managers, private equity firms, insurers and intermediaries.

Stuart is the co-founder of Paceline marketing and PR consultancy, working with firms in the tech, professional services and arts sectors. His 20+ years corporate career saw him running marketing and corporate relationships departments for the likes of Alliance & Leicester, first direct and TD Bank of Canada. He is a non-executive director and adviser to a number of startups, including JigTalk, Synap and Soc, and has helped startups to raise funds, through crowdfunding, angels and VCs.

He is also the co-founder and the Festival Director of the Leeds Digital Festival, the largest tech event in the UK. In 2019, the Festival had 240 events and 25,000 attendees, with more tech events in Leeds than in San Francisco, Boston and New York. The annual Tech Nation report saw him named by startups as the most influential person in Leeds.

Ed is an Associate in the Investment Banking team at GP Bullhound, a leading technology advisory and investment firm, providing transaction advice and capital to the world’s entrepreneurs and founders. Ed has worked on transactions throughout Europe and also in the US, South Africa and Asia – where he spent a year working in Hong Kong.

Alongside working on transactions, Ed is passionate about developing the technology ecosystem in the UK and is a judge on several national start-up competitions.

Kirsty Macdonald is an Investment Manager at JamJar Investments, the innocent drinks founders’ venture capital fund. They invest in exceptional founding teams to help them create, nurture and scale challenger consumer brands in the UK. Investments include Deliveroo, Bulb Energy, Propercorn and Tails.com. 

Prior to JamJar, Kirsty trained at consumer goods giant Unilever where she worked on marketing and customer analytics across a variety of brands within their personal care and food portfolios. She holds a BA in Economics and Management from the University of Oxford and an MSc in Global Politics from The London School of Economics.