Opening Speakers

Katherine Lucas is the CRM & Retention Lead at Abel & Cole, where she heads up strategies to enhance customer loyalty and engagement for the sustainable food delivery service. With 10 years’ experience in marketing and CRM, Katherine leverages data-driven insights to create personalised experiences that drive retention and long-term customer satisfaction.

Orla is a brand and growth marketeer with over 8 years of experience building digitally-native international brands. This includes growing seltzer company Ugly Drinks from birth to a global, award-winning brand and thereafter joining multinational CPG company Reckitt’s incubation and investment hub. Currently, Orla is Head of E-Commerce at the UK’s fastest-growing dog treat brand, Denzel’s.

International marketing strategist with 10+ years of experience in Europe and the Middle East. Passionate about brand building and deeply understanding consumer insights, strategic go-to-market plans, digital marketing, media, and customer experience across sales channels.

Rory Armitage-Burns is an e-comm pro with 10 years of experience in online beauty. As Head of Growth at Hairburst, he brings a data-driven approach to web, CRM, CX and performance marketing. Rory loves finding new ways to engage and connect with buyers and using data to drive real business impact.

Set up Pot Gang back in 2020, delivering gardening kits across London during lockdown weekends in a rent-a-van. Almost 4 years later, we’ve got gang members in all corners of the UK, delivering 10,000+ of our fruit, veg and herb growing boxes to customers each month.

We do this direct-to-consumer, largely on a subscription basis, and business-to-business, working with corporate wellbeing teams and also children via the public sector.

Our sole aim is to help anyone successfully grow fruit, veg and herbs from home. Our monthly boxes contain absolutely everything beginners need to grow seasonal produce, with step-by-step instruction guides and personal support on WhatsApp. Done in a way that’s the total opposite to what you expect from the gardening industry.

It’s led to us being named The Sunday Times Best Gardening Subscription, being presented to King Charles, plus even collabing with Nike for Air Max Day.

Lucy has worked in the payments industry for over 8 years, with a focus on optimising digital and subscription set ups for merchants across a range of industries. Coming from a background in Economics and Finance, she really focuses on ROI and value of spend when merchants are evaluating tech partners such as Adyen, and enjoys digging into customer data to discover potential revenue gains. In her current role she manages the UK Adyen Digital Sales team, and enjoys getting to know potential new partners looking to optimise their payments offering.

With over 10 years experience in the Ecom and D2C space, Tom has worked for and with a range of the UK’s top marketing agencies and D2C brands, helping to grow and scale brands’ customer database sizes and Ecom revenue through performance marketing channels. Tom is currently the Head of Acquisition at Craft Gin Club – the UK’s biggest gin subscription club.

Mike creates and protects customer value. For the last 15 years Mike has worked with businesses across sectors to ensure their customers buy more, stay longer and cost less to acquire. His recent clients include Gorillas UK, Nautilus Magazine (USA) and Fenway Resourcing.

As a consultant and fractional CMO, he’s helped B2B and B2C business in publishing, SaaS, media, banking, FMCG, retail and non-profits increase their customer value efficiently through innovative strategy.  His guiding belief is that businesses exist to deliver value to consumers and this must be done with empathy while maintaining profitability. Notably, Mike is recognized for pioneering the implementation of machine learning in CRM, enabling a more personalised and relevant experience for consumers and higher profits for businesses. You can find out more at www.customervalueguy.com.

Proven business leader (CCO / CFO / COO) and board member with a highly commercial / growth mindset and diverse functional expertise, having managed multiple departments and teams in the UK and internationally. Experience in scaling and restructuring businesses, as well as successfully marketing to and securing investment from private equity/venture capital partners to fund growth. Highly effective at engaging with and managing multiple stakeholders including shareholders/investors, board, leadership team and wider business.

Co-founder of The Cheeky Panda along with his partner Julie Chen. Cheeky Panda is a Fast Track 100 company, Ranked 13th in the UKs top 100 start-ups the 8 th most recognisable sustainable brand in the UK. Chris is passionate about delivering change for good and has been a public speaker with regular features in press and radio helping share the journey and inspire others to become environmental entrepreneurs.  Passionate about building sustainable 21 st century companies that have purpose over profit but are still commercially viable entities. He has been a mentor to several high growth businesses over the past 5
years.

Ben Lebus is the CEO and founder of Mob. Ben has always been passionate about food and learnt to cook from his father, who ran an Italian restaurant for a number of years. You can regularly find him cooking (and eating) some sort of puttanesca.

Stephan Ariesen is a seasoned enterprise tech leader with extensive experience in driving growth and innovation. He currently leads the EMEA team at Chargebee, the top provider of revenue management for subscription businesses. Stephan excels in enhancing subscriber retention, helping companies achieve long-term success.

Katie Searles is Editor of InternetRetailing and DeliveryX and a B2B journalist who has covered topics including the last-mile, urban logistics, zero-emission trends and technology, as well as robotic innovations. Katie also worked as a broadcast journalist for radio stations covering the east coast of Scotland and BBC London. Additionally, she has chaired both in-person and virtual conferences.

Maria has worked in financial services for 24 years in both consumer and corporate roles covering the end to end payment cycle.  She spent 7 years working in SME payments before moving to lead the Corporate Payments business for Lloyds.  Maria is passionate about building relationships with clients and ensuring we are providing them with a proposition which adds value to their business and helps them to provide an even better service to their end consumers.