Members' Advisory Board

Major General Tom Copinger-Symes CBE - Director Military Digitisation

Ministry of Defence

Tom spent his early career on operations with The Royal Green Jackets (now The Rifles) on operations in Northern Ireland, Bosnia, Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan; and in operational and strategy posts at the Permanent Joint Headquarters and the Ministry of Defence.

In 2014 he formed and commanded 1st Intelligence Surveillance & Reconnaissance Brigade, created to integrate the Army’s intelligence collection and exploitation capabilities. In 2017 he led the ‘Information Manoeuvre’ Project, commissioned by the Army’s Board to explore the benefits of integrating the Army’s information-centric and digital capabilities and to exploit digital technology with new ways of warfare.

In his next post, as a Major General, he commanded those capabilities, pioneering the Army’s response to a new era of great power competition, which culminated in his formation’s re-designation as 6th (UK) Division.

In Aug 19 he took up his current post, newly created to accelerate Defence’s Digital Transformation and increase its adoption and exploitation of digital technology. He reports to the Defence CIO and is the only military officer in the Defence Digital senior leadership team.

Ann Roberts - Chief People Officer

Flo Health

Ann is building rocketship companies in the high-growth tech space. She is the Chief People Officer of Flo, the #1 most downloaded Health app on a mission to improve the health and wellbeing of every girl and woman worldwide. Before Flo Ann was the Group HR Director at Bumble, with previous gigs in Goldman Sachs, Rolls-Royce, Connected Places Catapult and Lebara Mobile. She is interested in all things at the intersection of modern human capital practices, emerging tech, brands that are dripping with purpose, and business results. Born and raised in the Nordics, educated in Bangkok and calling London home since 2008. Ann was the Stonex Scholar at London School of Economics, has an MBA from Imperial College, is a judge at the UK Employee Experience Awards and was the HR Professional of the Year Gold Award Winner in HR Brilliance Awards 2019. When she's not working Ann likes running (away from her twin babies).

Mark Cliffe - Chief Economist

ING Group

Mark Cliffe is the Chief Economist of ING Group, an international financial services group with 37 million customers. Based in London and Amsterdam, he leads a team of economists, strategists and analysts in 16 offices around the world. Mark and his team are dedicated to helping businesses and consumers make better decisions by providing fresh insights about the outlook. In a disruptive and uncertain world, marked by dramatic changes in technology, politics and society, this increasingly involves an open source and multi-disciplinary approach to analysis. Mark travels extensively and has worked for a variety of financial services firms including HSBC and Nomura Research Institute.

Ben Legg - CEO and founder

Digital People International & The Portfolio Collective

Ben started his career in the Army. Following three years as a strategy consultant at McKinsey, Ben moved into senior leadership roles at Coca-Cola spanning Training & Development, Sales, Marketing & Distribution – culminating in leading 12,000 salespeople covering one million customers and 300 million active consumers.

He then moved to become COO of Google UK, Benelux & Ireland, and then COO of Google Europe where he wrote the blueprint for Google's monetisation approach. Ben then took on a variety of global C-Suite roles at technology companies, authored 'Marketing for CEOs: Death or Glory in the Digital Age,' and launched Ola UK.

Ben is now CEO of both Digital People International and The Portfolio Collective. He mentors start-ups and provides thought leadership and investor support.

Nick Lisher - Country Manager

Nextdoor

Nick Lisher is the UK Country Manager for Nextdoor, the free and private social network for neighbourhoods.

Nick spent six years in the early 2000s producing websites for MTV, before joining the launch team at successful UK dating site mysinglefriend.com, where he was Strategy Director for four years. Nick then joined mydeco.com as Marketing Director, before becoming Chief Marketing Officer for Massive Media, which was sold to IAC in December 2012. Most recently, Nick served as Chief Marketing Officer for Depop, a fast-growing social shopping app based in the UK.

With a wealth of experience managing online communities, Nick brings a passion for building authentic communities to his critical role leading the UK expansion for Nextdoor.

Phil Scully - Chief Information Officer

Costa

Phil Scully is the CIO for Costa, responsible for corporate and customer systems globally. Phil joined Costa from parent company Whitbread where he was Group CTO for 3 years with responsibility for Technology, Architecture, Data and Information Security functions. Phil has 30 years’ experience in the IT industry working in technology and delivery leadership roles on large, complex transformation agendas for BAA, Centrica, M&S and Whitbread.

Rich Corbridge - Chief Information Officer

Boots UK and Ireland

Rich is a disruptor in healthcare who has been asked to bring a different type of thinking to the health and beauty retail arena. Rich has been responsible for delivering nationwide genomics programmes, creating a digital fabric for one of the biggest hospitals in the NHS, leading a country from paper to digital healthcare, creating cloud first ‘permission’ for the EU and pushing the boundaries of a CIO and their interaction with business change. He is a believer in the concept of Collaborative Sensemaker. In late 2020 Rich was promoted from the position of Innovation Director to CIO of Boots UK and Ireland, retaining ownership of the innovation agenda as well as the leadership of all things technology related.

James Moore - General Manager

Trainline

James recently finished a 2-year tenure as General Manager of the UK Consumer Business at Trainline post the successful 2019 IPO and is now focussing on investing in and working with consumer tech scale ups. He is currently Chief Operating Officer/Investor at YourParkingSpace (think AirbnB for parking spaces instead of rooms) and is also an investor/advisor to Wombat (easy investments app), and Jigsaw (dating marketplace app). Prior to Trainline he had leadership roles at the top table of fast growth tech companies - Amazon, eBay, EA Games, Betfair and Sky. James is passionate about building innovative customer propositions at the intersection of marketing, data and digital product and putting together great teams and processes to run them.

Anna Sandgren - Head of Business Development

Ben & Jerry's

Anna Sandgren is the Head of Business Development including E-commerce/DTC and country expansion at Ben & Jerry’s in Europe, owned by Unilever. With 20 years of experience in a mix of tech/finance start-ups (Orc Software), private equity (Kopy Goldfields/Cancale), global retail (Unilever) and car companies (Volvo), Anna's passion and knowledge lies primarily within sales, marketing, driving purpose with impact and growing business fast within a disruptive or challenging context.

With purpose at the heart, Anna was co-founder of a network called Hera - for Engineering Women at LTH - 20 years ago in Sweden, which still is delivering value to next generations engineering women. She has been one of the co-founder of Ice Academy – an entrepreneurial refugee program jointly driven by Ben & Jerry’s and NGO Tern. Working across Europe, Anna has been one of the leaders behind the Unbreakable rainbow in Poland, where purpose and impact were driven by an offline experience combined with digital disruption to drive awareness of LGBT rights in Poland with the ambition to drive systematically change.

Darren Armitage - Enterprise Architecture Director

BMI Group

Experienced enterprise architect and innovator. Wide industry experience from banking to beer and now construction. Focussed on the intersection of architecture and innovation, to fix real world issues and support strategic ambition of the business.

Maneesh Kaushik - Senior Director Strategic Growth Insights

PepsiCo

Maneesh Kaushik is a senior leader who leverages 21 years of experience across Insights & Strategy to drive business growth. He has a global remit, and a depth of experience across key markets in US, Europe, Middle East, Asia, LATAM & China. He is an industry Thought Leader, was a speaker at Cannes Lions 2018 on "Social Prediction: Understanding What Consumers Want", and was author of an ESOMAR paper on "How cultures influence shopper behaviour".

Oliver Lewis - Co-Founder

Near Future Society

Oliver Lewis is the co-founder of the Near Future Society, a senior visiting fellow at the University of Southern California and a senior research associate at the University of Oxford. Previously he built a public sector business for billion-dollar British startup Improbable. He is one of the few technologists who has been deployed to Afghanistan and led efforts to reform how the UK government prepares for emerging technology. He is also the co-founder of Rebellion Defense, based in Washington DC and London, building products for the mission of national defence.

Brandie Deignan - Chief Executive Officer

Pier Health Group

Brandie Deignan takes a vision and makes it reality through sound strategy development and operational excellence. She intuitively sees the threads of opportunity that winds through an organisation, bringing them into a coherent whole, helping others extend their thinking and driving material business advantage. In 2021 Brandie joined primary care within NHS in general practice as Chief Executive Officer. Prior to this role, Brandie was Managing Director of Marco Pierre White Restaurants, cementing her c19 years’ experience in the consumer service delivery industry across hospitality, retail and aviation. Before her MD role, Brandie held senior leadership positions at British Airways Plc, Tesco Plc, Whitbread, Travelodge and Hilton Hotels, where she started her career as a graduate trainee and worked her way up. Brandie has a passion for education and equality and supports a number of schools, colleges and universities in an advisory capacity in this space. Brandie was recently voted No 41 of the Top 50 listening leaders.