Advisory Board
Dr Caroline Brown
Commercially focused business leader with 20 years main Board experience, as Executive and Non-Executive Director, driving strategic growth and leading high performing teams in the media, professional services and technology sectors. Caroline has delivered business strategy across EMEA, the Americas, former-CIS, India and the Far East in commercial leadership roles for FTSE100 groups, mid-cap companies, and innovative small and medium sized enterprises. Her early career was in corporate finance with Merrill Lynch (New York), UBS and HSBC advising global corporations and governments. Caroline’s current portfolio of interests is supported by a strong interdisciplinary background. She is a Qualified Accountant, Chartered Financial Analyst, Master of Business Administration and Chartered Director.
Lisa Smith
Lisa is currently setting up Btomorrow Ventures the Corporate Venturing arm of BAT in order to accelerate BAT’s digital transformation and Beyond Nicotine Strategy. She was previously a Director at Unilever Ventures leading sustainable investment for 8 years; and founder Entrepreneur in Residence at the Royal College of Art’s Dyson Incubator. Prior to investing Lisa was Chief Engineer building and operating factories for Unilever; she then joined McKinsey, practicing lean operations in NA and EU. Lisa is passionate about people and planet, she built a tech platform to support wellbeing and eliminate social isolation of the elderly as CEO of Kraydel, and designed and launched a Pan-African agricultural green bond to address food security alongside a novel multi-country Agri-MBA. Lisa has won numerous leadership, innovation & IT awards most recently as UK Women in IT Entrepreneur of the year & Mentor of the year. Lisa has an MBA from Harvard Business School, an MSc in Bio-Mechanics and a PhD in Mechanical Engineering.
Simon Devonshire
Entrepreneur. Investor. Non-Executive Director. Simon has an extensive corporate career and is also a serial entrepreneur. He previously ran O2 Business the business division of the mobile-network and co-founded Wayra Europe, the business accelerator belonging to Telefonica. He served as Entrepreneur in Residence (EiR) for the UK Government for three and a half years, reporting to Dept BEIS. Simon co-founded One Water which has donated more than £20m to providing clean water in Africa. He also helped scale-up Zopa.com at seed-stage. Simon’s current portfolio includes: being an active investor in Howz.com, TalentCupboard.com, LocalDataCompany.com, Yoti.com, Wrisk.co, TrueInvivo.co.uk, SwoopFunding.com and EiR for the National Physical Laboratory. Simon is a Non-Executive Director of the Student Loans Company, and a VCT.
Tim Jones
Chairman of Treatt plc, an ingredients manufacturer exporting to 90+ countries and Premium-listed on the London Stock Exchange Main Market. A Member of the Chartered Institute of Securities and Investments and an Associate of the Chartered Insurance Institute, Tim began his career in financial services with Royal Insurance and subsequently held posts in the Middle East, the US and Europe before entering the beverage sector including the establishment of a joint venture in the Balkans. For 17 years he was Chief Executive of Allia, a charitable organisation where he oversaw a range of new solutions to drive impact entrepreneurship developing social finance initiatives for impact investment through Employment and Housing Bonds and London Stock Exchange-listed Bonds. He remains Senior Advisor to Allia’s Trustees, Chairman of Allia’s stockbroking subsidiary City and Continental Ltd and a Non-executive director of Retail Charity Bonds plc.
Hugh Parnell
Chairman of Cambridge Cleantech/Envirotech Ltd, co-founder of the Cambridge Energy Forum and of the Cleantech Special Interest Group at Cambridge Network.
Having qualified as a chartered account with Peat Marwick Mitchell (now KPMG) in 1978, Hugh moved to British Petroleum (BP), where after diverse positions based around strategy, planning, MI and marketing his last role was in charge of strategy implementation and planning for downstream Europe. After BP, Hugh joined Robert Fleming and Co. to develop the oil-sector corporate finance business, followed by a similar role as a Director with Dresdner Kleinwort Benson. In 2000 Hugh joined NW Brown Group to head up corporate finance and later took responsibility for developing a business centred on early stage technology investing including the Great Eastern Investment Forum (GEIF). GEIF provided a platform from which to build a suite of funds totalling 40m.
James Wallman
James is an author, entrepreneur, futurist, keynote speaker, and government adviser. He has written 2 bestselling books. The first, Stuffocation was about what he believes is one of key trends of our era. Concerned about the environment and wellbeing, our fundamental values are shifting from materialism to ‘experientialism’: instead of wanting more stuff, we want experiences instead. The Financial Times named its sequel, Time And How To Spend It a Book Of The Year 2019.
James runs advisory firm The Future is Here. Clients include VISA, KPMG, KFC, HSBC, IDEO, Avis, Facebook, and Marriott International. He has given talks from TEDxManchester and TEDxLSE to the Collision Conference in Las Vegas, Google HQ in California, and 10 Downing Street. He advises the British government on the experience economy: he is a ‘Sector Specialist, Experience Economy’ at the UK’s Department for International Trade.
Paul Bourne
Paul works in ‘Creative Engagement’. In Executive Education and Entrepreneurship, his key areas of interest are working alongside Artists exploring Creativity in the Workplace, Enterprise Thinking, Collaborative working, Communication Impact and Transformational Leadership. All wrapped up in Storytelling.
He has most recently worked with a wide variety of retained clients focusing on two key areas: Cultural Shift with The Dubai Stock Exchange (DIFC), Liverpool Football Club, NIKE and Sberbank (Russia), and Communication Impact Programmes for management and staff with Fairtrade, United States Armed Forces and McLaren Formula One Racing.
David Foster
David is an experienced ‘people, development & change consultant’ and a facilitative learning practitioner. He has a passion for addressing ‘messy’ challenges, at an organisational, team or individual level, and for working in a discreet and people-focused manner. He ran ‘direct experience’ marketing agencies for more than a decade before becoming an independent consultant in 2007. He has additionally been teaching within University of Brighton, Business School between 2013 and 2020, latterly as a Senior Lecturer and as Interim Course Leader for the MBAs. He holds an Executive MBA from London Business School, is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and is a Certified Management & Business Educator.
Tim Barnes
Tim now runs The Rain Gods Ltd, helping start ups through the provision of work space, training and occasional investment. He works regularly with universities and large organisations to help them develop their start up support structures and ecosystems in areas as from tech to government and sport. His past roles cover activities in the public and private sectors, including as a management consultant, an early-stage investment manager and as the Director of Enterprise and head of the entrepreneurship centre at UCL. Significant engagements over the years have included projects with the BBC, NESTA and the Universities of Cambridge and Loughborough.
He is a non-executive director of both advisory services company Exemplas Holdings Ltd and support provider Capital Enterprise Ltd as well as Chair of Trustees for NACUE, a charity that promotes student entrepreneurship. He is an advisory board member at the London Co-Investment Fund and Emotech Ltd.
André Schwaninger
André cofounded Carbon13 in May 2019 and is a former Accenture MD with 20yrs of international consulting experience in Energy, Utilities, Oil&Gas, Pharmaceutical, High Tech, and Automotive-Industries. Andre is a founder of a digital consulting business and proficient in Digital Transformation, Business & Practice Development. He holds a Master in Physics from ETH Zurich and a Diploma in Entrepreneurship from Cambridge Judge Business School.
James Vacarro
James is a strategist and systems thinker with a background in sustainable finance. He runs the strategy consultancy, RePattern – part of NOW Partners. He is a Special Advisor to Triodos Bank (previously Director of Strategy and MD of the UK Investment Business), and Interim Director for the Climate Safe Lending Network. James has served as a member of several advisory groups on sustainable finance at UK, European and international level including the Global Steering Committee for the UNEP Finance Initiative, where he was one of the founding developers of the UN Principles for Responsible Banking. James is a Senior Associate of the Cambridge Institute for Sustainable, Senior Fellow (and previous Chair) of the Finance Innovation Lab, a director of Regen and an advisor for a small number of NGOs in Europe including the Club of Rome.
Pravin Rodrigues
Pravin runs Mentis Management Solutions, Inc., a management consulting firm based in Canada that helps organisations implement large-scale, mission-critical people, process and technology transformation, including change for sustainability. With a growing focus on the clean technology and social enterprise spaces, the firm also offers advisory and implementation assistance throughout the venture cycle in the areas of financing, product road-mapping, partnerships and market development.
He is a graduate of the Masters in Sustainability Leadership programme at the University of Cambridge. As part of a global team, he also researched the effectiveness of valuation initiatives in engaging the private sector to preserve natural capital. Pravin launched the Espera Ventures Green Economy I Fund in 2017 to invest in ventures with environmental and social impact at the heart of their business models.
David Gill
David has been CEO of the St John’s Innovation Centre in Cambridge since 2008. He previously ran the Innovation & Technology Unit at HSBC Bank in London (1997-2004). David was called to the Bar by the Middle Temple before working in corporate finance for US and UK banks. A Sloan Fellow at the Stanford Graduate School of Business in California (2004-05), he is an Visiting Fellow at the Institute of Manufacturing (University of Cambridge Department of Engineering), a non-executive director of the European Business Network and NXD of several firms specialising in financing early-stage, high-potential businesses. In recent years, he has been involved in advisory and training projects for Poland, Libya, Kuwait, Thailand and China. His publications cover innovation ecosystems, entrepreneurial finance and business incubation.
Dharmesh Raithatha
Dharmesh is a leader in the product and venture space. Most recently he was the founding partner at Forward Partners and has helped launch over 20 startups and supported many more. He has extensive experience in product and growth of early, growth and large-scale consumer and B2B tech businesses across many different verticals. He has founded 2 startups with 1 exit and the scars from both. He is an expert in combining Lean, Design thinking, Product and Growth philosophies to build and scale startups.
Dharmesh is a regular writer on product and startups, run workshops and coaches founders and product talent. He also sits on the board of Mossy Earth and the Rest Easy Group.
Dr Rebecca Myers
Rebecca is an organic chemist and spent 20 years at the Department of Chemistry at the University of Cambridge. She did her PhD with Chris Abell FRS then moved the labs of Steven Ley CBE FRS for postdoctoral research. Rebecca was Associate Director for the Cambridge-CRUK PhD Training Programme in Medicinal Chemistry.
Now as Head of Education at the Cambridge Judge Business School Entrepreneurship Centre, Rebecca has designed and established entrepreneurship programmes for the research community at the University of Cambridge and beyond, including two new-to-the-scene educational programmes, EntrepriseTech and EntrepriseTECH STAR, now flourishing between the laboratory and start-up interface.
Rebecca is passionate about cultivating meaningful research impact, creating opportunities for researchers to thrive beyond academia and become founders of next-generation companies that put the earth and human health first.
Philippe Manet
Philippe Manet has over 35 years experience in banking and financial markets, ranging from debt structuring to asset management. He is now an angel investor but remains on the board of both commercial companies and investment funds. Philippe is a CFA® charterholder.
Cyrille Najjar
Cyrille has founded, managed, and scaled companies in the UK and US including raising capital from corporates and venture capital. He has established partnerships with leading brands in Pharmaceuticals, Automotive, HVAC, and home appliances and has managed teams for both serverless and server-based architecture for Machine Learning and Data Analytics platforms. Cyrille has expertise in Engineering, Industrial Design, User experience, and User Interface with over 20 years of experience in manufacturing, supply chain and logistics. He has developed over 300 products ranging from early-stage startups to Fortune 500 companies in aeronautics, hospitality and major cosmetic brands and has specialized in product innovation, design management and manufacturing, with expertise in both digital and physical prototyping and production. He has designed and supervised over 100 architectural projects from conception to execution, with a focus on offices, commercial retail and F&B projects built in the UK, Canada, Lebanon, France, UAE.
In addition he is an advisor to the French government in digital and data strategy and is helping the French Senate and Parliament representatives tackle the intricacies of data and protecting citizens’ personal data and is a promoter of data transparency and ethics in banking and contracts using blockchain and distributed ledgers .