Speakers

Piers Clark

Founder and chairman - Isle Utilities

Piers is Isle Utilities’ chairman. Isle is a technical, specialist water consultancy with offices in the UK, the Netherlands, the USA, Australia, Singapore and Abu Dhabi. Piers was previously the managing director for the private equity fund Global Water Development read more

Gerard Harkin

R+D manager - Southern Water

Gerard has worked with organisations of all sizes to manage innovation programs, build new propositions, enhance business models, and deliver real revenue growth. He has broad experience across a dozen industries. He has twenty-five years' experience in innovation in both consulting and industry roles, read more

Rebecca Dibb-Simkin

Marketing and product director - Octopus Energy

Rebecca is product and marketing director at Octopus Energy, a multi-award-winning challenger energy supplier. Octopus is an e-commerce specialist and digital first with product, marketing, and customer service. It’s changing the way people consume and buy energy with ground-breaking product launches read more

Steve Kaye

Head of innovation - Anglian Water

Steve is a chartered mechanical engineer and has worked in the water industry for around twenty seven years. Steve has an MBA from City University in London and is also a visiting professor at Imperial College and Brunel University. Steve’s career read more

Ben Newby

Chief customer officer - Bristol Water

Ben is the customer services and IT director and a member of the executive team at Bristol Water. Ben has worked for Bristol Water for the past 5 years and before being appointed to his current position in 2015 was read more

Sarah McMath

Managing director, strategic planning & investment - Thames Water

Sarah has worked for Thames Water since 1994, initially in the innovation team where she gained a doctorate in Environmental Engineering while working as a research scientist. During the past 20 years, Sarah has held a range of roles, leading read more

Aaron Burton

Director of policy and innovation - Waterwise

Aaron is an internationally recognised expert in water efficiency and sustainable water management. He has worked in the UK and Australia across NGO, consulting, industry, academic, regulatory and government roles. This has included projects joining up water and energy efficiency, read more

Jacob Tompkins

Chief technical officer - The Water Retail Company

Jacob Tompkins is the co-founder and CTO of The Water Retail Company an independent new entrant retailer in the water market. Jacob trained as a civil engineer with degrees from UCL and Imperial. He worked as an academic researcher, the water lead read more

Jeremy Heath

Innovation manager - Sutton and East Surrey Water

Jeremy Heath is the innovation manager for Sutton and East Surrey Water, located just south of London. With a background in mechanical engineering and a qualification in software application development, part of his responsibility includes the introduction and implementation of read more

Jon Brigg

Manager of innovation - Yorkshire Water

Jon Brigg began his career in agriculture which led to a role in Yorkshire Water in 1992. Using experience gained through science, operational, R&D, commercial, procurement, fleet and leadership roles, Jon's current challenge is to build and drive a programme read more

Iliana Portugues

Head of innovation, Electricity Transmission Owner - National Grid

Iliana is the head of innovation for National Grid Electricity Transmission Owner, responsible for the delivery of innovation across National Grid. Iliana joined National Grid in 2014 as a condition monitoring specialist before moving into the innovation team in 2015. Previously, read more

Kieran Brocklebank

Head of innovation - United Utilities

Kieran has been with United Utilities since 2002 and has been head of innovation since 2013. He is tasked with delivering multi-million-pound efficiencies by introducing great ideas into the company. This involves creating a network to harvest ideas, reviewing them to read more

Nick Ellins

Chief executive - EU Skills

Nick Ellins is the chief executive of Energy & Utility Skills and the National Skills Academy for Power. Previously, Nick held posts of director of policy for the Rail Delivery Group rail strategy body and was the director of policy read more

John Russell

Senior director, strategy and planning - Ofwat

Dan Green

Head of sustainability and innovation - Wessex Water

Eddie Wrigley

Innovation Facilitator - Northumbrian Water

Eddie is an experienced workshop facilitator and has designed and delivered sessions for groups from 5 - 100+. He keeps up to date on latest thinking and good practice from across the innovation field and translates it into business strategy read more