Speakers for the third annual Sustainable Events Summit include:
- Ed Gillespie, Director, Futerra, and Summit Chair
- Jonathon Porritt, Founder Director, Forum for the Future – morning keynote
- Phil Cumming, Corporate Sustainability Manager, LOCOG
- Charlie Dorman, Operations Director, Connection Crew
- Andy Fryers, Hay Festival of Literature and the Arts
- Stephen Greene, Co-Founder and CEO, RockCorps
- Gerry Hopkinson, Co-Founder, Unity
- Dale Hudson, IMEX
- Graham Keene, Group Executive Chairman, World Events
- Amanda Kiely, Sustainability Project Manager, LOCOG
- Patrick Loy, Head of Events, GLA
- Allison Ogden-Newton, CEO, Social Enterprise London
- Jacquie Rogers, General Manager, ACC Liverpool
- Viki Stapleton, Event Manger, Schroders
- Andrew Williams, Managing Director, Seventeen Events
Speaker biographies
Ed Gillespie – Co-Founder and Creative Director, Futerra
In a varied, complementary career Ed has taught in Jamaica for a year, worked for the Survival Natural History Film Unit, as a marine biologist in Australia, New Caledonia and Orkney, and prior to co-founding Futerra in 2001 was environmental manager for London Transport.
Ed has Masters degrees in both Marine Conservation and Sustainable Development and has recently returned from a global circumnavigation of the world without flying during which he kept a popular blog www.lowcarbontravel.com and wrote a regular column, ‘The Slow Traveller’ for the Observer newspaper.
A provocative communicator and public speaker on all things sustainable Ed is a Member of the International Visual Communication Association, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, a Director of AntiApathy the campaigning and social experiment organization, and sits on the Steering Group of the RSA’s ‘Personal Carbon’ programme. He is a passionate and persuasive advocate for positive change in all aspects of our lives and sectors of society.
Stephen Greene – Co-Founder and CEO, RockCorps
Stephen Greene is a co-founder and the CEO of RockCorps, a pro-social production company and global organisation that uses the power of music to inspire volunteering, and introduce young people to a lifelong relationship with charities. RockCorps produces large-scale pop, rock and hip-hop concerts, distributing the tickets exclusively to volunteers who commit four hours of time at a RockCorps community project in their area.
Originally from Portland, Oregon, Stephen previously held the position of Executive Director at The Fowler Center, a Michigan-based non-profit facility for people with developmental and physical disabilities. He then earned his MBA at UCLA’s Anderson Business School.
In 2003, Stephen joined six friends from a wide spectrum of management, entertainment, and social service backgrounds to establish RockCorps. As CEO, he led RockCorps onto the U.S. scene in 2005.
In 2008 Stephen and the RockCorps co-founders brought their innovative idea to the UK and worked in partnership with Orange, Sony Ericsson and Channel 4 to create a series of community projects. By October 2009 RockCorps had produced three hugely successful gigs and worked with 80 UK charities including CSV, Nacro, Trees for Cities, Beat Bullying and Thames 21. By October 2009 over 56,000 people had registered with Orange RockCorps and 13,000 had worked four hours each (52,000 hours in total) to see an inspirational gig.
RockCorps (in partnership with Orange) ran its first programme in France in 2009, culminating in a gig for 5000 volunteers at Le Zenith. Stephen is working to spread the message that volunteering can become part of anyone’s lifestyle just like going out, music, sports and entertainment. RockCorps plans to go to more cities within the UK and more countries throughout the world, working with more likeminded NGO’s and charities and helping more communities.
Gerry Hopkinson – Co-Founder, Unity
Gerry Hopkinson set up Unity with co-founder Nik Done in 2005 to offer a new approach to PR.
Unity believes that all stakeholders deserve to be treated with respect, whether they’re employees, shareholders, consumers or the wider community.
The agency has pioneered a whole-brained approach to PR that combines right-brained creativity with left-brain planning and strategic insight to drive campaigns – spanning media relations, experiential, digital and design – that are bold and imaginative and effective in driving bottom-line results.
Unity has built its reputation on developing and delivering creative, award-winning campaigns for ethical causes like Cancer Research UK, Friends of the Earth, 10:10, Fifteen, Energy Savings Trust and Crisis as well as high profile brands like Orange, Pizza Express, Directline, Nivea and NBC Universal.
Over the past four years the agency has won or been a finalist for more than 20 industry awards including Marketing Magazine’s PR agency of the year, The Green Event Award for the launch of Age of Stupid and Best Green Campaign in this year’s PR Week Awards.
Prior to co-founding Unity, Gerry was CEO of Band & Brown Communications.
Graham Keene – Group Executive Chairman, World Events
Graham spent 10 years in the British Army before studying for a Recreation Management Masters Degree at Loughborough University in England and eventually making the decision to start his own events business in 1986.
Today WorldEvents™ celebrates its twenty fourth year in business and as Executive Chairman Graham continues to be passionate about the growing value that the events industry is now adding to the more traditional marketing communications mix. He remains at the forefront of WorldEvents™’ vision to become one of the leading international events agencies in the World. Most recently he has spearheaded the company’s entry into the Asian market through a launch of its Hong Kong office.
Graham is also very passionate about the effect of the events industry on the environment and has devised award winning CSR event concepts that have changed perceptions and helped to shape WorldEvents™’ CSR offer ‘TripleImpact®’.
Allison Ogden-Newton – CEO, Social Enterprise London
Allison Ogden-Newton is the Chief Executive of Social Enterprise London, the capital’s leading agency supporting and promoting social enterprise.
Allison has successfully promoted social enterprise to a wide spectrum of London’s agencies and decision makers, raising awareness and creating a community of support through effective networking and developing strong strategic partnerships. Whilst at SEL, Allison has worked to increase the understanding and implementation for social enterprise, particularly in the delivery of public services, social accounting, and business support.
Prior to SEL, Allison was the CEO at Women’s Education in Building (WEB), which was a voluntary organisation set up to support women by providing education and training in the construction trades. It was while at WEB that Allison became interested in social enterprise and set up Building Etc, a project that offered struggling entrepreneurs incubator office space, access to start-up finance and business mentoring.
Allison is a member of the Government’s Women’s Enterprise Taskforce and the Building Stronger Communities Taskforce. She is Deputy Chair of ACEVO, and sits on a number of social enterprise Boards including the London Migraine Centre and the Council of the Social Enterprise Coalition.
Jonathon Porritt – Founder Director, Forum for the Future
Jonathon Porritt, Co-Founder of Forum for the Future, is an eminent writer, broadcaster and commentator on sustainable development. Established in 1996, Forum for the Future is now the UK’s leading sustainable development charity, with 70 staff and over 100 partner organisations, including some of the world’s leading companies.
In addition, he is Co-Director of The Prince of Wales’s Business and Environment Programme which runs Seminars for senior executives around the world. He is a Non-Executive Director of Wessex Water, and of Willmott Dixon Holdings. He is a Trustee of the Ashden Awards for Sustainable Energy, and is involved in the work of many NGOs and charities as Patron, Chair or Special Adviser.
He was formerly Director of Friends of the Earth (1984-90); co-chair of the Green Party (1980-83) of which he is still a member; chairman of UNED-UK (1993-96); chairman of Sustainability South West, the South West Round Table for Sustainable Development (1999-2001); a Trustee of WWF UK (1991-2005), a member of the Board of the South West Regional Development Agency (1999-2008).
He stood down as Chairman of the UK Sustainable Development Commission in July 2009 after nine years providing high-level advice to Government Ministers.
His latest books are Capitalism As If The World Matters (Earthscan, revised 2007), Globalism & Regionalism (Black Dog 2008) and Living Within Our Means (Forum for the Future 2009).
Jonathon received a CBE in January 2000 for services to environmental protection.
Jacquie Rogers – General Manager, ACC Liverpool
Jacquie Rogers is the General Manager of the BT Convention Centre, part of ACC Liverpool in the UK and has over 20 years experience in business tourism and the meetings industry
The UK’s newest venue opened only 22 months ago and Jacquie’s role has been to set up and develop the Convention Centre from a building site to a leading, state of the art, international meetings facility.
The BT Convention Centre, Liverpool boasts the latest environmental measures in its design and operation to make it, internationally, a leading ‘green’ venue setting standards for best practice in the meetings industry. Part of this development, and development that Jacquie is passionate about, is to continue not just the Convention Centres environmental credentials, but broadening out to embrace all factors associated with Corporate Social Responsibility.
The BT Convention has also recently launched its Green Alliance with Cape Town and Melbourne as well as achieving ISO14001 to compliment a range of other environmental accreditations and awards.
Jacquie sits on ACC Liverpool’s Operational Board and the Board of Directors for AIPC.
Andrew Williams – Managing Director, Seventeen Events
Andrew Williams is a co-founder and director of Seventeen Events, a sustainable event management agency based in east London. Prior to co-founding Seventeen in 2005, Andrew spent the previous five years working for the Borders Books & Music chain, and living in Mexico and Central America. Andrew is a regular speaker on the subject of sustainability in events and was recently voted one of the 50 most influential figures in the UK events industry.
Since its inception Seventeen has had a sustainable focus to its work and the company now organises a variety of high profile events every year including the Observer Ethical Awards. Seventeen are BS8901 compliant, having helped to trial the new British Standard for sustainable event management in 2007.