Future Circular Cities Conference 2019 — Agenda

Construction/ hous­ing
Food
Fash­ion
FMCG (Fast Mov­ing Con­sumer Goods
Con­sumer Tech­no­logy

The out­puts will form the basis of poten­tial col­lab­or­a­tion oppor­tun­it­ies.

Speaker Profiles

Tre­vor Gib­son (Con­fer­ence Chair)

Tre­vor has almost 30 years’ exper­i­ence in the pub­lic sec­tor with a focus on stra­tegic man­age­ment and city scale sus­tain­ab­il­ity. His cur­rent role is focused on part­ner­ship build­ing and the devel­op­ment of new ini­ti­at­ives as part of Peterborough’s Future City Demon­strat­or pro­gram­me.

He is a mem­ber of the Nation­al City Stand­ards Insti­tute and chairs BSI’s Smart and Sus­tain­able Cit­ies Com­mit­tee hav­ing been heav­ily involved in the devel­op­ment of a range of smart city stand­ards.

He is a Board Mem­ber of both PECT and Change Agents UK.

Cllr. Peter Hiller (Cab­in­et Mem­ber for Growth, Plan­ning, Hous­ing and Eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment — Peter­bor­ough City Coun­cil).

Cab­in­et Mem­ber for Growth, Plan­ning, Hous­ing and Eco­nom­ic Devel­op­ment

Coun­cil­lor Hiller is respons­ible for plan­ning (devel­op­ment con­trol, stra­tegic plan­ning and stra­tegic growth), high­ways, trans­port and traf­fic orders as well as hous­ing includ­ing home­less­ness and ensur­ing adequate sup­ply. He is also the lead mem­ber for attract­ing extern­al fund­ing to aid eco­nom­ic prosper­ity and regen­er­a­tion of the city, as well as lead­ing on busi­ness engage­ment and devel­op­ment.

He is the coun­cil rep­res­ent­at­ive at nation­al, region­al and loc­al for­ums to pro­mote the city as a centre for busi­ness growth and has fur­ther respons­ib­il­ity for the work of Digit­al Peter­bor­ough in sup­port of our Smart Cit­ies ambi­tion. Coun­cil­lor Hiller leads the council’s Envir­on­ment Cap­it­al work, ensur­ing all poli­cy decisions are tailored to encour­aging clean­er and green­er liv­ing in the city.

As chief exec­ut­ive, Tom leads the Oppor­tun­ity Peter­bor­ough team, driv­ing eco­nom­ic growth to the city, work­ing with loc­al busi­nesses to increase job cre­ation, innov­a­tion and skills devel­op­ment ini­ti­at­ives. Tom joined Oppor­tun­ity Peter­bor­ough in 2014 from Cam­bridge­shire County Council’s Growth & Eco­nomy Unit where he was Pro­ject Lead for Inward Invest­ment.

Tom holds an MSc Devel­op­ment Man­age­ment and Exec­ut­ive MBA and is a Mem­ber of the Insti­tute of Eco­nom­ic Devel­op­ment.

Fac­ulty (Pro­fess­or level) in Man­age­ment Prac­tice, and a mem­ber of the Eco­nom­ics & Poli­cy group at the Uni­ver­sity of Cam­bridge Judge Busi­ness School, Dr Soufani holds a mas­ters degree in Applied Eco­nom­ics and a PhD in Fin­an­cial Eco­nom­ics.

Dr Soufani has pub­lished extens­ively in eco­nom­ics and fin­ance in areas relat­ing to fin­an­cial man­age­ment, cor­por­ate restruc­tur­ing, M&A, private equity, ven­ture cap­it­al and fam­ily busi­ness and the fin­an­cial and eco­nom­ic affairs of small to medi­um-sized enter­prises. His research also includes work on eco­nom­ic growth and innov­a­tion relat­ing to the cir­cu­lar eco­nomy and fast-grow­ing mar­kets and eco­nom­ies. His work is widely cited and included in poli­cy reports by organ­isa­tions such as the EU, OECD and the Insti­tute of Dir­ect­ors.

His work has also been cited and pub­lished by the World Eco­nom­ic For­um. He sits on the edit­or­i­al boards of a num­ber of inter­na­tion­al aca­dem­ic journ­als. Before join­ing aca­demia, Dr Soufani worked in invest­ment bank­ing in the area of bond and money mar­ket trad­ing. Dr Soufani has been the aca­dem­ic pro­gram­me dir­ect­or for many Exec­ut­ive Edu­ca­tion pro­grammes for major com­pan­ies and fin­an­cial insti­tu­tions as well as gov­ern­ment organ­isa­tions.

Ross is cur­rently on second­ment from Innov­ate UK, the UK’s Innov­a­tion Agency. He joined the KTN in Janu­ary 2017 to lead the stake­hold­er engage­ment and oth­er activ­it­ies of the Smart Spe­cial­isa­tion Hub. His role has since expan­ded to encom­pass and lead on KTN’s wider place-based engage­ment strategy and activ­it­ies.

At Innov­ate UK he was respons­ible for build­ing on and extend­ing exist­ing stra­tegic rela­tion­ships with key region­al stake­hold­ers and the Know­ledge Trans­fer Net­work. From May 2016 I was Innov­ate UK’s Region­al Man­ager for the South East and Lon­don link­ing to Loc­al Enter­prise Part­ner­ships and incor­por­at­ing the grow­ing import­ance of place into Innov­ate UK think­ing.

Before join­ing Innov­ate UK, he was a trans­port plan­ner at Peter­bor­ough City Coun­cil writ­ing poli­cy, devel­op­ing plans, deliv­er­ing pro­jects and pro­mot­ing sus­tain­able trans­port and was also part of the Peter­bor­ough DNA future city pro­ject team lead­ing on city data. Ross has a degree in Civil Engin­eer­ing and star­ted his  plan­ning career in Birm­ing­ham before spend­ing six years in United States work­ing for a con­sultancy

Wayne is the Chief Exec­ut­ive Officer of the Lon­don Waste and Recyc­ling Board, where he over­sees the day to day run­ning of the organ­isa­tion. He has been heav­ily involved in LWARB since its estab­lish­ment and has sub­stan­tial loc­al gov­ern­ment and waste industry exper­i­ence. Pri­or to LWARB, Wayne worked as Head of Waste Poli­cy at the Great­er Lon­don Author­ity and has also held roles at the Lon­don Bor­ough of Haringey and East Sus­sex County Coun­cil. Wayne has over 20 years’ exper­i­ence in the waste industry.

Steven Revill has taken over as CEO from Octo­ber 2017. This change has been made to sup­port UrbanTide’s trans­ition into a fully pro­duct-led busi­ness.

Steven’s vis­ion for Urb­an­Tide is to con­tin­ue to develop our core pro­duct USMART, to increase the value provided to cli­ents and to make organ­isa­tions smarter through using data.  He will also seek to secure extern­al fund­ing to deliv­er rap­id and scal­able growth for our products and util­ise his exper­i­ence in devel­op­ing soft­ware products with a strong mar­ket need to pos­i­tion USMART and build on its already excel­lent com­pet­it­ive advant­ages.

Jim Har­vey (MA prop­er­ty invest­ment and man­age­ment — Com­mend­a­tion. & BA pub­lic admin­is­tra­tion and man­age­ment — 2.1.)   is the Cir­cu­lar Eco­nomy Lead at Oppor­tun­ity Peter­bor­ough. He sup­ports invest­ment in sus­tain­ab­il­ity, cir­cu­lar eco­nomy and busi­ness through the busi­ness and value sup­ply chain which includes industry, gov­ern­ment, 3rd sec­tor and edu­ca­tion.

He is a qual­i­fied BREEAM assessor, a qual­i­fied RICS invest­ment sur­vey­or, an exper­i­enced sus­tain­ab­il­ity and cir­cu­lar eco­nomy pro­fes­sion­al with 25 year exper­i­ence in industry, busi­ness and gov­ern­ment and a registered European Com­mis­sion Expert in the cir­cu­lar eco­nomy and sustainability.(EX2018D336592). He also a Cir­cu­lar Eco­nomy Club Ment­or and Organ­iser.

Centre in Octo­ber 2014 as Research Officer and works across a num­ber of the Centre’s pro­jects, includ­ing our flag­ship pro­jects under the Welsh Gov­ern­ment Centre of Excel­lence grant. She holds a PhD and first class BSc in Chem­istry from the Uni­ver­sity of Hull, and has been involved in design edu­ca­tion and research for the last ten years.
Katie has pre­vi­ously worked as a lec­turer at the Uni­ver­sity of Leeds deliv­er­ing eco­design and sus­tain­ab­il­ity to pro­duct, fash­ion, tex­tiles and graph­ic design under­gradu­ates and post­gradu­ates. She is pas­sion­ate about ensur­ing that eco­design is appro­pri­ately embed­ded into main­stream design courses. Katie’s research to date has focused on sus­tain­able fash­ion and tex­tiles and she has super­vised sev­er­al PhDs in this area

Dr Rhys Char­les (Swansea Uni­ver­sity).

Rhys Gareth Char­les cur­rently works at the Sus­tain­able Pro­duct Engin­eer­ing Centre for Innov­at­ive Func­tion­al Indus­tri­al Coat­ings “SPECIFIC”, Swansea Uni­ver­sity. Rhys does research in Mater­i­als Engin­eer­ing, Envir­on­ment­al Engin­eer­ing and Ana­lyt­ic­al Chem­istry. Their cur­rent pro­ject is the cre­ation of green tech­no­lo­gies based on thin film coat­ings for the fic­tion­al­iz­a­tion of build­ings to gen­er­ate, store and release their own energy i.e. the com­mer­cial­iz­a­tion of build­ings as power sta­tions (BAPS) tech­no­lo­gies. Rhys has strong interests in the exploit­a­tion of eco­nom­ic and social value of WEEE for cir­cu­lar eco­nomy, crit­ic­al mater­i­als, and life­cycle optim­isa­tion of photo­vol­ta­ics.

Gil­li is a Dir­ect­or in the Build­ing Per­form­ance Group at BRE, which includes resource effi­ciency, low car­bon build­ings and products, lean con­struc­tion, renew­able energy tech­no­lo­gies and sus­tain­able com­munit­ies, in the UK and over­seas. This role includes the devel­op­ment of high pro­file, col­lab­or­at­ive pro­jects in the UK, EU and inter­na­tion­ally. Tech­nic­ally, she has over 23 years’ exper­i­ence in deliv­er­ing tools & solu­tions for achiev­ing a bet­ter built envir­on­ment. This has recently focussed on the devel­op­ment of sus­tain­ab­il­ity stand­ards, at build­ing and com­munity level, work­ing with mul­tiple stake­hold­ers, across mul­tiple pri­or­ity areas for improve­ment. With much exper­i­ence in the field of resources and waste man­age­ment, she is also the lead for Cir­cu­lar Eco­nomy at BRE, with cur­rent emphas­is on Build­ings as Mater­i­al Banks (BAMB).

Cath­er­ine is a speak­er, work­shop facil­it­at­or and coach, focus­sing on the cir­cu­lar eco­nomy.  Her book A Cir­cu­lar Eco­nomy Hand­book for Busi­ness and Sup­ply Chains, pub­lished by Kogan Page (and avail­able at all book­sellers!), includes a wealth of wide-ran­ging examples and tips on get­ting star­ted.

Cath­er­ine has over 25 years’ exper­i­ence in con­tract logist­ics, man­u­fac­tur­ing, retail and sup­ply chain con­sultancy, and her career spans food, fash­ion and logist­ics, includ­ing Tesco, Kellogg’s and DHL Sup­ply Chain..

She is a Vis­it­ing Fel­low at the Uni­ver­sity of Hud­der­sfield and Vice-Chair of the Envir­on­ment and Sus­tain­ab­il­ity for­um for the Chartered Insti­tute of Logist­ics and Trans­port, UK.  She sup­ports the Cir­cu­lar Eco­nomy Club as a Ment­or and City Coordin­at­or for the Tees Val­ley, UK. Cath­er­ine is a qual­i­fied Indus­tri­al Engin­eer and with MSc in Logist­ics and Dis­tri­bu­tion from Cran­field Uni­ver­sity.   

Peter Des­mond (Brighton and Hove Cir­cu­lar Eco­nomy Club. Peter Des­mond MA (Oxon) MA MBA FCA FRSA

Peter is a Chartered Account­ant and MBA gradu­ate with 40 years’ exper­i­ence as a stra­tegic advisor, coach, train­er and seni­or fin­ance exec­ut­ive. He assists start-ups, SMEs and cor­por­ates in the UK and Africa on their cir­cu­lar eco­nomy jour­neys. He is a Cir­cu­lar Eco­nomy Club Ment­or and Loc­al Organ­iser for Brighton & Hove, organ­ising monthly meet­ings to help Great­er Brighton become a cir­cu­lar region. Peter has an MA (Dis­tinc­tion) in Glob­al­isa­tion, Busi­ness and Devel­op­ment from the Insti­tute of Devel­op­ment Stud­ies at the Uni­ver­sity of Sus­sex. His dis­ser­ta­tion, “Towards a cir­cu­lar eco­nomy in South Africa – what are the con­straints to recyc­ling mobile phones?”, enabled him to uncov­er the ways that cir­cu­lar approaches bene­fit emer­ging eco­nom­ies. Fol­low­ing his gradu­ation in 2016, Peter returned to South Africa to co-found the Afric­an Cir­cu­lar Eco­nomy Net­work; this aims to build a res­tor­at­ive Afric­an eco­nomy that cre­ates well-being and prosper­ity for its people whil­st regen­er­at­ing envir­on­ment­al resources. He is a Stra­tegic Advisor with Rethink Solu­tions.

Bio: Cheryl has worked in the Cir­cu­lar Eco­nomy team at Zero Waste Scot­land for 5 years and her role involves sup­port­ing CE pro­jects at a loc­al level work­ing with part­ners across Scot­land from our largest cit­ies to small island com­munit­ies.  The team work across a range of sec­tors, encour­aging col­lab­or­a­tion, identi­fy­ing innov­at­ive cir­cu­lar oppor­tun­it­ies, and work­ing dir­ectly with busi­ness to help them trans­ition to a more cir­cu­lar approach. Pri­or to work­ing at Zero Waste Scot­land, Cheryl worked in loc­al gov­ern­ment for 9 years in sus­tain­ab­il­ity, cli­mate change, and waste man­age­ment roles.  Cheryl is a STEM ambas­sad­or and an IEMA Prac­ti­tion­er. Fur­ther info: https://www.zerowastescotland.org.uk/

When Char­lot­te intro­duces her­self in meet­ings, at con­fer­ences and oth­er events she often start by say­ing that she’ll offer a prize to any­one with a longer job title than hers, as the Council’s Envir­on­ment, Trans­port and Future City Man­ager she’s lucky enough to work in a diverse team full of people with dif­fer­ent back­grounds, interests and pas­sions. This is a pretty excit­ing place to be from her  per­spect­ive. It means that on a day to day basis we are increas­ingly able to think bey­ond our own silos to see how we can do the one thing that drives us all — mak­ing the city a bet­ter place.