People
Vision2020 features inspirational presenters and facilitators with international, regional and local perspectives.
Fiona Bennie
Fiona works on sustainable innovation and design strategy for product and service development, focusing on creative thinking and problem solving for future challenges. Most recently she led the i-team project, in collaboration with IDEO London, and co-authored Fashion Futures 2025, in collaboration with Levi Strauss & Co. She is currently leading the Sustainability ‘Beacons for Innovation’ project for the Creative Industries Knowledge Transfer Network, which looks ahead to 2030 to uncover the challenges and opportunities that sustainability issues pose to the industries.
Thilo Boeck
Thilo Boeck is a senior research fellow based in the Centre for Social Action, De Montfort University. He worked in Youth and Community Development in Peru, Germany and the UK which has influenced his commitment to participative research and training. He worked in several research projects exploring social capital and community cohesion and was the social researcher on the Amplified Leicester project. Twitter: @tgboeck
Warren Buckley
Warren Buckley is the Managing Director, Customer Service, for BT Retail. He graduated in Politics from the University of Leicester. He has worked in the Telecoms Industry for the last 20 years across both mobile and fixed and during that time has led teams in many disciplines from revenue assurance, fraud, logistics, mergers and acquisitions, technical support, call centres, operations, product management and customer service.
Nicholas Ebbs
Nick is a director of Igloo Regeneration and CEO of Blueprint, a partnership between Igloo, the Homes and Communities Agency and East Midlands Development Agency. Igloo are specialists in the development of sustainable places including Phoenix Square Leicester. Nick was previously a Special Professor of Sustainable Development at Nottingham University and has a degree in Philosophy and Theology. Twitter: @nebbsey
Michael Fern
Michael joined Portland in 2005 and is currently Creative Head of The Environments team. With a degree in interior and Industrial design he possesses a very unique understanding and awareness of delivering solutions that are both creative as well as informed by consumer insights and their relationships with products and brands. He is currently working on a wide range of projects for global clients such as Diageo, and Inter Ikea Center Group, exploring new strategies for the future of their businesses. www.portland-design.com Email: Michael Fern
Aidan Lane
Aidan has studied and worked in horticulture all his adult life. He has worked as Foreman, an Estimator, and has worked with a number of leading companies in the industry. He started at Frosts Landscape Construction as an Assistant Landscape Manager, and in 1997 became Director Commercial Landscapes. During his 18 years at Frosts he has spent several years researching and designing the green roof and the living wall business. Aidan has a great passion for the industry and has delivered many CDP presentations to Architects covering a number of subjects where he feels the industry needs to change in order to move forward. www.frostslandscapes.com
Martin Rieser
Professor Martin Rieser has always been fascinated by the possibility of creating fragmentary narrative structures and interactive stories using new technology. This has led him into his current explorations using mobile and locative technologies and large-scale interactive video experiences. Professor Rieser has worked in the field of interactive arts for many years. He is Joint research Professor between the Institute of Creative Technologies and the Faculty of Art and Design at De Montfort University.
Hugo Spowers
Hugo is the founder of Riversimple. An Oxford University trained engineer and entrepreneur, he made his name in motorsport in the 1980s. He left the racing industry due to concerns about its environmental impact and went on to study for his MBA at Cranfield. Here he investigated the feasibility of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles and embraced the idea of Whole System Design, a concept that is integral to Rivesimple’s vehicle design and business model. www.riversimple.com
Bernd Carsten Stahl
Bernd Carsten Stahl is Professor of Critical Research in Technology at De Montfort University, Leicester, UK. His interests cover philosophical issues arising from the intersections of business, technology, and information. This includes the ethics of computing and critical approaches to information systems. Centre for Computing and Social Responsibility website
John Stobart
John Stobart is a Partner in the Corporate team at Leicester law firm Harvey Ingram. During his career, he has worked in the City of London as the senior in-house lawyer for a FTSE 250 company. His specialist areas include corporate finance, acquisitions and joint ventures, university start ups and spin-outs and all related matters from licensing to agency agreements. www.harveyingram.com Facebook: Harvey Ingram LLP Twitter: @HarveyIngram
John Thackara
John Thackara is a writer, speaker, and event producer. Described by Business Week as "one of the great voices on sustainability", he is the author of In The Bubble: Designing In A Complex World (MIT Press) among thirteen books, and of a widely-read blog about design for resilience, doorsofperception.com. As director of Doors of Perception, John organizes festivals and encounters around the world in which communities imagine sustainable futures – and take practical steps to realize them. John Thackara lives in France.
Sue Thomas
Professor Sue Thomas developed Amplified Leicester and, with Toby Moores, CreativeCoffee Club. Sue works across the Faculty of Humanities and the Institute of Creative Technologies at De Montfort University, and one of her key roles is to identify synergies between business and academic interests, especially in relation to the impact of social media and amplification. She directs the Transliteracy Research Group, exploring the impact of transliteracy in business, education and the arts, and is the author of several books, most recently the internet travelogue Hello World: Travels in Virtuality.
Sue Tilley
Sue Tilley is Head of Inward Investment at Prospect Leicestershire, the Economic Development Company for Leicester and Leicestershire. She is responsible for the generation of the growing economic wealth for Leicester and Leicestershire through the management of a portfolio of projects. Sue has extensive entrepreneurial business experience having successfully set up and ran her own Leicester based design and manufacturing company for seventeen years. Following the sale of her business Sue held senior management roles, working with major blue chip companies nationwide. Sue can be contacted on 0116 225 4010 or 0788 074 5876. Visit Prospect Leicestershire for more information.
Satish Visavadia
Satish is a successful businessman and educator with over 20 years of experience in media, teaching, training and leading business globally. He is an Fellow of the Chartered Management Institute, member of Institute for Learning and an Associate Fellow with the Australian Management Institute. Satish qualified as an engineer and later achieved a master's degree in education from the University of Warwick, also a Post Graduate Certificate in Education from the University of Northampton.
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