2022 Speakers

Ioana has been working in broadcast and music production for over 15 years.

She is currently supporting Global’s audio and video production teams working across radio, tv, and internet streaming.

Her music production work includes sessions with artists such as Bryan Adams, Stereophonics, The Smashing Pumpkins, Jack Savoretti, Catfish and the Bottlemen, Gaz Coombes, Johnny Marr, Blossoms, The 1975 etc, as well as sound mixing for film and documentaries.

Dr Rachel Boon is an experienced museum professional with a background in history of science, technology and medicine and public engagement.

She is Curator of Computing and Communications at the Science Museum.

Rachel has worked on several exhibitions at the Science Museum including The Art of Innovation (2019-2020) and Churchill’s Scientists (2015). Previously, she was an Exhibitions and Interpretation Officer at the Imperial War Museum and has been part of the learning teams at the Science and Industry Museum and Science Museum.

Her research interests include industrial research and development, histories of infrastructures and British scientific establishments. She completed her PhD in 2020 on the history of the Post Office Research Station, Dollis Hill.

Kate joined Adobe in 2016 and is Head of Policy and Government Relations for UK and Europe. She leads Adobe’s policy work in the UK, its second largest market, and Adobe’s advocacy in the EU on issues such as Artificial Intelligence and disinformation. 

Kate has been leading the Content Authenticity Initiative’s efforts to engage with governments and regulatory regimes around the world, as part of which she has been actively involved in the development of the EU Strengthened Code of Practice on Disinformation and engaging with the European media eco-system related to digital content provenance. 

Prior to working at Adobe, Kate’s career spanning nearly two decades has included policy and government affairs roles in the private sector at Accenture and advising pharmaceutical companies. She also worked for the UK Electoral Commission for five years, where she led legislative change on party and election finance, voter registration and managed the international observers programme. 

She holds a Masters in International Relations and World Order. 

Yevheniy Chyzh (53) has been the Chief Producer of Suspilne Radio for 5 years, tasked with looking after the three National Radio services, studios and spaces.

He started to work in radio broadcasting in 1997, managing the projects on commercial radio stations in the north of Ukraine. He was engaged in running commercial radios, advertising services and developing regional radios.

In more recent times Yevheniy has one of the most critical and difficult jobs in Ukraine ensuring broadcasting continues to keep the public informed since the Russian invasion.

After a diverse career change in 1999 Alison joined JP Morgan Chase working as a global service desk analyst, within the technology department. She continued to work for JP Morgan for several years focusing on becoming a Business Continuity Specialist and becoming an integral part of the project team building a dedicated DR facility. In 2008 joined Nokia as IT Service Continuity Manager and went on to work for Vodafone and Carnival Cruises managing Operational Resilience.

In 2019 Alison joined Arqiva working across the business, broadcast, media and satellite functions implementing a business continuity framework and programme. 

Simone Eubanks is a project manager in BBC Research & Development, looking at the BBC’s potential public service responsibilities outside linear broadcast.

Simone is a current member of the BBC’s Next Generation Committee, a group of young people trying to positively shape the future of The BBC.

Simone has a masters degree in Medical Humanities, and is passionate about sociotechnology.

Ian Forrester works for the BBC’s R&D Advisory team in Media City UK in Manchester where he enjoys the unique job title of Senior Firestarter.

He specialises in open innovation and identifying new disruptive opportunities through open engagement and collaborations with start-ups, universities and early adopters.

A Chartered Software engineer, after becoming a mother Samera retrained as a coach and contributor on radio programmes.

Now an autism trainer, collaborator on A3i project at York University and host of the ‘Quirky and Autistic Parenting’ podcast.

David Hemingway has been with the BBC since 1988, starting off as a trainee transmitter engineer. Through a combination of mishaps and luck, he’s now a Senior Distribution Manager in the Distribution & Business Development team.

He spends his time defending the BBC’s access to spectrum for content production and distribution, arguing with Ofcom and DCMS in the UK, and fighting the good fight in the CEPT and ITU. As a reward for all this he also gets to chair the EBU’s spectrum management group.

With over 15 awards & 11 years hosting Capital FM’s breakfast show, Stephanie Hirst is one of the UKs biggest broadcasting stars. She’s been fixture on BBC & Commercial radio during the past 25 years and played at the highest level behind the mic.

Expanding into TV, she has presented for ITV’s Lorraine, C5’s Jeremy Vine on 5 Show, BBC Breakfast along with writing for The Guardian & The Independent.

Starting her career aged 12 at Radio Aire in Leeds, securing a slot on the overnight show at 16, this took her on an unbelievable journey hosting some of the biggest commercial radio shows in the UK, including the national Sunday top 40 show ‘Hit40Uk’ for 3 years, along with interviewing some of the world’s biggest stars.

She is a Trustee & Fellow of the Radio Academy, former Chair of the Student Radio Awards & recipient of an Honorary Degree from Leeds Beckett University.

Zoe Laughlin is a co-founder and Director of the Institute of Making.

Working at the interface of the science, art, craft and design of materials, outputs range from formal experiments with matter, to large-scale public exhibitions and events with partners including Tate Modern, the Hayward Gallery and the V&A. Her work has been shown in London’s Science Museum and is included in the permanent collection of The Design Museum.

Alongside this, Zoe also presents television programmes for the BBC, is a regular panellist on BBC Radio 4’s Kitchen Cabinet and a can often be found pushing the health and safety limits on ITV’s This Morning.

Bob joined the BBC in February 1979. He has worked on programmes as diverse as Listen With Mother and The Today Programme. He spent a long period of time with News and Current Affairs where highlights included George Bush Senior’s election coverage from NY and closer to home, Jimmy Young’s election specials. Bob was for many years a mainstay of Sport on 5, having started when it was still on Radio 2 medium wave and has sat through many a memorable Sports Report, including the day of the Hillsborough disaster.

He has assisted in many studio engineering projects from the original Radio 5 and Stage 6 TVC to the new studios at BH.

He has been the main studio manager in the broadcast studio for every royal ceremonial programme since the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales in 1997.

Having worked on Loose Ends and its predecessors from the start and recorded programmes with every Desert Island Disc presenter, sometimes remotely during the pandemic, he is most proud of having once successfully played a 78rpm record in live to Radio 3.

Alex founded Respeecher with Dmytro Bielievtsov and Grant Reaber in 2018. Since then the team has been focused on high-fidelity voice cloning.

Their technology was the first synthetic speech adopted by big Hollywood productions, starting from 2019.

Alex is in charge of Business Development and Strategy. The primary focus of Respeecher is improving voice cloning technology in several directions, including the democratisation of the technology to let sound professionals and creators all over the world have access to this great tool. Respeecher technology is already applied in Feature films and TV projects, Video Games, Animation studios, Localization, media agencies, Healthcare, and other areas.

Jude is an internationally accredited Mental Health First Aid Trainer, Resilience Trainer and Consultant working for clients such as National Film and Television School, Screenskills and PACT to help improve mental health awareness in the industry and empower individuals and companies to support their own and each other’s mental health better.

Chris has been at Wireless since there was just talkSPORT, and has been involved in the launch of seven extra stations since then, most recently a TV station, TalkTV.

When he’s not pulling out what little hair he has left, he’s managing a team of eight lovely Engineers who collectively achieve Broadcast Brilliance….

Bill Thompson a well-known technology journalist who appears regularly on Digital Planet on BBC World Service radio. 

Bill has been working in, on and around the Internet since 1984 thinking, writing and speaking about the ways digital technologies are changing our world.

In the 1990s he was Internet Ambassador for PIPEX, the UK’s first commercial ISP, and head of the Guardian newspaper’s New Media Lab.

He also works in BBC Research & Development where he leads the new forms of value research programme and is an Adjunct Professor at Southampton University.

Rebecca is a freelance developer and creative whose work focuses on interactive narrative and spans many forms of technology.

She worked with Pilot Theatre to create Traitor VR, a live theatre Virtual Reality Escape Room which had its world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival. She recently directed and produced her first interactive short film with Sky and has worked with BBC R&D to create Adaptive Podcasting, a project which lets users create podcasts that adapt to their listeners.

Dr Lauren Ward is a media accessibility Research Fellow at the University of York.

She is part of the XR Stories project and she leads the Screen Industries Growth Network project ‘A3I: Accessible Audio for Autistic Individuals’.

She has worked with major broadcasters including BBC and Sky and is an expert in the design and user testing of accessibility solutions in new media formats.

She completed her PhD as a General Sir John Monash Scholar at the University of Salford in 2020 and holds a Bachelor of Engineering and Bachelor of Philosophy from the University of Tasmania. She is also a volunteer puppy raiser for Guide Dogs and is best known for talking about cake when she should be talking about Object-Based Media.

Ann is a radio producer-turned broadcast engineer who specialises in all things studios and workflow. Equally happy making programmes as running broadcast infrastructure projects, her career so far has included 12 years at the BBC, teaching journalism in New Zealand and training broadcast engineers and producers in South Sudan. She also travels the world as the workflow consultant for Broadcast Bionics. After several years as a volunteer, she formed TBC Media Ltd. with two friends to take over the running of Radio TechCon in 2016. Outside of work, Ann can be found fitting parents with baby slings, drinking gin, and eating chocolate (not necessarily all at once.)

Aradhna runs Clockhouse Media working across broadcasting, media, film and events. She formerly worked at the BBC for 12 years, which she joined as a radio engineer, looking after the studios and production areas for the BBC’s national radio networks. Aradhna subsequently trained engineers and technical staff on new studios, systems and workflows in the purpose built broadcasting centres at Media City UK, Salford and New Broadcasting House, London. She led a number of large-scale projects, including the launch of national television channels for the BBC’s coverage of the 2014 Commonwealth Games, and led the technology strategy for BBC Archives, managing their project portfolio. Aradhna now works with a number of clients on projects including broadcast project management, digital and diversity engagement strategy and media event production.