Sahar Hashemi, In 1995 Sahar Hashemi together with her brother Bobby founded Coffee Republic, and built it into one of the UK’s most recognised high street brands with a turnover of £30m. Sahar was recently named Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum, one of 237 leaders chosen from 8000 candidates to build a ‘community of extraordinary leaders who are under 40 and are exceptional on a global level’.

Giving up highly professional jobs, she a lawyer in London and he an investment banker in New York, they staked everything on a dream – and made Coffee Republic on of the main players in the ‘coffee revolution’ that transformed a nation of tea drinkers into one obsessed with ‘triple decaf half–caf lattes’.

Sahar’s  message is Anyone Can Do It!  With her passion and enthusiasm, she motivates and inspires the audience: ‘you don’t have to be Richard Branson to start your own business!’. At the same time she demystifies the entrepreneurial process through a step-by-step ‘system’ that anyone can follow and without use of intimidating business jargon (eg ‘market research is just a big fact finding mission!, ‘business plan is a structured brain dump!’).  She proves that passion is all you need – ‘is your fuel!’ and what turns you into an entrepreneur.

William Scott, Professor William Scott-Jackson is Director of the Centre for Applied HR Research at Oxford Brookes University Business School, which carries out practitioner oriented research into the impact of HR in business. William is also is a Fellow at Oxford University (Skope) and acts as Head of Corporate Affairs for one of the Oxford Colleges (St Cross). William is Chairman of several companies including:

Richard Cullen, Dr Richard Cullen is presently the Head of the Probation Area Co-ordination Unit in the Home Office which combines his former role as HR Director for the Probation Service with responsibility for the management of performance across the Service.

He was formerly a senior police officer and the Metropolitan Police Service’s Director of Training and Development.  He is a member of the Advisory Board of Oxford Brookes University’s Centre for Applied HR Research.

He lectures and writes extensively on HR and leadership issues and is presently developing a leadership pipeline for the Probation Service.

Tony King is the Head of HR Development at Clifford Chance LLP.

After teaching at law school and practising with the firm as a tax lawyer, Tony has been involved in education, training and professional development at Clifford Chance since 1988.  Over that time he has been instrumental in introducing the firm's extensive global programme of legal-technical and business skills programmes.  He has worked on the firm's competencies and all the HR processes which go with them (appraisals, career and performance management etc) together with putting in place the firm's structure of development and assessment centres for its lawyers from graduate recruits up to and including candidates for partnership.

Tony is a member of the Legal Education and Training Group (of which he was a co-founder and is a Past Chair) and of its North American equivalent - the Professional Development Consortium. In addition, he is the current Chair of the City of London Law Society's Training Committee.

Fritz Bangert, Group Director of Learning and Development, Jumeirah Group, Dubai. Fritz Bangert interests are the people aspect of business and developing strategies that support the sustained development of individuals and groups to achieve organisational objectives.

His current focus includes the development of training strategy and policy for an expanding hospitality based organisation, curriculum design across the organisation, development programs for localisation, implementation of the group's performance management process and managing the regional Centre for Training and Development.

He is qualified with an Adult Vocational Education degree from Griffith University, Training and Development qualification from Edith Cowan University, Occupation Testing and Personality and Preference certification.

Hany Mahmoud is currently Director of Human Resources and Legal Affairs at Vodafone in Egypt & Turkey. Hany has a wealth of experience in the field of HR management, people and organization development.

The majority of his successful career has been spent with Xerox in Egypt and the Middle East where he has held a number of key management positions in Customer Service, Finance, Manufacturing, Marketing and Human Resources.

Hany started his career in HR with Xerox at the Headquaters for the Middle East and Africa, based in the UK. While overseas he also successfully completed his HR Management Studies at Slough University.  Hany then returned to Egypt as HR Director for Egypt with regional responsibility for people development.

Before joining Vodafone Egypt, Hany managed the merger process between Hoechst and Rhone Poulenc from the HR perespective to form the new pharmaceutical giant, Aventis.

Hany is also the President of the Egyptian Human Resources Management Association (EHRMA).

In addition to presenting at numerous seminars and conferences, Hany has considerable experience as a HR and management consultant both in Egypt and the Middle East.

Thomas Mannarelli, joined INSEAD in 1997 and is an affiliate professor of Organizational Behavior.  He specializes in issues related to creativity, innovation and leadership in organizations.  He has instructed, consulted, conducted seminars and directed executive education programmes with government agencies and leading international companies representing a wide range of industries. Some of the companies he has worked with include Standard Chartered Bank, Siam Cement Group, Glaxo-Smith Kline, DKSH, Shell, Nissan, ABN-AMRO, Philip Morris, UGS, Pernod-Ricard, Pictet, Umicore, Visa, Swire, Singtel, and the Chartered Accountants of Ireland.  He has teaching and consulting experience around the world having worked in countries as diverse as Japan, the Netherlands, Australia, Thailand, Malaysia, Ireland, United Arab Emirates, Korea, Vietnam, France, and China.

His research focuses on the different facets of creativity that either facilitate or hinder creative behaviour in organizations.  He also studies individual differences (e.g., personalities, motivations, attitudes) and their relationships to physical environments and he has also researched the effects of process and group size on team decision-making and creativity.