Editor-at-large, TechCrunch
Mike Butcher MBE is Editor-at-large of TechCrunch, and co-founder of Pathfounder editorial events and reports series on ‘impact innovation’. Mike has been named one of the most influential journalists in European technology by Wired and The Daily Telegraph, among others. He has interviewed Tony Blair, Dmitry Medvedev, Kevin Spacey, Lily Cole, Pavel Durov and many other tech leaders and celebrities. He co-founded The Europas Awards for European startups, the non-profits TechVets and Techfugees, the co-working network TechHub. He is a regular tech commentator on the BBC, Sky News, CNN, CNBC and Aljazeera and has been a judge on The Apprentice UK. GQ magazine named him one of the 100 Most Connected Men in the UK and he’s a “Maserati 100 innovator”. He has advised previous UK governments on tech startup policy and was awarded an MBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours.
Community Alchemist
Lana Jelenjev is a community alchemist and learning design specialist with a solid background in training and education. She is the author of Community Builder: Designing Communities for Change and The 90 Day Action Planner, a Kickstarter backed planner for creative entrepreneurs. Lana provides support in various areas related to ideation, curriculum design, community building and personal development.
Lana is an avid firestarter, having co-founded initiatives like Neurodiversity Education Academy, an online platform providing awareness, education and support for teachers, parents and students on the topic of Neurodiversity. She is also a co-founder of Shift Foundation, an organisation for real life learning and awareness based collective action. Lana also established Community Rituals, a training and support platform to enable leaders to understand the language of rituals in communities. Supporting fellow community weavers, transformational leaders and impact driven NGOs, Lana also launched Community Alchemy, an online learning and mastermind program focused on designing communities for change.
Executive Vice President - Head of Marketing, Technology and Customer Experience, Clarion Events
Liz’s endless curiosity, desire for learning, and passion for building relationships infuse her responsibilities as the Executive Vice President- Head of Marketing, Technology and Customer Experience for Clarion Events. With over 20 years of experience in the events industry, she is focused on delivering results by creating brand strategies and providing innovative approaches that meet her customers’ needs.
In her current role, Liz oversees the strategic direction and integration of the marketing and technology functions across North America. These are led by insight, marketing effectiveness, digital and virtual platform development and innovation. In addition, she is responsible for virtual product strategy development where she partners with Clarion’s portfolio directors to identify growth opportunities to enhance our existing events and develop new digital offerings. She constantly has her eye on the customer experience and how to continuously evolve what our events offer to increase the value we provide face-to-face and digitally.
Liz’s interest in events began when she would work hands-on to assist her father in setting up his local food distributor events. From there she worked a variety of positions in college assisting the Convention & Visitors Bureau and quickly her passion for the events business spread. Before joining Clarion , Liz was with Reed Exhibitions for 14 years, in a variety of marketing leadership positions across several events, including the leading jewelry media brand, JCK.
Liz earned her bachelor’s degree from Niagara University and a master’s degree from the University of New Haven. She is active in her community where she volunteers in her assisting her sons’ sports teams throughout the year, managing communications and events. Liz is involved in SISO’s planning committee and chairs the Marketing Special Interest Group. Liz lives in Connecticut with her husband, two boys and two dogs and cat.
Chief Strategist, Powers of Marketing
Megan Powers is a creator who has vast experience in the meetings and events industry. She has worked in marketing for tech companies, in a venue, as a planner, and in audio-visual production sales, before starting her own business. All of this experience gives her a unique lens through which she sees and approaches events. Founded in 2013, her company Powers of Marketing is a boutique strategic marketing communication agency, providing product marketing, podcast hosting, strategy consultation, training, content development, and community-building to organizations seeking to strategically market themselves through content and events. Megan is passionate about being face-to-face for events AND about the opportunities digital spaces also give us to interact, learn, and grow revenue. Her podcast Making a Marketer is closing out its fourth season, and covers all aspects of marketing and business.
Director of Event Marketing, Informa Connect
Kathryn Frankson is the Director of Event Marketing at Informa, the global leader in specialized events and event intelligence. After 48 straight quarters selling exhibition space and custom event sponsorships, Kathryn launched Informa’s sales marketing team, modernizing demand generation. Kathryn now leads the experience and digital marketing efforts for Informa’s content led events in the architecture, event planning and hospitality space.
Editor-in-chief, EventMB
Miguel is passionate about helping event professionals working online and offline to develop digital communication and content strategies. He is no stranger to the world of business events and he speaks, consults, and trains on topics around communication, content and event technology.
Since 2005 Miguel has held multiple industry roles, starting in his native Portugal, then spending 10 years in the UK and US and currently based in Denmark. He played an key role in developing the IMEX Group’s digital content and social media presence from 2011 to 2017, and since then Miguel has worked independently on digital communication strategies for business events. focused organisations
Miguel holds a masters degree in Conference and Events Management from the University of Westminster and is certified as a Certified Meeting Professional (CMP) and a Digital Event Strategist (DES). He sits on the International Board of Directors of Meeting Professionals International and is past-Chair of Events Industry Council’s Industry Insights Committee.
Founder, Acier Events
Chloe is an exhibition and trade show sales expert and owner of Acier Events, a company that creates, develops, coaches and executes exhibition-specific commercial strategies, including how to maximise commercial communications with your exhibitors and sponsors. A multi-lingual sales leader with clients all over the globe, Chloe has always believed that tech can be the cherry on the solution-based sales cake.
Director of Community, mmhmm
Andrew's experience creating community spans over 14 years. He started his career as a founding member of an annual festival for documentary photographers, then joined Instagram in early 2014 to grow the global community of creators, and now as Director of Community at mmhmm, Andrew is setting the path for how thousands of users connect and learn an essential new skill: how to be great on video.
Innovation Director, Identity Group
Phil is a creative technologist, experience designer & innovation director with Identity. He began his career by designing Special Effects for TV, Film and Live Music with notable projects including world tours for Katy Perry, Guns & Roses and The London 2012 Olympic Ceremony. Working with brands like Rolls Royce, Pepsi and Nike. Phil creates digital, interactive and technology-based immersive experiences. Working from initial technology strategy, research & development through to prototyping unique products, activations and tools, he encompasses the full spectrum of emerging and innovative technologies.
Founder & CEO, Growth Blazers
"Vasil is a growth marketing and startup event entrepreneur, who has produced over 500 in-person and virtual events, as well as built a 90K+ network of tech entrepreneurs and marketers.
Formerly, he was also the founder of the Growth Marketing Conference, one of the leading growth marketing events in the industry.
"
Editorial Director, Mash Media
Award-winning, experienced web and print editor and video presenter across news, sport, business events, technology, lifestyle and automotive sectors, with demonstrable experience of high-profile website building and management, including social media.
Editorial Director, TSNN & Corporate Event News
Matt Swenson is a communications specialist with more than 20 years’ experience in journalism, marketing and B2B companies. He currently is editorial director at TSNN and Corporate Event News. Previously, he was editorial director of Connect's B2B publications and websites.
In 2019, Eventex named Swenson one of the 100 most influential members of the event industry. Previously, Cadmium CD ranked two of his stories among its top 10 blogs about the events industry, including the No. 1 story, which examined what Donald Trump’s affect would be on the industry.
Matt came to Connect in 2014 after having served as assistant managing editor at Washington Post Express, a daily publication in Washington, D.C., of which he was a founding editor in 2003. At Express, Matt oversaw production of the news side of the newspaper, organizing coverage on everything from the Olympics to presidential elections.
Originally from Washington, Matt is now based north of Atlanta, Georgia, where he lives with his wife and two children, ages 7 and 6.
Founder, BostonSpeaks
Social Media Strategist, Wier/Stewart
Jackie Rogers has been in social media marketing for over 5 years. From planning and strategy, to copy and content creation, Jackie works closely with business owners and event managers to help them get the most out of any promotion.
Jackie didn’t always see herself as a social media manager. In fact, her path was quite different just a few short years ago. For almost 10 years Jackie worked in health communications. She’s mastered how to talk to audiences where they’re at in their health journey, and help them make better choices for their overall wellbeing.
When she saw how little community there was for people who were trying to get well on their own, she knew she needed to work in a space where she could make a difference.
Fast forward to today, Jackie has branched out to help business owners communicate with their audiences where they’re at meaningfully. From local arts and crafts shops, to national brands, to an international tech startup, she’s thrilled to be able to help so many people in a way that’s close to her heart.
Education and Community Lead at Airmeet
Founder & CEO @ AllEvents.in
10 years back, Amit co-founded [AllEvents.in](http://allevents.in/) along with his friend Ruchit Patel.
They were looking for business networking events to attend. But it was challenging to know what's happening in the city, where, and when.
So to solve this problem, they started aggregating event information from all over the internet and made it easy to discover events by interest & location on a single platform.
They launched AllEvents in April 2011. Today, it's one of the world's largest - event discovery platform covering 40K cities worldwide, helping more than 10 people discover events of their interest and book the tickets.
Entrepreneur. Investor. Advisor.
Marco is a successful entrepreneur and investor with over 25 years of intensive experience in media, technology, and the live events industry. He is the Founder and CEO of Vesuvio Ventures, where he works with startups, Venture and Private Equity investors, and corporate innovators serving as a coach, advisor, interim executive, board member, or angel investor (or a combination thereof).
After several years in a successful career as a corporate executive at Apple, Marco pursued his entrepreneurial ambitions and became:
• Co-founder and Board Member of Mind Opener, a leading publishing group in Latin America that was later sold to British Pearson Media Group, and
• Co-founder and Board Member of e-mind, an internet and media communications company that was sold to Liberty Media.
• President, CEO and co-founder of Mind Trainer (later Reed Exhibitions), a firm specializing in the organization of major regional trade-shows and events that was sold to Reed Elsevier after a successful long-term joint venture.
Marco is a Harvard Business School OPM Graduate, and member of YPO, the Young Presidents Organization and a frequent speaker at industry conferences.
He is also a co-author of the best-selling books The Face of Digital focused on how digital technologies are changing the live events business industry and Reinventing Live about the “Always-On” future of live events.
Executive Chairman, AMR International
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Jackie Rogers
Megan Powers
Liz Irving
Kathryn Frankson
Marco Giberti
Denzil Rankine
Mike Butcher MBE
Martin Fullard
Miguel Neves
Matt Swenson
Chloe Richardson
Phillip Maggs
Andrew Owen
Kit Pang
Amit Panchal
Lana Jelenjev
Andrew Owen
Nevena Tomovic
Vasil Azarov
