Keynote speakers

Professor Christoph H Loch is the Director (Dean) of Cambridge Judge Business School (CJBS). Since 2011, Cambridge Judge has progressed as one of the top 20 business schools in the world, with a high evaluation of its research by the UK government (REF) and with research centres that successfully combine the creation of research output of the highest academic quality with a tangible impact on business practice and society.

CJBS actively supports the Cambridge Cluster, helping entrepreneurial talent development and commercialisation of new ideas; enhancing management development, enabling growth, and sharing thought-leadership.

Professor Loch’s research focuses on the management of innovation processes, and project management more broadly; including innovation strategy; projects under high uncertainty; the emotional aspect to the motivation of professional project workers, and project supervision and governance.

Before coming to CJBS in 2011, Professor Loch was Chaired Professor of Technology and Operations Management at INSEAD, where he also served as Dean of the PhD program and as the director of the INSEAD Israel Research Center. He served as department editor and Associate Editor of Management Science, Manufacturing & Service Operations Management and Production and Operations Management, and as chair of the Behavioral Operations Section of INFORMS.

Professor Loch holds a PhD from the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University, an MBA from the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, and a Diplom-Wirtschaftsingenieur degree from the Darmstadt Institute of Technology in Germany.

In 2012, Professor Loch was identified in a benchmarking study as one of the top ten innovation researchers world-wide. He serves on the supervisory board of an educational software start-up company and is a member of the Cambridge United Football Club board of directors.

Dame Sandra is KPMG Professor Emeritus at Cambridge Judge Business School. She was Director of Cambridge Judge Business School from 1995 to 2006, Master of Sidney Sussex College from 1999-2009 and one of the Deputy Vice Chancellors of the University 2008-2012. She writes and consults on organisational behaviour, leadership and innovation.

In 2004 Dame Sandra was invested as a Dame Commander of the British Empire as part of the UK national honours system in recognition of her contribution to higher education and management research and in 2006 she was inducted into the International Women’s Forum’s International Hall of Fame in recognition of her achievements in business education and leadership development including being an outstanding role model for women who aspire to lead in the commercial, educational and not-for-profit sectors.

Dame Sandra has wide experience in the commercial, public and charitable sectors, both in leading executive development and through serving on Boards including as Senior Independent Director and Chair of Remuneration Committees. She is a Non-Executive Director of DRS (Data Research Services) plc, TSB bank plc and Winton Capital Management and a Trustee and Non-Executive Director of the Institute of Government, the Social Science Research Council in the USA and the Board of Trustees of the American University of Sharjah and a member of the UK India Round Table.

Helena joined Newton in 1994 as a fixed income fund manager and was appointed CEO in 2001. Newton manages more than £50bn for pension funds, charities and through funds available to individual investors.

In 2010, Helena founded the 30% Club, a cross-business initiative aimed at achieving 30 per cent women on UK corporate boards by 2015 through voluntary, business-led change. This has now become an international approach, with 30% Clubs in the US, Hong Kong, Ireland and Southern Africa. She also chairs Opportunity Now, Business in the Community’s gender diversity campaign.

In June 2014 Helena was appointed Chair of the Investment Management Association, the UK’s industry trade body whose members manage £5trn.

In both 2013 and 2014, Helena was voted one of the 50 Most Influential People in Finance by Bloomberg Markets magazine. She is a Fellow of the Society of Investment Professionals, a Fellow of the London Business School and was appointed CBE in the 2012 New Year’s Honours list.

A Cambridge philosophy graduate, she began her career as a global bond analyst with Schroders in New York. Helena is married with nine children.

Brenda Trenowden is the Head of the Financial Institutions Group for Europe and the Head of Banks and Diversified Financials E&A for Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Limited (ANZ).

Over the past 25 years, Brenda has established a strong track record in building international businesses and teams, and managing complex client relationships across the globe. She has lived and worked in a number of different countries in Asia, Europe and North America for some of the world’s largest banks including Citi, BNP Paribas, Lloyds Banking Group and BNY Mellon.

Brenda graduated with an honours Bachelor of Commerce degree from Queen’s University in Canada and has a Chartered Financial Analyst designation. She is passionate advocate for women’s economic empowerment and is involved in a number of gender diversity initiatives including her role as Past President of CWN and her recent appointment as Chair of The 30% Club. Brenda is also a Member of the Global Council of Queen’s University School of Business, a Trustee of Queen’s University’s Bader International Study Centre in Sussex, and a Freeman of the Worshipful Company of International Bankers.

A Canadian by birth, Brenda now considers herself a ‘citizen of the world’ and lives in Kent with her husband, ‘Trend’ and her two children, Teddy and India.

Professor Dame Carol Black DBE, FRCP, FMedSci was appointed Principal of Newnham in September 2012. She is a past-President of the Royal College of Physicians, of the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges, and of the British Lung Foundation, and has chaired the UK Health Honours Committee. The Centre she established at the Royal Free Hospital in London is internationally renowned for research and treatment of connective tissue diseases such as scleroderma.

Dame Carol was National Director for Health and Work from 2006 to 2012, and completed two independent reviews for the Government, the first in 2008 on the health of the UK working population, the second in 2011 (as co-chair) on sickness absence in Britain. The recommendations of the second report are now being put into place, with for example a national Fit for Work Service. She is Expert Adviser on Health and Work to the Department of Health and Public Health England, and in 2015 she was asked by the then Prime Minister, David Cameron, to undertake a third independent review, on ways of encouraging back into work adults with long-term but treatable conditions such as addiction to alcohol or drugs, or obesity.

She has long been involved in encouraging women to aspire to positions of leadership, in the professions, academia and public life. She is now a member of the University’s Equality and Diversity Committee, and of the organising committee for the annual Women of the World Festival in Cambridge. She chairs the board of Think Ahead, a not-for-profit organisation that encourages graduates into mental health social work. As Principal she regularly gives talks to schools, at home and abroad, often through such organisations as Inspiring the Future and Speakers for Schools, encouraging girls to apply for leading universities and aim for high-level careers fulfilling their potential.

In July 2016, Dame Carol stepped down after ten years as Chairman of the Nuffield Trust for health policy. She is a member of the Welsh Government’s Bevan Commission on health in Wales, Chair of the RSSB’s Health and Wellbeing Policy Group, a non-executive director of UKActive and a member of PwC’s Health Industries Oversight Board. She is a Trustee of the National Portrait Gallery, The Work Foundation and of Uppingham School. In November 2013 she was named one of the 100 most powerful women in the UK in the BBC Woman’s Hour list.

Dame Carol was interviewed on BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs in February 2016 and in May 2016 she gave a special Tanner Lecture in Tokyo – the first time the prestigious lecture series was held in Japan.

An independent review, written by Dame Carol, which analysed the impact on employment prospects for people who have battled drug or alcohol addiction, was published by the Government in December 2016.

Dame Carol was asked to recommend ways people addicted to drugs and alcohol can be helped to find work. She also explored the effect of obesity on unemployment but found no clear link.