Speakers
Ken Nelson MBE - Chair of InterTradeIreland
Ken Nelson has extensive involvement in economic development, business start up and growth as chief executive of Local Economic Development Company (LEDCOM) Ltd. Ken has over 27 years’ experience working as a business advisor, mentor and trainer with entrepreneurs, start-up companies, small businesses and social enterprises. He has wide ranging experience in designing and delivering support initiatives for economic development, business incubation, managed workspace development, social entrepreneurship and small business growth.
Ken was one of the founding directors and former Chairman of Enterprise Northern Ireland, the association of NI’s local enterprise centres. In 2010 he was the sole Northern Ireland recipient of the Queen’s Award for Enterprise Promotion.
Brought up on a farm and married with six children, Ken began his career in the textile industry working in production management and product management.
Ken is a voluntary member of the board of directors of two social enterprises. He has a BA in Business Studies, MBA and MSc in Human Resource Management as well as being a Chartered Manager (CMgr) and Fellow of the Chartered Management Institute (FCMI). He is also a member of the Board of Governors of Stranmillis University College.
Ken is a regular speaker at economic development and entrepreneurship conferences locally, nationally and internationally, as well as writing an occasional column on business issues for local media.
In April 2012, he was appointed to the Board of Invest Northern Ireland by the Northern Ireland Minister for the Economy. He was re-appointed to the Board of Invest NI in April 2015.
In December 2016, he was appointed as Chairman of InterTradeIreland by the North South Ministerial Council and in 2018 was awarded an MBE in the New Year's Honours List.
Sara Venning - Chief Executive at Northern Ireland Water
Sara Venning graduated from Queen’s University Belfast with a Master of Electrical and Electronic Engineering after which she joined NIE as Customer Operations Manager. In 2010 she joined NI Water as Director of Customer Service Delivery and has been CEO since 2014. She has a passion for excellence, driving change that is transforming NI Water to becoming world class.
Sara is President of the UK water sector industry body - Institute of Water and is also President of the WaterAid NI Committee, part of the global WaterAid charity working to transform lives by improving access to clean water, hygiene and sanitation in the world's poorest communities.
Sara is married with three daughters. In her spare time she enjoys the outdoors with her family, including long walks around the beautiful settings of some of NI Water’s reservoirs.
Sarah Travers - Compere
Sarah Travers is a freelance journalist, presenter, trainer and media coach, based in Northern Ireland. Sarah began her career with BBC Northern Ireland after completing a degree in broadcast journalism at the Nottingham-Trent University, first in BBC Radio Foyle before joining the Radio Ulster news bulletins team in 1997. Sarah’s perhaps best known for her role as anchor on BBC Newsline over a thirteen year period where she also fronted the weekly Family Focus slot, Lifeline, The Balmoral Show and Children In Need. Sarah also presented ‘The Magazine’ programme on UTV and ‘Made in NI’ on BBC NI.
In 2015 she set up her new training business, Bespoke Communications, with her business partner Camilla Long. She is passionate helping people and organisations tell their stories through media appearances and keynote presentations and developing strong leaders of the future.
She’s a mum of two.
Alistair Jinks - Director of Business Services, Northern Ireland Water
Alistair Jinks, Director of Business Services at NI Water. Alistair leads the Business Transformation Programme, IT, and Corporate Affairs, all functions that are key in helping in NI Water’s ambition of becoming a “world class” water utility, capable of meeting future customer expectations at sustainably lower costs. Having joined the company in 2006, Alistair’s experience in managing business change across a number of sectors including telecoms, manufacturing and retail, has helped the company build capability through improved service and efficiency.
Alistair is married with three sons and is an avid climate enthusiast who enjoys the natural surroundings of the North Coast and retreating to Donegal to absorb the incredible landscape.
Damien O'Mullen - Head of Energy, Northern Ireland Water
Pete Gray - Associate, Arup
Pete is an Associate and he leads the Belfast Water Team for Arup; a global consultant working across every aspect of today's built environment. He enjoys working in a team environment to solve complex problems, and to deliver projects which improve the lives of people in NI and beyond. He is chartered civil engineer with over 17 years’ industry experience.
A key role of Pete’s is to lead Arup as their NI Water Framework Manager. He has worked closely with their Head of Energy to develop business cases for NI Water’s ambitious £30m Energy programme for PC21.
Pete understands the importance of our need to address Climate Change and he is Infrastructure Sectoral Leader for the Climate NI Steering Group.
Ronan Larkin - Director of Finance & Regulation, Northern Ireland Water
Ronan Larkin, Director of Finance, Regulation and Commercial at Northern Ireland Water. Ronan is a Chartered Global Management Accountant and an Associate of The Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (CIMA). He has worked in utilities including telecoms, gas and water for over twenty years. He joined Northern Ireland Water as Director of Finance in 2005 and in 2019 became the lead for the development of Northern Ireland Water’s programme for Commercial Excellence.
Ronan is a Council Member of Water UK and is President of The Institute of Water Northern Ireland. He lives in South Down in Northern Ireland and when not working spends as much time as possible surrounded by natural capital in the beautiful Mourne Mountains and Carlingford Lough with his wife Barbara and their four children.
Brad Mallard - CTO, Northern West Europe, Fujitsu
Brad leads on the development of Fujitsu’s CTO and Consulting practices and he sets the portfolio and investment strategy for Fujitsu’s services for the North Western European region. Brad has been supporting the development of Fujitsu’s Global Work Life Shift capability and has been driving new ways of working in developing and delivering projects to support customers that help them adapt to a different future of work. Brad’s background as a deep technologist and with broad visibility across sectors and countries brings a rich set of insights that help business and technology leaders with adapting their organisations for resilience and pace to overcome the uncertainty of a post pandemic world.