TEDxHighgateSchool

Speakers

Speakers may not be confirmed. Check the event website for the latest lineup.

• Simon Milner

  Simon Milner is the policy director for Facebook in the UK, Middle East and Africa. He previously held senior roles with BT, most recently as Director for Group Industry Policy, where he was responsible for policy development, articulation and advocacy on communications industry issues. Milner has also worked for the BBC, including holding the position of Secretary, responsible for the Corporation’s governance and accountability whilst advising the Chairman and Director-General on a range of strategic, regulatory, managerial and governance issues.

• Meike Ziervogel

  Meike Ziervogel is a writer and publisher. Having grown up in northern Germany she came to London to study Arabic language and literature. She has worked as a journalist for Reuters in London and Agence France-Presse in Paris. In 2008 she founded Peirene Press, an award-winning independent publishing house. In 2012 Meike was voted as one of Britain’s 100 most innovative and influential people in the creative and media industries for the h.Club 100 list devised by Time Out London and the Hospital Club. Her debut novel MAGDA was shortlisted for the Guardian’s Not the Booker prize and nominated as a book of the year 2013 by the Irish Times, Observer and Guardian readers whilst her second novel CLARA’S DAUGHTER was published to critical acclaim in September 2014. She hopes to publish her third novel KAUTHAR in autumn 2015.

• Marc Hazan

  Marc is Vice President Of Content and Distribution at Spotify where he is responsible for negotiating their major global content deals. Marc started his career with Accenture,as a Strategy consultant in their Communications and High Tech practice before working in British Telecom’s Venture Group and then on to Sony Music where he ran Business Development for digital for Europe.

• Tom Hulme

  Tom Hulme is a General Partner of Google Ventures Europe, a Senior Advisor to IDEO and a Board Director of both OpenIDEO and OIEngine. Prior to IDEO, Hulme was Managing Director of Marcos, the British sportscar manufacturer and founder of Magnom, a magnetic filter startup. OpenIDEO is an open innovation platform on which a community of over 60,000 users from more than 170 countries tackles big design challenges for social good whilst OIEngine is a SaaS business that enables its clients to manage their own closed and open communities. Hulme has been named Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum and has also since been listed in WIRED UK’s top 100 “digital power brokers”. In 2012 he was included in the Evening Standard list of London’s 1000 most influential people.

• Justine Roberts

  Justine Roberts is the founder and chief executive of British websites Mumsnet and Gransnet. Roberts was named in the Media Guardian’s 2010 power 100. Alongide Mumsnet co-founder Carrie Longton, she was voted number 7 in BBC Woman’s Hour’s ‘Power List 2013′ of the most powerful women in the UK. Mumsnet is now the UK’s biggest network for parents, generating over 70 million page views and over 14 million visits per month.

• Edward Smith

  Edward Smith is an ex-Freshfields lawyer turned food writer. Edward re-trained as a chef in 2012 and has since worked in food television, run a pop-up restaurant and developed menus and recipes for a number of street food brands. He’s now settled as a documenter of food, and is also Creative Director of Cannon and Cannon, the British cured meat retailer and distributer. Edward writes for a number of online magazines, including his website http://www.rocketandsquash.com, as well as other more traditional publications, such as the Guardian and The Financial Times Weekend Magazine. He was shortlisted for best online food writer and best online restaurant writer at the Fortnum and Mason Food Awards 2013 and 2014.

• Susannah Nicklin

  Susannah Nicklin is an investment and financial services professional with 20 years of experience in executive roles at Goldman Sachs and Alliance Bernstein in the US, Australia and UK. She has also worked in the social impact private equity sector with Bridges Ventures and the Global Impact Investing Network, and sits on the Investment Committee of Impact Ventures UK and the Finance & Investment Committee of the Berkshire Community Foundation. She is currently Co-Founder and CEO of Apprecie Limited. Susannah is also a Director of Baronsmead VCT as well as a CFA charterholder and member of STEP.

• Julie Meyer

  Julie Meyer is an American-born entrepreneur, investor, business adviser, networking expert, broadcaster, and business commentator. She is the founder and Chief Executive of Ariadne Capital, the Managing Partner of Ariadne Capital Entrepreneurs Fund, the Founder of EntrepreneurCountry, and the Founder of Strong Jules. She was a regular columnist for the London business paper, City A.M, has contributed to The Daily Telegraph’s business pages, writes for Forbes.com, and is an Influencer on LinkedIn. Meyer has since won awards including the World Economic Forum Global Leader of Tomorrow, the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year and a place in the Wall Street Journal’s 30 most influential women in Europe. She was also cited as one of INSEAD’s ‘50 alumni who have changed the world’. Alongside these, Meyer is also the author of Welcome to Entrepreneur Country, published by Little Brown in 2012.

• Daniel Ishag

  Daniel Ishag is the Founder of Bluewater Bio, who specializes in the treatment of water and wastewater. Ishag was the vision and drive behind Espotting. In 2000, at the age of 26 and in the middle of the dotcom bust, Ishag, along with his school friend Seb Bishop, launched one of the most successful internet companies. The award-winning Espotting was picked up by the Financial Times as one of their Top 50 Creative Businesses. In February 2004, Espotting announced its merger with NASDAQ which valued Espotting at $170m. Ishag was finalist in both the European Technology Forum’s Technology Entrepreneur of the year in 2001, and the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year in 2003 and 2004.

• Amna Boheim

  Amna Boheim graduated from Cambridge University in 1998 and joined the investment bank, Goldman Sachs, where she worked in a variety of roles in the Investment Management Division. She was made a Managing Director in 2007. Amna left Goldman Sachs in 2009 to join the hedge fund, Moore Capital. An avid reader, for some time she had entertained the idea of writing a book. After the birth of her first child, she enrolled on Faber Academy’s six month Writing a Novel programme. The first draft of her novel, The Silent Children , was written during the Faber course. Several drafts later plus a manuscript assessment from The Literary Consultancy, it is now finished. She writes a regular blog series under the banner, Djinn Mamu & Other Strange Stories and regularly submits poetry to the online anthology, www.visualverse.org. Lastly, she was shortlisted for The Literary Consultancy’s 2014 Pen Factor award. She has started work on a second novel, provisionally entitled, Crossed Paths .

• Will Maunder-Taylor

  Will served as a commander in the Armed Forces, specialising in embedding with and mentoring foreign troops. He served in Afghanistan, Iraq and subsequently instructed in Jungle Warfare in Central America & Borneo. Upon leaving he spent three years with a Goldman Sachs start-up in an equity sales role focusing on Technology & Telecoms. In 2013 he began several projects that focus on intelligent introductions, events and network build-outs. Most recently he co-founded Children of Heroes; a charity that helps educate and mentor the children of servicemen and women, who have died on active duty.

• David Aaronovitch

  David Aaronovitch is a British journalist, broadcaster, and author. He is a regular columnist for The Times, and author of Paddling to Jerusalem: An Aquatic Tour of Our Small Country (2000) and Voodoo Histories: the role of Conspiracy Theory in Modern History (2009). In 2001 he won the Orwell Prize for political journalism and the What the Papers Say “Columnist of the Year” award in 2003. Aaranovitch started his media career in the early 1980s as a television researcher and later producer for the ITV program Weekend World. In 1988 he began working at BBC as founding editor of the On the Record and moved to print journalism in 1995, working for The Independent and Independent on Sunday as chief leader writer, television critic, parliamentary sketch writer and columnist until the end of 2002. Aaronovitch has also written for a variety of other major British news and opinion publications, such as the New Statesman.

• Eileen Burbidge

  Eileen Burbidge is software engineer turned investor as a partner at Passion Capital, the London-based venture capital firm, described by VentureBeat as being among Europe’s most prolific investors. Quietly becoming one of the most powerful forces in Silicon Roundabout, she brings extensive operational experience to her investment activities gleaned from business and product development roles at Yahoo!, Skype, PalmSource, Openwave, Sun and Apple.

• Hayley Quinn

  Hayley Quinn is a UCL graduate in English and is one among the most popular consultants of personal relationships. Over the years she has coached thousands of men and women (one to one!) to improve their dating lives, been a featured expert for Channel 4, ITV, Sunrise on 7, and Made in Chelsea. She has also given talks on social skills at Imperial, Brunel and Trinity universities. Is a regular columnist across international media for the likes of Cosmopolitan, Men’s Health, The Independent, and BBC Radio. Has organised 50+ dating training seminars across the UK, USA & Europe. And has also successfully launched apps, ebooks and two members sites (the great Hayley Quinn Club!) for dating.