Rita Clifton CBE

Rita Clifton CBE is a speaker, writer & practitioner on all aspects of brands, branding and business leadership. She graduated from Cambridge and started her career in advertising, becoming Vice Chairman at Saatchi & Saatchi, then London CEO and Chairman at the global brand consultancy Interbrand over a fifteen year stint. In 2013, she co-founded BrandCap, which has performed amongst the 1% most successful business start-ups in the UK.

Rita has been an author of best-selling books including ‘The Future of Brands’ and two editions of The Economist ‘Brands and Branding”. She is working on her new book as we speak! She is also a non-executive director on the board of businesses including ASOS, Nationwide Building Society and Ascential plc, and her non-profit boards have included WWF, The Conservation Volunteers (TCV), and the Government’s Sustainable Development Commission.

Rita received a CBE for services to the creative industries in 2014.

Richard Berry, Avaloq

Richard’s responsibility in Avaloq is to define the strategy, roadmap, products and services for UK and Ireland. Prior to Avaloq, Richard spent seven years at HBSC, working in numerous senior management roles including being UK Head of Premier investment platforms. Previous to that, Richard was a management consultant for ten years, working with a range of financial services clients including: Barclays, JP Morgan, Fidelity, Scottish Widows and St James’s Place. During his time as a consultant, he developed some of the UK’s leading investment products, propositions and distribution approaches.

Florence Clark, Truth Consulting

Flo is deeply curious about how people operate – as individuals, in groups, in businesses and as consumers. With an Msc in the Philosophy of Mental Disorders she has a keen insights into the workings of the human mind and her career explores how people behave, make decisions, form attitudes and generally interact with the world.  Flo’s work spans sectors and categories but her passion and focus lies in brand positioning, category development and understanding customer/ user experiences with a view to optimising this for all involved. Clients often come to her to champion the voice of the consumer (or user). Current clients include Bayer, Dixons Carphone, Bank of Ireland, Coca Cola and Nomad Foods and Samsung.

Michael Gardner, Wedlake Bell

Michael advises clients in relation to disputes involving commercial, IT and in particular intellectual property matters. This includes trade marks, passing off, copyright, databases, designs, patents, confidential information, privacy and disputes involving IT contracts.

Michael is experienced in all forms of IP dispute resolution including litigation in the High Court and IPEC including the obtaining of urgent injunctive relief. His practice includes anti-counterfeiting work (including in the online space) and advising on parallel imports. He also advises on brand protection generally and conducts trade mark prosecution work and domain name dispute resolution.

James Brown, Compeer

James joined Compeer in October 2006 as an Analyst following his graduation from The University of Warwick, where he studied Mathematics, Operational Research, Statistics and Economics.

Today he manages Compeer’s team of Analysts. He has widely presented key trends in the UK Wealth Management Industry, with in-depth experience of providing statistical analysis of firms’ business performance. He regularly provides recommendations during presentations to Executive boards and is actively involved in bespoke research projects.

Roger Bootle, Capital Economics

Roger Bootle is the founder and chairman of Capital Economics, one of the largest macro-economics consultancies in the world. He is also an Honorary Fellow of the Institute of Actuaries and a regular columnist for The Daily Telegraph. Roger was a Specialist Adviser to the House of Commons Treasury Committee for twenty years from 1997 to 2017. Under Chancellor Kenneth Clarke, he was appointed to the panel of Independent Economic Advisers, the so-called “Wise Men”. He is a former Group Chief Economist of HSBC and a Visiting Professor at Manchester Business School. In 2012, he was named Economics Commentator of the year and, together with a team from Capital Economics, won the Wolfson Prize. He has also written several books, including his widely acclaimed latest book, Making a Success of Brexit, and the prophetic The Death of Inflation, published in 1996.

Paul Fletcher, Coutts

Paul heads marketing for two private banks: Coutts and Adam & Company and is also a member of the Executive Committee. He was previously Partner and Board Director of wealth and asset manager, London & Capital where he had responsibility for marketing, products and services. During his five years at the firm, he helped turn around an unprofitable business to become one of the fastest growing companies in its sector and moved large parts of the client experience online. In recognition of this, he has twice been recognised by PAM as a ‘Top 40 under 40’ and three times by CityWealth in their Leaders List. Prior to wealth management, Paul spent four years in private equity, initially in a marketing and communications role for Duke Street, advising both the firm and its investee businesses, and subsequently moved into global fundraising and investor relations. He has also spent time in East Africa advising an impact investment fund, Pearl Capital Partners, which was financed as a joint venture between the Rockefeller, Gates and Gatsby Foundations. Paul has previously held senior marketing and communications roles for UBS Investment Bank, where he was Head of Fixed Income Marketing, and Deutsche Bank, where he was Global Head of Marketing for their equities business.

Cynthia Poole, Raymond James

Cynthia’s responsibilities include Marketing, Relationship Management, Client Services and Technical Training. Cynthia and the teams she oversees are the principal contacts for the independent wealth management practices Raymond James supports in the UK, helping these business owners and their teams to thrive and succeed. In addition, her department is responsible for corporate marketing activities.

Born in Georgia, USA, Cynthia holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Business Administration from Auburn University with a major in Marketing. She is also a mentor to current students of the Raymond J. Harbert College of Business at Auburn. Cynthia has completed Executive Education programs including Business Marketing Strategy at the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University and General Management at the University of Cambridge Judge Business School, to complement her 25+ years’ experience in sales, relationship management and marketing roles in the financial services industry.

Cynthia also supports Project Concern International in particular its Women Empowered Initiative, which is a global effort to promote the economic and social empowerment of women in developing countries through the formation of self-managed and self-sustaining savings groups.

Jane Parry, Canaccord Genuity Wealth Management

An executive-level, strategic marketing professional, Jane has worked in financial services for more than 30 years. She is passionate about marketing, client-centric change, personal development and building strong teams.

Jane enjoyed a successful career at Barclays over 22 years, undertaking a wide variety of roles ranging from client-facing Small Business Manager to Marketing Director of Premier Banking.

Over the last 20 years, Jane has covered all the marketing disciplines. After an interim spell at HomeServe, she led the customer experience agenda at Skandia before moving to Duncan Lawrie Private Bank. Jane was their first female Executive Board Director before becoming Group Marketing Executive at their parent company, Camellia Plc. This extended her marketing remit across the group, including the tea business in India.

Since 2015, Jane has been Head of Marketing and Communications at Canaccord Genuity Wealth Management. Now a top ten independent UK wealth manager, the firm looks after c£27bn AuM and 26,000 clients. As a member of the Executive Committee, Jane’s challenge is to raise brand awareness and drive a client-led strategy.

Kirsten Burt, UBS Wealth Management

Kirsten Burt is Head of Marketing for the UK & Jersey business at UBS Wealth Management; she joined the firm in 2013. At UBS, she leads a team of senior marketers  who are responsible for the marketing and client strategy to help grow the business. Ms. Burt is an international strategic marketer with 20 years of experience in the full marketing mix including PR, advertising, sponsorship, client segmentation, client insights, content marketing and direct marketing. She has led the digital transformation of the UK marketing team at UBS for the past 5 years.

Prior to UBS, Kirsten was the Head of Marketing for Standard Chartered Private Bank for the EMEA and Americas regions for 6 years. She also held VP level marketing roles at Citigroup in New York and London in their card businesses.

Kirsten holds a bachelor’s degree in management and marketing from Boston College, and an International MBA from the Thunderbird School of Global Management with a focus on Global Brand Management.