WABChats

Richard Kennell is the founder and CEO of the charity SOFEA. SOFEA is all about helping young people for whom traditional schooling doesn’t click find their spark, the thing that is going to unlock their talents and ultimately find their path in life.Before starting SOFEA Richard ran his own Education company working with local schools and prior to that Richard had a 20-year career as a secondary school teacher and Assistant Head Teacher. During his time as a teacher, Richard decided he wanted to help those young people that didn’t get on with the traditional schooling system. Richard saw these young people dropping out of school with few skills and fewer qualifications and decided it was time to do something about it.In this conversation, Richard shares with us the inspiration behind the charity and some of the personal leadership challenges he faced when first getting things off the ground. Richard also talks to us about how businesses can help students in this situation and how they can re-think the early-stage recruitment processes to account for an untapped pool of young talent. SOFEA - https://www.sofea.uk.com/Fareshare - https://fareshare.org.uk/

Piers Daniell is an entrepreneur in the world of energy, property and, more recently, politics. Piers set up his first business aged just 15 and hasn't looked back since then. Piers founded internet service provider Fluidata in 2004 and by the time he departed as Chairman in March 2019, it had grown into a £30m company with over 95% customer retention rate.The company won numerous awards multiple times including the Tech Track 100 award, Deloitte Fast 50 and being named a Sunday Times Best Small Company to work for three times. Piers himself has also won a number of awards, including Young Entrepreneur of the Year and the Queen’s Award for Innovation which he was presented by the Queen in 2014.More recently Piers has entered the energy market with his company Tewke. Tewke's AI-enabled Automation allows homeowners to boost energy efficiency, save money, and reduce environmental impact by learning from homeowners' routines and encouraging eco-friendly habits. Tewke's objective is to control and optimise energy, by learning, controlling and adapting.In this episode, Piers shares with us the challenges and lessons from the very early stage of his business career and the significant challenges he faced when selling his first major business Fluidata. We then go on to discuss his new business Tewke and the work it is doing to address the problems of behavioural change in sustainable living, using AI and Automation to build what is in essence a smart grid for homeowners.

Omid Moallemi Is a creative and product designer. He is the Co-Founder of the social gifting app Prsnt. After graduating, Omid worked in furniture design, creating designs for tables, cutlery and kitchen products. Following this he joined other design consultancies which ultimately gave him the platform to start his own consultancy BlueSix Design in Brighton. Omid has also designed a next-generation nicotine device and has a patent around its technology which has attracted interest from the “big 4” tobacco companies. In 2020, Omid Co-Founded Prsnt. Prsnt is a social gifting app aiming to change the social fabric of how we gift in the next few years. In this episode, Omid explains in detail how Prsnt allows you to send someone instant gifts, such as a coffee or a voucher to their phone, they can redeem the QR code and send a video message back. Prsnt already has many big-name brands signed up to its platform including Deliveroo, John Lewis, Amazon and Sainsbury's.

Francesca Muston is Vice President of Fashion at the world-leading trend forecasting company WGSN. WGSN uses expert trend forecasting and data science to help global companies and brands get ahead of the right trends. WGSN provide consumer insight, product design direction and trading strategies to help businesses create sustainably in the future and ultimately land the right trends at the right time to maximise sales.Francesca started out as a Senior Editor with WGSN nearly 20 years ago and now leads a team of trend and data experts in delivering well-evidenced trend directions that enable clients to make decisions confidently. Francesca is a seasoned speaker, she has presented and consulted for global brands, retailers and manufacturers advising them on future strategies and sustainability. Her contributions and insight in the future of fashion discussion can be found in the National Press, The Economist and the WSJ.

Duncan McKay is the Founder & CEO of Aistetic, an Oxford University spinout that aims to revolutionize the fashion industry by offering 3D body models generated from mobile devices. The accurate next-gen 3D body modelling platform is found in Aistetic's first product which is available to online clothing retailers and is designed to increase conversion, lower returns and excess inventory and ultimately this works to reduce clothing waste and increase sustainability.Aistetic is compatible with e-commerce platforms. The solution is designed to be compatible with any ecommerce platform, with simple low-cost implementation.  Duncan is a highly experienced marketer. He’s an expert in launching and commercializing new products for major consumer goods companies. He started his career at L'Oréal, and has worked for the likes of Unilever and Walls. He was awarded PepsiCo's Chairman's Award and the Marketing Excellence Award and holds an MBA from INSEAD. Prior to founding AIstetic he served as Head of Ecommerce Europe at Pepsi Lipton.Duncan's vision is to disrupt and make accessible 3D body measurements using state-of-the-art computer vision and deep learning technology. https://www.aistetic.com/

Leo Campbell is Co-Founder of Modern Baker. Modern Baker is seen by many as the UK’s first truly healthy bakery. The business launched the latest iteration of the high-tech Superloaf, it's gut healthy bread brand, exclusively into Marks & Spencer in March 2023. The product –full of bioactive plant-based compounds – is co-manufactured and co-packaged by Hovis.Modern Baker has re-engineered ultra-processed bread to make it actively healthy and it has plans to use the same approach for making other foods healthier such as breakfast cereals, pasta, ready meals and pastries. Innovation UK, a national agency, has just awarded the company £450,000 and six successive government grants has led to investment of up to £4 million.Modern Baker was born as a result of Leo's business partner Melissa’s breast cancer diagnosis. Whilst she was seriously ill, Melissa supplemented her medication with a very natural diet. It became very clear, very quickly that there were all sorts of benefits to this type of diet. So much so that Leo and Melissa started looking seriously into how significant diet is in terms of the impact it has on our health and general wellbeing.We talk to Leo about why him and his partner Melissa first started Modern Baker, their drive and purpose. We cover the technology behind the product and it's versatility, how outsourcing has proved vital for Modern Baker and what the future holds for the company following its 6th Government grant from Innovate UK.

Rebecca Aycheng Ajulu Bushell is CEO of the 10,000 Interns Foundation. She is wow listed in Forbes 30 under 30. Rebecca is the first black woman to have swam for Great Britain, becoming British Champion and ranking number 1 in the world. After retiring from competitive swimming in 2011…… she became a communications consultant and founded NKG, a media and communications agency focused on social change. Rebecca studied fine art at Oxford and has produced an award winning documentary ‘Breakfast in Kisumu' which is about her father, a leading Kenyan academic and freedom fighter in the struggle against apartheid in South Africa.We discuss Rebecca's incredibly varied career until now and how she came to be CEO of the 10,000 Interns Foundation and explore the vital work the 10,000 Interns Foundation do in addressing the issue of employment disparity for Black and Disabled students. We also spend time discussing why businesses should aspire to have as diverse a work force as possible, and what practical steps businesses can take to increase diversity in their workforces.

Peter Higgins is Co-Founder and now Non-Exec Director of Charles Tyrwhitt Shirts, which is a multi-channel clothing retailer, specializing in smart and smart casual wear. He is former director of luxury fashion retailers MeandEm and Peter also spent 4 years serving as Chairman at Cath Kitson, and 10 years and clothing brand Joe Browns, as well as some time at LK Bennet. Peter is also a NED at Mary’s Meals. Mary's Meals is a global charity that serves life-changing school meals to some of the world’s poorest children. Their vision is that every child receives one daily meal in their place of education and they are already reaching 2.4 million school children every day.We chat to Peter about Co-Founding Charles Tyrwhitt Shirts, advising the business through lock-down and what B2B can learn from B2C when it comes to customer centricity.