Alice Pike is a Fire Engineer and the team lead for the Rail Fire Team at Mott MacDonald with 5 years’ experience in fire engineering, specialising in the railway sector. She has worked on a range of major rail infrastructure projects – including Liverpool Baltic Station, HS2, and Birmingham University Station – incorporating fire safety design to create practical, reliable life‑safety solutions for complex transport environments.
Archives: Speakers
Lauren Teague
Lauren Teague is a Fire Engineer at Mott MacDonald with four years of experience delivering fire‑safety solutions across the rail, buildings, and nuclear sectors. Her project portfolio spans both major national schemes and smaller, specialist commissions, including the Cardiff Central Enhancements Project, Holtec’s Small Modular Reactor SMR-300 development, multiple Access for All programmes, and works at Heathrow Airport.
Maria Concepción Ortega Ortiz
As Vice President of MAFEX (Spanish Rail Industry Association) since 2018, María Concepción Ortega Ortiz has channelled her 28 years of experience in rail delivery, spanning high-speed, metro and light rail, as well as her ENVISION Sustainability Professional certification, to champion a collaborative, technically exacting and future-ready agenda for Spain’s rail ecosystem. With a global portfolio spanning Europe, North America, LATAM, Asia, Australia and New Zealand, and assignments in 22 countries and 54 cities, together with her current corporate market leadership at IDOM and her earlier hands-on engineering experience, she provides MAFEX with a pragmatic, internationally tested perspective to advance standards, integration and inclusive, efficient mobility.
Sofia Magnusson
Sofia Magnusson is an AI strategist, entrepreneur and City Lead for Women in AI Gothenburg. She works at the intersection of business transformation, AI adoption and human-centred change, with a strong focus on how organisations build skills, trust and leadership capability alongside emerging technologies.
With a background as a tech founder and digital strategist, Sofia has over a decade of experience working with digital transformation and value creation in technology-driven businesses, including building and scaling ventures with external capital. Today, she focuses on AI education, internal capability building and practical use of AI tools, while driving competence development through initiatives such as workshops, hands-on sessions and hackathons.
Kristine Bjørnstad
Kristine Bjørnstad is SVP Technology & Insight Commercial at Gjensidige. She leads overall digitization strategies for Nordic B2B customers, heading interdisciplinary agile teams and translating technology into measurable business value. Previously, she served as CEO of NoA Ignite Norway, an agency specialized in digital services and customer driven growth. She has also held leadership roles at Microsoft in product management and public‑sector sales, and has previous board experience. Bjørnstad’s focus areas include governance models, value driven modernization programs, and building effective team structures.
Lezgin Zilan
Lezgin is a technology leader in the techcnical forefront with experience within innovation, security, architecture and a passionated problem solver. He had the OpenAI GPT-3 model on the radar 2 years before chatgpt release. Besides that he have a year of agentic development experience and is currently rolling out agentic way of working for the compan
Xia Wang
Xia is the co-founder of Ark Investment Management and Ark Family Office. She is the Chief Investment Officer and is also responsible for family succession for ultra-HNW clients from Greater China.
Xia has nearly 20 years of extensive experience in the UK’s wealth management industry. Prior to setting up her own practice, she was a Senior Investment Manager and Head of Research at Barnett Waddingham Investments.
In recognition of her professionalism and diligence, Xia received the inaugural Chinese Business Leaders Awards – Excellence in Asset Management.
Xia is a CFA charterholder and MCSI. She is an academic book author and frequent panel judge for an international entrepreneurship competition.
John Porteous
John Porteous FCSI CFP FPFS IMC
Managing Director, Central Financial Services and Chief Client Officer, Raymond James Wealth Management
John Porteous has over 30 years’ experience in wealth management and platform services. He joined Charles Stanley in 2019 as Head of Distribution and now serves as managing Director of Central Financial Services and Chief Client Officer.
Previously, John held senior roles at Quilter PLC as Retail Client Services Solutions Director and at Tilney (formerly Towry) as Director of Client Proposition and Chair of the Investment Committee.
A regular speaker at industry events, John has also served at influential positions including Chairman of the Society of Financial Advisers, Director of the Institute of Financial Planning, and Council Member of APFA.
Dejanira Araiza Illan
A hands-on engineer with plenty of industry and R&D experience, who likes to experiment with new technologies, design and deploy novel solutions, and inspire the new generations of engineers and digital innovators.
A firm believer in the use of advanced technology and artificial intelligence to increase our quality of life, and to build a better society.
A promoter of best practices to ensure technologies are useful, safe and trustworthy.
You will find Dejanira leading teams of engineers and supply chain experts, sharing a vision of future technologies and digital capabilities with global leaders and future engineers, or bouncing ideas off other experts.