Archives: Speakers

John began his work in mass spectrometry over 25 years ago designing Time of Flight systems for the study of rapid combustion processes. From there he went on to work on the design of atmospheric pressure external ion source systems for quadrupole based analyzers. John gained experience of ion trap systems prior to moving onto triple quadrupole configurations and business applications. Throughout his career, John has held a number of positions, including research fellow, application chemist, development physicist, sales specialist and group manager. Having been with Agilent Technologies for over 10 years, he is currently responsible for gas phase and mass spectrometry within the International Distributor Organization. John holds a BSc (Hons) in Chemistry and Biochemistry, and a PhD in Physical Chemistry

David Curry has had a varied career that has taken him around the world. He has been involved in a number of tech businesses with his serial entrepreneur wife, working on everything from tech infrastructure to fund raising seed capital in a range of applications. Starting out as an Officer in the Canadian Navy he left that to pursue a career in Opera and Musical Theatre which as a principal has appeared in over 2000 performances in 27 countries. The world of Opera provided access at a very high level to a unique group of people which include business leaders and policy makers which has offered invaluable insight and perspective. Covid19 provided an impetus to merge and apply his unique talents to tell the story of the evolution of the burgeoning world of the global cannabis trade.

ick Pateras is Managing Director, Europe at Materia, where he oversees the company’s operations across Germany, Malta and the UK. Materia is an EU GMP certified manufacturer and distributor of medical cannabis and CBD products across the burgeoning European market. Previously, Nick served as Vice President, Strategy at Lift & Co., Canada’s leading cannabis education and insights platform. He is a regular speaker at cannabis conferences across North America and Europe and taught the Cannabis Business Fundamentals course at George Brown College in Toronto in 2018-19. Prior to his time in cannabis, Nick spent several years in the pharmaceutical sector with Johnson & Johnson Inc, managing various category-leading OTC and Health & Beauty businesses.

Victor is an insurance industry veteran with 15+ years of experience delivering digital transformation initiatives at market-leading insurers such as Zurich Financial Services and Swiss Re. Victor now leads transformation in the complex payments ecosystem, helping brokers, insurers, and others deploy modern payments methods, delivering on changing customer requirements, business agility, and reducing TCO.

James Dening is a seasoned technology executive and people leader. After having led Minit as a CEO to a successful acquisition by Microsoft, James continues to evangelize about process mining as a Partner at Microsoft. Thanks to his role as VP Europe for Automation Anywhere, his professional life also includes significant experience with digital transformation and Robotic Process Automation. Today, his mission is to shed light on how business processes actually work and enable organizations to automate, improve, and transform with focused precision and without wasted efforts.