Archives: Speakers

Adrian is a digital content, marketing and communications specialist, with 15 years’ in-house, agency and freelance experience in content strategy, management, creation and editing for web, social, video and email channels. As Senior Digital Content Manager for Towergate, the UK’s leading independent insurance broking organisation, he leads the 5-strong content team and strategy for driving organic traffic, leads and sales. Through a successful focus on SEO, UX and CX, he has overseen a doubling of organic traffic and 50% rise in organic new business leads since joining in June 2017. Towergate is part of The Ardonagh Group, a network of over 100 offices and 7,000 people. In 2019, Adrian won the Group’s Service Excellence Award, as well as being nominated as Emerging Leader of the Year.

Adrian has been a Member of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR) and Institute of Direct and Digital Marketing since 2014, and in 2016 qualified as both a member of the Public Relations and Communications Association and a CIPR Accredited PR Practitioner. He was subsequently chosen as a judge for the CIPR 2017 Excellence Awards.

Keen to provide the best support to both staff and peers to help their personal and professional success, he became a Mental Health First Aider in 2019. Outside of work, Adrian is a keen reader, singer, photographer, walker and traveller, and a lover of gardens, cricket, historical literary events and steam trains; besides being a Guinness World Record Holder!

Susan MacDonald gained a BSc in Food Science from the University of Strathclyde and joined the MAFF Food Science Laboratory to work on mycotoxins soon after. She has continued to work in this area for 30 years, and is now Science Lead for Chemical Contaminants at Fera Science Ltd. She heads the UK National Reference Laboratory functions for Contaminants in feed and food at Fera, and is the main expert for mycotoxins and plant toxins. She has over 40 peer reviewed scientific articles, is a member of the FSA Joint Expert Group on Animal Feed and Additives and 2 CEN Working Groups on analysis of mycotoxins and plant toxins. Her current main research interests are mycotoxins and plant toxins in herbal products, contaminants in CBD products and a survey of foods for acrylamide and furans.

As Director of Services Delivery, Ben oversees services delivery out of Suvoda’s Bucharest office. Ben has over 11 years of experience in the software industry, holding a variety of positions in professional services, global operations and business development. He has consulted with Fortune 2000 clients across a variety of industries on how to best leverage technology to solve mission-critical business challenges

Thomas has been an instrumental figure in the DHL Life Sciences & Healthcare sector for over 14 years.

As a Global Sector Team member, Thomas is now leading the cross-divisional development of clinical trials logistics offering. He recently co-authored the white paper “Pandemic Resilience” and is central to business development efforts in DHL’s Global Task Force to support distribution readiness for global vaccine manufacturers, governments, and NGOs. Thomas is also leading the company’s COVID-19 vaccine distribution strategy.

Previously, Thomas was Sales Leader for EMEA, including Emerging Markets in the Middle East and Africa, where he had responsibility for an extensive portfolio of pharmaceutical and medical devices companies. Before joining the DPDHL Group, Thomas spent several years in FMCG and specialty chemicals industries, where he held roles in supply chain and customer services.

Thomas holds a Master’s degree in Physics from the WWU Münster, Germany