Meet our 2023 speakers!
Jeff Nathenson has more than thirty years of international experience in media extending from production and operations through to business development and sales. He currently is the managing director for the international division of Whistle, the digital entertainment media company for Gen-Z. Launching the international business of Whistle in 2014, he has worked on strategy, programming, channel management, marketing and monetization on behalf of the Premier League, the Olympics, FIFA, World Rugby, Major League Baseball and many others.
Prior to Whistle Sports, Jeff helped launch the partnership programme on YouTube, bringing BBC, C4, ITV, Fremantle, Endemol and many others onto the platform. He ended his time at YouTube as its head of football. Jeff also has worked at Turner International, IMG, and Dow Jones.
Kate Biggs is a Director in the Broadcasting and Media Group at Ofcom, and leads Ofcom’s work on commercially funded PSBs, PSB legislative reform and prominence. She has over 20 years’ experience in the public sector, beginning her career in the UK Civil Service, working in the Cabinet Office and the DCMS, including a couple of years on secondment to the BBC. More recently she worked for the New Zealand and Australian governments on a diverse range of public sector reform projects.
Alex Kann is the Chief Executive of Together TV, the TV channel inspiring positive change. Together TV reaches millions of viewers each month through its TV channel, streaming service and engagement platform that encourages people to take up new interests and activities.
Together TV improves viewers’ mental health, connection to their community and participation in local life – and 85% of viewers report they’ve started something new as a result of watching Together TV (Opinium Research, 2k base, Nov 2022)
Together TV is the world’s only cooperatively-owned charitable national broadcaster, and is underpinned by support from 20 leading media companies including the BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Paramount, Sky, Virgin Media, Meta and Salesforce. Its themed Challenges engage tens of thousands of people to help build new habits and share their successes. Together TV also runs the BAFTA-winning Diverse Film Fund, providing funding, training and mentoring to new filmmaking talent from underrepresented social groups.
Prior to Together TV and its previous incarnation Community Channel, Alex was at the BBC and BBC Studios for several years, on BBC iPlayer’s launch team, Project Kangaroo, global VOD projects, commissioning, the soaps and in BBC technology and broadcast outsourcing deals.
Alex is the chair of charity My Life Films which runs the dementia-friendly SVOD My Life TV, is chair of the TV On Demand Industry Forum and was a director of the VOD regulator ATVOD.
Ruth joined Sky Media as Investment Director in April 2021 and leads the UK sales team, driving revenue across Sky’s innovative advertising products, propositions, and capabilities.
Ruth’s career in media started over 20 years ago, with a large part of her experience in major agencies including GroupM, Publicis and Dentsu. Working across all key category sectors, she’s helped bring a wealth of experience to a wide range of clients. Ruth has traded media for over a decade and continues to work with agencies and clients to help deliver market-leading impactful and effective campaigns.
Gaurav joined Arqiva in January 2023 as Executive Director, Media and Broadcast, responsible for the commercial relationships with our broadcast customers across the globe. Prior to Arqiva, Gaurav was Business Head, TV and streaming, at Telia, the Nordic and Baltic media house, and leading telecoms provider. He has also held senior roles at Walt Disney and Vodafone.
Andy Jones is Head of UK Sales at Samsung Ads. His passion and comprehensive knowledge of the industry from both agency and media owner perspectives lead him to his most recent role at Samsung Ads.
In his role Jones is responsible for developing and redefining advertising strategies for advanced TV by helping clients leverage first-party data from Samsung TVs to gain unmatched audience insights. Jones has 20 years’ experience and knowledge of TV & Video having worked at Roku, Videology and prior to that at Channel 4.
Like many in media, Andy’s foundation was as a Zenith TV Buyer at the old Paddington office. Whilst TV has changed significantly in that time, the experience has given Andy the extensive agency knowledge for his role with Samsung. Jones has 20 years’ experience and knowledge of TV & Video having worked at Roku, Videology and prior to that at Channel 4.
Like many in media, Andy’s foundation was as a Zenith TV Buyer at the old Paddington office. Whilst TV has changed significantly in that time, the experience has given Andy the extensive agency knowledge for his role with Samsung.
Magnus is Director of Strategy, Policy and Regulation at ITV plc and sits on the ITV plc Management Board. Magnus has responsibility for ITV’s strategy, policy and regulatory teams, which includes overseeing ITV’s corporate strategy development and leading on interaction with UK and European regulators, government and parliamentary committees. Magnus is a non-executive director of a number of ITV subsidiaries and JVs and from 2019-22 was a non-Executive director of ITN the news and TV programme producer. From 2014-19 Magnus was Chairman of the Board of the Brussels based Association of Commercial Television in Europe which represents Europe’s commercial broadcasters to the EU institutions.
Prior to joining ITV he was Head of the BBC Director General’s Office for both Greg Dyke and Mark Thompson. He began his career as a lawyer specialising in regulatory and competition law at City of London law firm Ashursts, where he also trained.
Lynette is Director of Commercial & Propositions (Streaming) at ITV where she is responsible for the overall consumer proposition and business plan for the recently launched ITVX streaming service. Lynette joined ITV in 2020 as Director of Strategic Partnerships, focused on driving a holistic and joined up approach to partnerships across ITV PLC including driving the initial strategy for the distribution of ITVX and board membership at YouView.
With over 20 years’ experience building partnerships, delivering strong financial performance and leading consumer products in businesses such as Google, Yahoo! and Virgin Media Lynette’s experience spans the full TV/Broadcast/Platforms and Digital Video ecosystems from distribution of one of the largest video-sharing platforms in the world (YouTube) to full P&L accountability and product management of one of the UK’s leading Pay TV services (Virgin Media) and includes advertising and ad technology (Videology). Lynette has led large diverse teams and particularly enjoys mentoring colleagues giving people confidence in themself and helping them to grow personally and professionally.
Rufus began his career in advertising at McCann Erickson followed by a further stint at J.Walter Thompson. He then left to join the world of TV. At Channel 4 Rufus helped launch their brand new digital entertainment channel, E4 and over the next decade helped lead the further diversification of Channel 4’s digital portfolio with the launch of More4 and 4oD.
Currently ITV’s Managing Director of Streaming he leads all of ITV’s digital products, including ITVX as well ITV’s interactive business and group wide data strategy.
Previously Rufus was ITV’s Chief Marketing Officer and was Marketing Week’s 2020 Marketer of the Year. He has been Chairman of Freeview, is Director of BritBox SVOD UK and is Chair of the London Wildlife Trust, helping to improve the capital’s bio-diversity.
Adipat is an award nominated writer / immersive producer and has worked on various films, TV series and immersive theatre.
Over the last two decades, Adipat has applied innovation thinking and knowledge to embed Immersive strategy at the core of global organisations (META (Facebook), Charlotte Tilbury, BBC, Virgin Atlantic, HSBC and Coventry University, amongst others). Here, Adipat has helped to develop: evolved / immersive audience engagement ecosystems; streamlined business processes; metaverse architecture; V-Comm (virtual commerce) blueprints; blockchain mechanics and cutting edge storyworlds and IP.
Adipat has positioned himself as a leading thinker in leveraging emerging tech to deliver innovation-led frameworks (in all realities) for both social and commercial impact. Highlights include: designing and delivering an agile workshop / rapid prototyping framework for the BBC ‘Future of Content’ strategy across 50 BBC teams; delivering bespoke experience blueprints for various clients in the retail and entertainment sectors; building effective, immersive storyworlds for numerous IP; curating the Centifolia conference and subsequent strategic report for the global perfumery industry to explore more ethical ways to design, produce and deliver fragrances through impactful storytelling.
From a personal perspective, Adipat is working to pioneer how powerful XR narratives can deliver real world social change. To this end, his latest project centres around how we can eradicate forced marriages and honour crimes through building, and delivering, participatory engagement through an immersive storyworld. Empathy as software for advocacy.
Sylvain was appointed to Netgem’s Executive Committee in 2015, where he spearheaded the development arm of the “End-to-End Service” business for operators in London.
His exceptional performance earned him the opportunity to extend his expertise to several of Netgem’s operator customers, including TalkTalk TV 4K in the UK. With a career spanning over 25 years, Sylvain has gained valuable experience working with start-ups, including founding one of the first ISPs in France, as well as established fixed and mobile telecom operators such as Vodafone, TalkTalk, and EE.
As a manager of operator customers and associated B2B2C services, Sylvain possesses a wealth of international experience that is highly valued within the industry.
Dinah Lammiman is Professor of Immersive Factual Storytelling in UCL Anthropology. She created – and now leads – what was the first Russell Group MA course In Immersive Storytelling (VR) in the UK, at UCL, which launched as a standalone MA in 2022. Since 2017 the Immersive studio annual cohort has comprised around 30 students, many of whom have gone on to senior positions in the VR and AR industry.
She is also co founder of immersive storytelling company PastPorte. PastPorte creates stunning and thought-provoking installations bringing to life historic stories for national and international attractions. Clients include The Eden Project, Tower of London, Hampton Court Palace, the National Trust for Scotland and ss Great Britain.
From 2017 -2019 she was also part of the team at the BBC VR incubation project producing and distributing award-winning VR content, particularly noted for its compelling narratives and popular appeal. Dinah also led a widescale project to push VR out to over 170 public libraries around the UK, thereby introducing a large new audience to VR and its possibilities.
Previously Dinah Lammiman had a long and successful career as a producer and reporter for BBC News and Current Affairs – majoring in parliamentary stories.
With 20+ years in media, entertainment, and sports technology, Matt leverages his expertise to drive innovation and deliver cutting-edge experiences.
As an award winning technical and creative leader, he brings deep industry knowledge and a strong track record of leading cross-functional teams to explore new and emerging technologies, such as 5G, XR, Web3.0, and metaverse, to enhance fan engagement.
Matt is also a Non-executive Director at Condense a UK-based start-up that develops innovative software for creating immersive augmented reality experiences. As a thought leader in the industry, he actively collaborate with incubators to solve global challenges facing broadcasters and content creators. With a passion for sharing his knowledge, he is a frequent speaker at prestigious industry events
Creative innovator and thought leader in the broadcast audience engagement & visual innovation space with 25 years media industry experience.
Having a niche mix of live TV programming production expertise fused with executive digital engagement, content and emerging technology understanding. Most recently, Tom has been championing immersive user and fan experiences in-venue with live mobile streaming as well as with new virtual production techniques with live mixed and augmented reality for both editorial and commercial gain.
Dan has nearly 20 years’ experience working in the broadcast space, starting in the early days at Carlton Digital and ITV, before moving to A+E Networks in the UK. He progressively gained valuable experience working across multiple disciplines including marketing, ad sales, sponsorship, and channel distribution in Scandinavia and Benelux. Dan has led the commercial development for Simplestream since its foundation, and his extensive knowledge has enabled the company to accelerate its success in the broadcast and media sectors.
Akhila is Vice President of Partnerships and Business Development, UK, at Paramount Global (formerly ViacomCBS). Her remit spans the business’ portfolio of free-to-air and pay TV channels, including Channel 5 and MTV, as well as Paramount’s streaming services in the UK, across SVOD (Paramount+), FAST (Pluto TV) and AVOD/BVOD (My5).
Prior to joining Paramount in 2017, Akhila spent eight years at A+E Networks, eventually leading VOD and OTT sales as Director of International Business Development. She began her career in TV production and development, with stints at CNBC in Mumbai and NBC Universal in Los Angeles.
Khanna graduated magna cum laude from New York’s Syracuse University, with an MA in TV and Film Management. She also holds a Bachelor’s degree in Media Production from Occidental College, Los Angeles, and executive accreditation from The London School of Economics.
Bhav Chandrani is Director of Creative & Digital Partnerships at ITV, heading up sponsorship, ad funded programming, creative and digital partnerships, and partnership innovations for ITV’s Commercial team.
With over 20 years in the industry, Bhav’s passion is in bringing brands and content together to make meaningful campaigns. Bhav leads ITV’s commercial relationships with other media brands such as Twitter and Global Radio and new innovations such as Shoppability and ITV’s first brand funded steps into the Metaverse.
Bhav is a founding member of the diversity network, MeFA (Media For All), and Board Director of Metavision.
Lisa Rousseau is head of Amazon Freevee UK, Amazon’s free, ad-supported video on demand (AVOD) service. Lisa joined Amazon in March 2021 to oversee business and marketing functions for IMDb TV (the former name for Amazon Freevee), and lead the first international launch of the service in the UK in September 2021, as well as the rebrand to Amazon Freevee in April 2022.
Prior to joining Amazon, Lisa spent seven years at Google. As head of TV and film EMEA at YouTube and Google Play, Lisa built content partnerships across the region to drive the transactional (TVOD) movies and TV business, launched Google Play Movies & TV across 15 markets, and led the film/TV partnership strategy for YouTube EMEA. She also led YouTube business and partnerships across Northern Europe and Sub-Saharan Africa. Lisa was previously at the BBC and BBC Studios in a number of commercial and digital business development roles.
Lisa is passionate about supporting career opportunities for women, and is a trustee of the Young Women’s Trust charity in the UK. She is based in London.
Dan Cohen leads the development and launch of TV Advertising Products and innovation across the Sky Group.
From the industry leading addressable TV proposition AdSmart to self-serve buying and reporting tools, Sky builds on its 1st Party data to link advertisers to audiences in order to bring better return on investment and improved understanding of the audience advertiser relationship.
Finding new ways for advertisers to reach key audiences through innovative advertising products, ways of buying and measuring performance underpins all of our thinking and drives our development strategy.
Shahina O’Mahoney is head of licensed content at Amazon Freevee UK, overseeing all content strategy and acquisitions for British territories of Amazon’s premium free streaming service.
O’Mahoney has been with Amazon for more than 10 years, and has previously served as Prime Video territory expansion content strategy lead for the Nordics and Turkey (2019-20), on a sabbatical in the fashion sustainability team (2019), as Prime Video global kids lead (2016-18), and as content acquisitions lead in the UK (2011-15). O’Mahoney was one of the founding Prime Video team members.
Before joining Amazon, O’Mahoney spent two years at the British telecommunications company Vodafone, where she oversaw content acquisition for European mobile and IPTV devices. Prior to Vodafone, she worked as digital content consultant for linear and VOD platforms BT Vision and TalkTalk (formerly Homechoice), managing content negotiations and strategy, led programming teams for cable networks Virgin Media (formerly NTL) and Cable & Wireless, and was one of the founding launch team members for Disney Channels in Europe.
O’Mahoney graduated from the University of Plymouth with a Bachelor of Science degree in Computing and Informatics. She has two children and is based in London.
Tom Price joined Roku last year as Director of Content Distribution to build the streaming platform’s entertainment offering in the UK and deepen partnerships with local broadcasters. Roku pioneered streaming to the TV and is the #1 TV streaming platform in the US with 70M active accounts globally.
Tom previously served as Director of Commercial & Financial Planning at BritBox UK, where he was responsible for the business plan and trading activity, strategic content partnerships and distribution.
As a founding member of the BritBox team, Tom was instrumental in growing a streaming business to over 750,000 subscribers in 30 months before it was subsumed into ITVX. Before BritBox UK, Tom set up the BritBox North America joint venture which has grown into a profitable multi-territory business with over 3 million subscribers.
Prior to this, he worked in various strategy and distribution roles at ITV and Discovery, having started his career in management consulting.
Tom holds a MSci in Physics from The University of Cambridge.
Khalid leads Channel 4’s Strategy, Policy & Public Affairs, Research & Insight, and Data Science functions. He also represents Channel 4 as a Board Director in a range of TV platform joint ventures, including Digital UK, Freeview, YouView and Digital 3&4.
Khalid joined Channel 4 in September 2020 from Deloitte, where he was a Director in the strategy consulting practice, working with multiple high-profile TMT clients. He is a specialist in the broadcast sector, with 22 years of experience in consulting and the TV industry, having also previously held senior strategy and regulatory positions at both ITV and Ofcom.
Ben Page is Chief Executive of Ipsos. He originally joined MORI in 1987 after graduating from Oxford University in 1986, and was one of the leaders of its first management buyout in 2000, and the team leading its sale to Ipsos in 2005. A frequent writer and speaker on trends, leadership and performance management, he has directed thousands of surveys examining consumer trends and citizen behaviour.
Ben led our government and social research practice from 2000 to 2009 when he became Chief Executive of Ipsos in the UK and Ireland. He was appointed CEO of Ipsos as a whole (across 90 countries) in September 2021.
Ben is a Visiting Professor at King’s College London, and a fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences. He sits on the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) at UKRI. He serves on advisory groups at the King’s Fund, and the Social Market Foundation (SMF), and is a Trustee at the Centre for Ageing Better. Ben was named one of GQ’s 100 Most Connected Men of 2015.
He regularly appears on national TV and radio programmes.
Jo Redfern is Strategy Consultant for youth media brands with two decades’ experience in content and platform strategy. She has worked with Studios such as Disney, managed the CBeebies portfolio in the UK and more recently has pivoted to working with IP being created and scaled primarily on non-traditional platforms such as TikTok, YouTube, Roblox, Fortnite and more.
Her passion is for developing IP that combine entertainment and education – which in 2023 means creating brands that work across multiple platforms and touchpoints, reaching Generations Z and A where they are, and in a way that engages them seamlessly as they live their lives between the physical and digital world. She is an avid user of data and insight to identify how youth consume on these ‘metaversal platforms’ and uses it to develop strategic opportunities for new IP.
Gary Woolf is currently EVP Strategic Development at All3Media International where he is responsible for researching and implementing new and innovative commercial strategies, while building on the considerable success that All3Media International has achieved in the digital arena.
He leads our digital innovation unit – a3mi² – which is focused on the fast growing digital publishing space including AVoD, SVoD and FAST services on a global basis, along with our consumer facing social media and EST opportunities, and a growing range of apps based on A3MI programming. The team is responsible for the A3MI partnerships with the latest tranche of major VoD players including the likes of Pluto TV, Tubi TV, The Roku Channel, alongside publishing opportunities with Amazon Prime Video Direct.
Gary’s career spans roles in Digital, Business Development and Insight, including spells at BBC Worldwide (now Studios) Zodiak Rights (now part of Banijay), and ITV Global Entertainment. He also had a prior spell at All3Media International as SVP Digital and Business Development driving growth in both the SVoD and EST lines of business as they evolved.
Garazi leads the Media & Entertainment business growth for FTI Consulting in EMEA. She has over 15 years’ of experience in the media industry having held senior roles at organizations like the BBC and Sky, leading wide variety of projects and multi-skilled teams in different countries.
Her career has been primarily focused on business development, strategy & transformation and commercial areas across different business verticals (TV and radio broadcast, OTT/SVOD players, FTA TV platforms, content distribution, customer service).
Nigel is a technology industry profession with thirty years of experience in emerging digital media technologies.
Over the last 20 years he has used his experience built in the early years of internet development to launch digital strategy consultancy Decipher; the media R&D facility iBurbia and the consumer-focused digital services company Chimni.
Sasha Twining is a journalist and presenter, currently heard worldwide on the BBC World Service (global audience figures 97 million).
International audiences can hear her presenting the flagship programmes ‘Business Matters’ (also broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in the UK) and ‘World Business Report’.
Previously, she has presented for both national and international broadcasters, both TV and radio, including Sky News, ITV, and Nine Network (Australia)
She also works as a debate facilitator across Europe, working in fields including energy security and transition, food sustainability, eco-design, and communications. She works with both public and private sector organisations.
Sasha is an advocate of new technology – she has an embedded NFC chip in her hand, and has presented a BBC programme about the innovation.
With 30 years of TV industry experience, Richard drives the DTG’s unique collaborative culture placing it firmly at the centre of UK television.
A design engineer by profession, Richard spent 15 years in senior design and later, senior marketing and strategy roles at Sony, Toshiba and Pace.
Richard has a track record of supporting UK world-firsts in flat-panel, widescreen, digital and interactive TV. He launched the world’s first free-to-view digital devices into the UK market at Pace in 2002, joined the DTG in 2004 to lead public affairs in preparation for digital switchover, and later picked up the mantle of Commercial Development Director for Freesat’s launch in HD in 2006. He returned to the DTG as CEO in 2008, where he continues to drive innovation in next generation media, distribution and end-user experience.
Passionate about the alchemy of people, products and technology, and always looking out for the next big thing in television, Richard was named one of the top 50 most influential people in 2021 and honoured as a SMPTE Fellow.
