RT Hon Baroness Neville-Jones DCMG

Chair Person

Rt Hon Baroness (Pauline) Neville-Jones DCMG is a Conservative peer in the House of Lords where she currently sits on the Science and Technology Committee. 

In the 1980s she was Chef de Cabinet to the European Budget Commissioner, Christopher Tugendhat, and then became head of the FCO Policy Planning staff. She participated in the German unification negotiations. She was subsequently Head of the Defence and Overseas Secretariat in the Cabinet Office and chaired the Joint Intelligence Committee. As FCO Political Director she led the UK delegation to the Dayton agreement on Bosnia. She was David Cameron’s National Security Adviser in opposition where she designed the UK National Security Council and was Minister of State for Security and Counter Terrorism in the coalition government.

She has chaired the UK technology company QinetiQ, been a BBC Governor and a member of the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council.  She has served on the Councils of City, Oxford and Lancaster Universities. She is a Chevalier of the Legion d’Honneur.

.

Shaba Shaukat

Saba Shaukat is a pioneering international business and technology executive with
over 25 years of experience. She specialises in leveraging frontier technologies to
drive transformative change and has a deep expertise in transitioning FTSE 250
companies into the next wave of growth and profitability.
Currently, Saba heads Engagement and Innovation at the Accelerated Capability
Environment (ACE), a joint venture between the Home Office and QinetiQ on AI,
data analytics, deep fakes, economic crime and emerging technology. She assists
the Government in accelerating digital transformation initiatives to drive disruptive
innovation and implement policies to enhance security, national resilience, and UK
prosperity.

Previously, Saba was the Group Director of Technical Capability and Innovation at
QinetiQ plc, where she led a team of top scientists and engineers. She focused on
frontier technologies such as artificial intelligence, robotics, autonomous systems,
cyber technologies, immersive augmented reality, human-machine teaming,
advanced materials, quantum computing, lasers, and human behaviour.
Throughout her career, Saba has driven transformational technologies resulting in
over £1 billion in new revenue. She has extensive international experience in
strategy and commercial development and has held several board positions as a
Non-Executive Director and Trustee. She recently became a Board Fellow at the
world-renowned Royal College of Art(RCA), the leading school in innovation
design engineering with the capability to tackle complex challenges faced by society
and the planet.

Saba’s career also includes significant roles at Capita, BT, Vodafone, Deloitte
Consulting, and PwC, where she contributed to global market entry strategies,
business turnarounds, and new technology ventures for both enterprise and
consumer sectors.

An alumna of Harvard University’s Kennedy School for Executive Leadership
Training and the London Business School with an MBA, Saba is a thought leader
and board advisor. As a former regional board member of The Prince’s Trust, she
has inspired young people from disadvantaged communities to win national
entrepreneurial awards.

Saba is also a contributor to the bestselling book, The Power of Purpose. She is
dedicated to embracing disruptive ideas and advancing skills, science, and
technology for societal good amid rapid technological change.
In her spare time, Saba is an avid sailor, traveller, and explorer of new science and
technological innovations for the 21st century.

.

Dr. Ruth Wandhöfer

NED, Author, Speaker, Adviser, Professor

Dr. Ruth Wandhöfer has been instrumental in shaping the future of finance and
money during her impressive career over more than 22 years. She operates at the
nexus of technology, cyber security, identity, finance and regulation and advises
and speaks to international audiences on the evolution of the digital economy.
As a sought-after keynote speaker, author and recognized global authority on
banking, technology, ccyber and regulation she is a very influential female leader
in the Fintech space, promoting the understanding, development and deployment
of new business models and technologies for our digital future across payments,
financial markets and processes.

After a distinguished career of over 11 years with Citi, Ruth has also advised the
European Commission, the European Central Bank, the Bank of England, the
White House, the Singapore MAS, the EBRD and the OECD.

She is a Visiting Professor at CASS Business School (now Bayes), where she
gained her PhD, teaching Fintech in Banking and Finance and Digital Money as
well as providing Executive Training on topics such as Financial Market
Infrastructures, Payments and the Future of Value in a World of Technological
Change. She is also a Visiting Professor at the London Institute of Banking and
Finance and an occasional lecturer at Queen Mary London School of Law.
Since 2018 Ruth is also an independent Non-Executive Director on various boards
ranging from regulated banks and stock exchanges to Fintechs in addition to being
an active Angel and VC investor for years.

In the past she has been the Chair of the Statutory Payment Systems Regulator
(PSR) Panel in the UK and board member of the London Stock Exchange Group,
Gresham Technologies and Digital Identity Net.
Furthermore, she sits on the Bank of England CBDC Engagement Forum and
chairs the CBDC Privacy Working Group. She also advises the City of London
Corporation, the British Standards Institute and the European Third Party Provider
Association (ETPPA).

Ruth was named as one of 2010s ‘Rising Stars’ by Financial News; named in
Management Today’s 2011 ‘35 Women under 35’ list of women to watch and
identified as one of the 100 Most Influential People in Finance 2012 by the
Treasury Risk Magazine. She received the ‘Women in Banking and Finance
Award for Achievement’ in 2015 and in 2016, 2017, 2018, 2020, 2021 and 2022

she was named on the global ‘Women in Fintech Powerlist’ of Innovate Finance
(Senior Leader in 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023).
So far, she published three books: “EU Payments Integration” (2010), “Transaction
Banking and the Impact of Regulatory Change” (2014) and “Redecentralisation:
Building the Digital Financial Ecosystem” (2023). Ruth is a champion in support
of transforming the UK into a Digital Economy and has recently published the
“From Fintech to Ubiquitech Report”, which you can find on her website.
She balances this extraordinary career while raising her two children and
championing for a better work life balance for single parents and more support for
women entrepreneurs.

.

Roy Isbell

Roy Isbell is a Cyber Security professional with over 40 years of experience as a practitioner, businessman, educator, and researcher. He is a Visiting Professor at Aston University and Visiting Fellow at Loughborough University. Roy is an advisor to Governments and Enterprise clients on all aspects of cyber security. Roy is research active in cyber security from an engineering, security, safety, and behavioural perspective. Roy is also a Principal of the Register of Security Engineers and Specialists (RSES) with NPSA, Publisher & Editor in Chief for Digital Forensics Magazine, Chair of the Cyber Security Alliance and a Freeman of the City of London through the Worshipful Company of Information Technologists.

.

Tim Watson

Professor Tim Watson is the Director of the Cyber Institute at Loughborough University and the Director of Defence and Security at The Alan Turing Institute. With more than thirty years’ experience working with government, industry and in academia, he has been involved with a wide range of programmes, several high-profile projects and has acted as a consultant for some of the largest telecoms, power and transport companies. He is an adviser to various parts of the UK government and to several professional and standards bodies. Tim’s research combines AI and cyber security and includes GCHQ-funded projects building AI-based synthetic environments and user simulators, FCDO research on smart cities, vehicles and anomaly detection, EU-funded projects on detecting and combating cyber crime, UK MoD research on automated defence, identifying insider threats and countering improvised explosive devices, and UKRI-funded research on the protection of critical national infrastructure.