Rehana Ameer
Councillor in City of London and CEO at Prosap Corporation Ltd
Rehana is the first Indian born woman to be elected as a Common Councillor in the City of London Corporation’s 950 years of history in March 2017. She is a serial entrepreneur with ventures in Consulting (IT, Engineering and Management) Education and Healthcare. She possesses over 25 years of experience in IT and Management Consulting where she has led, managed and successfully delivered large multimillion-pounds IT and business transformation programmes for multinational companies worldwide.
Rehana is a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and is an honorary member of CEO Clubs Network UAE. She is also a Trustee of Trust for London. Rehana is on the Significant Business Committee of the East London NHS Foundation Trust where she provides strategic advice and guidance on the Trust’s investments and other commercial activities. She is an International Advisor of the United Economic Forum and a few other chambers of commerce in the UK and abroad where she mentors and provides strategic advice to entrepreneurs and professionals.
Her key interest areas are entrepreneurship, women empowerment, education, technology, health, and international trade. Her interest also includes promoting the City of London in overseas markets with a focus in India and she actively engages in promoting trade between the UK and India.
Rehana studied Public Policy from Oxford University. She also holds an MBA in International Business from the UK and several IT and Management certifications to her credit such as PRINCE2, SAP, MSP, ITIlLV3, Cloud Computing, Change Management, TOGAF, Digital Marketing and many more.
Zowie Broach
Head of Programme for FASHION RCA
After arriving 5 years ago, Zowie has radically changed the paradigm of what it means today to consider how we might design in FASHION.
Zowie previously co-founded the label BOUDICCA who were the first independent British Label to show during Couture, Paris, as well as exhibiting at Chicago Arts Institute, Tel Aviv Museum and their Invisible City collection AW04 is part of the permanent collection of The Metropolitan in New York, Kensington Palace and FIT. She has consulted for Honda, Cartier and Jaguar.
BOUDICCA, the first ever fashion show to be live streamed back in 2004 by SHOWstudio, continued to investigate the digital interface as a tool, an exploration of identity and material , with a fellowship at The Stanley Picker Gallery 2014 that echoed the virtual worlds of computer gaming – ‘The Liquid Game’ an immersive audio-visual installation.
Whilst at the RCA Fashion has established a new series of platforms – Optimal Systems, Digital 360 and Bio as Design that expands the practise of Fashion. This is not exclusive of values, economy and philosophy of self; taking on board the myriad of potentials that need investigating to assure a practise that can reveal and express the question of identity for our future.
Fashion has recently worked with Intelligent Mobility collaborating with Porsche, and Design Directions with Microsoft; had the first Fashion designers to be supported by Innovation RCA and Fashion Bio design with the Onassis Fellowship in Athens and Open Cell in London. Zowie Broach has been voted into the top 500 Fashion Leaders, Business of FASHION for the last 5 years and was a member of the British Fashion Trust jury this past year.
Photo Maxyme G. Delisle
Christine Megson
Change Management Consultant at The Key Support Services Ltd
Christine’s substantive career was in Further and Higher education including Vice Principal of Gloucestershire College, with niche fashion and retail programmes and Principal of Stafford College with a wide range of art and design courses. From 2001 she worked as a principal consultant in central government departments in DfE, DH, and the Cabinet Office contributing to the development and delivery of new policies including establishing Academies and the School Food Trust. For The Innovation Unit she led on field trial work and developing localised models in engaging parents through raising their own aspirations and co-developed a leadership programme for support staff. For Sheffield City Council she worked on reducing tenancy turnover and school absenteeism. More recently she has been education adviser for four property developers including Argent LP opening King’s Cross Academy: a new primary school and nursery, advising Multi Academy Trusts on governance and providing professional advice and support to six headteachers and deputies. She has been running leadership and change programmes for The Key for School Leaders & School Governors.
Her voluntary roles include co-founding and running the Fabian Women’s Network mentoring and political education programme, now in its tenth year, Chair of The Difference and Trustee of Health Action Campaign.
Photo Asia Werbel
Professor Dilys Williams FRSA
Director of Centre for Sustainable Fashion, a University of the Arts Research Centre, which she established in 2008, supported by London College of Fashion, the centre’s base.
Guiding the centre’s exploration of fashion and sustainability, her work contributes to the study of fashion as a life well lived within ecological boundaries and practices of human equity. Through design practice, this is applied to new forms of education, business, public and political dialogue.
Dilys’ work draws on her longstanding research, teaching and industry experience as a lead womenswear designer with international collections for Katharine Hamnett, Liberty and Whistles, AHRC, ERDF, ESRC and Erasmus funded projects in Fashion Design for Sustainability and knowledge exchange work with small to large businesses. Having established and led MA Fashion and the Environment, now MA Fashion Futures, led by Julia Crew, her teaching spans from BA to PhD supervision.
As Special Advisor to the House of Lords All Party Parliamentary Group on Fashion, Sustainability and Ethics, she brings a range of climate and social change considerations to the attention of key political figures, creating space for a range of voices for change to be heard.
Her place on the Evening Standard’s London’s Progress 1000 list in 2015, 2016 and 2017 evidences the public and academic influence of her work. Dilys holds advisory roles to business and academic institutions and regularly contributes to media publications including the Guardian, ShowSTUDIO and Salt magazine.
Trained at Manchester Metropolitan University and holding a UAL professorship, Dilys publishes widely on fashion and sustainability in academic journals and published books.
Kate Hills
Founder Make it British
Kate is on a one-woman mission to save UK manufacturing!
With a background in working for several large brands and retailers in design and buying roles, she gave up her corporate career to set up Make it British as a way of supporting UK manufacturers and those companies that wanted to make in the UK.
Make it British acts as a platform to promote UK-made brands and manufacturers and aims to raise awareness of all of the fantastic manufacturing that still takes place in Britain.