2024 Speakers

Albert Ko

Albert Ko serves as Chief Executive Officer at Auctane, the leading global delivery experience company that operates trusted brands such as ShipStation, Stamps.com, ShipEngine, Metapack, and Endicia. Ko joined Auctane from Early Warning Services (EWS), where he served as CEO. During his four-year tenure leading EWS, best known for the Zelle® payments network, he oversaw 20x growth in financial institutions and 5x growth in volume, while building a strong culture of employee engagement.Prior to his time at EWS, Ko spent more than 13 years at Intuit, where he served in various executive leadership roles, including Chief Transformation Officer, General Manager of Mint, and Head of Product for QuickBooks, where he was instrumental in its global expansion. Ko holds a B.A. in History and International Studies from Yale University and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. He currently serves on the boards of Elation Health and LPL Financial.

Nina Schick

Nina Schick is a world-leading authority on AI. She has been named at the top of world’s 20 best speakers on AI, alongside others including Sam Altman, Demis Hassabis, Geoffrey Hinton.

Nina argues that AI is fundamentally about power and people. She analyses what it means to lead in the Age of AI, examining how AI will transform business, geopolitics and humanity.

Nina was among the first to identify AI as a ‘tipping point for humanity.’ She articulated this vision years before ChatGPT made AI a global phenomenon.

Nina advises several AI and technology companies, including Truepic – the first to build media authentication technology, and Synthesia, the world’s first AI-to-video generation platform.

Nina worked on geopolitical crises, including Brexit, the Russia-Ukraine war and state-sponsored disinformation. She has advised leaders including Joe Biden,

the President of the United States and Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the former Secretary General of NATO.

Gary Page

Gary has 20 years experience in the carrier industry. Gary’s current role is ‘General Manager, Carriers’ at the John Lewis Partnership where he has been a Partner for over 10 years. Gary started his career as a graduate trainee at UPS, progressing into Industrial Engineering before switching to retail.

Rob Owst

Rob Owst is Head of Home Delivery at B&Q, responsible for the performance and growth of the B&Q fulfillment networks to meet ever changing customer needs. Over 8 years in B&Q Kingfisher Rob has led many strategic projects to build the fulfillment capabilities in Kingfisher’s European banners.

Murvah Iqbal

HIVED is building the first sustainable parcel delivery network at scale for a fast and reliable delivery experience. With a 100% electric fleet, live tracking, and on demand customer support within just minutes, retailers choose HIVED to offer their customers an uncomplicated and hassle-free delivery experience. HIVED offers nationwide collection and delivery to all of Greater London for some of the largest international retailers, including ASOS, Zara, and Karen Millen.

Jonathan Jenssen

Jonathan Jenssen is the co-founder and CEO of Relay. Prior to Relay, Jonathan scaled Stuart Delivery UKs business from incubation into the market leader for same day delivery. He began his career in investment banking where he focused on shipping

Lucy Matchett

Manager in OC&C Strategy Consultants Retail and Leisure Team. Experience in advising our clients across both high street retailers, brands and digital pure plays on their ecommerce/ omnichannel proposition, and assessing the importance of delivery/ returns in both customer experience and underlying channel economics

Max O’Brien

Max O’Brien is Global-e’s Sales Director for the UK and the Middle East. Max has been a part of Global-e’s team for over five years. He has extensive experience in the cross-border ecommerce industry, guiding the ecommerce expansion of merchants of all sizes, in line with their current and future international business goals. Max works with some of the largest retailers in the UK and Middle East, strategically advising on the advantages Global-e can bring to large global ecommerce retailers’ setups in order to make their cross-border expansion simple, efficient and profitable. Max holds a BSc Honours degree in International Business Management and Mandarin from the Royal Agricultural University.

Bex Postlethwaite

Bex has 13 years experience in the Retail industry, consulting with leaders across Digital, IT, Marketing and Operations. In her current role at Google, Bex is partnering with Enterprise Retailers to digitally transform using Google’s Cloud solutions.

Richard Lim

Richard is Chief Executive Officer of Retail Economics, an independent economics research consultancy focused on the consumer and retail industry. He also sits on the Strategic Advisory Board at the University of East Anglia’s School of Economics, ranked in the top 10 departments in Economics in the UK. Previously, Richard held the position of Chief Economist at the British Retail Consortium before heading up the Retail Insight and Analytics team. Prior to that, he worked in mergers and acquisitions for Citi. Richard has a wealth of experience in data analytics, retail insight, economics and consumer research.  He lives in London and has a keen interest in behavioural game theory and its application on consumers.

Ed Hodges

Ed has more than 20 years of experience across digital, apps and AI. Ed was responsible for developing Tesco’s Grocery and Clubcard apps as well as RBS and Vanquis Bank’s mobile banking stack. More recently Ed founded HelloDone which focuses on using conversational AI to automate customer service, delivery & returns tracking notifications and new marketing and loyalty opportunities via WhatsApp & Messenger.

Torrin Balsollier

With an international background in sales, commercial strategy and marketing across multiple categories and regions, Torrin is now global head of Business Development at Back Market. He has been with the company for 4 years and has worked with numerous partners in that time to unlock high growth opportunities within the refurbished category.

Dave Middleton

I have more than 25 years of experience working in Supply Chain roles in FMCG, Pharmaceuticals, Healthcare and Logistics. Throughout my career, I’ve held management roles in various functions such as Production Planning, Purchasing, S&OP, Warehousing, Transportation and Relationship Management with a bias towards process improvement and building strong, self-sufficient teams.

Since joining GXO, I’ve used my prior experience of managing 3PLs to successfully grow the Carrier Management function while streamlining processes, increasing the use of automation and technology, and providing a world class service to our customers.

Married for 21 years and with an 18 year old son, in my spare time I enjoy travelling, (badly) playing golf and training in Japanese Jiu Jutsu. I’m currently studying part-time for a BSc in Professional Management with a focus on change and innovation.

SJ Grabiec

SJ is the Head of CX & Fraud at AllSaints & John Varvatos, overseeing the Global CX and the Fraud & Payments teams. Her focus lies in implementing and evolving customer experience and online payment and fraud strategies, and plays a pivotal role in managing Direct-to-Consumer operations. SJ recently introduced Conversational AI and order review automation at AllSaints, delivering increased efficiency, scalability and service quality. SJ is also a super fan of AI technologies and how they can be utilised to enhance and improve performance, productivity – also absolutely fascinating!

Adhering to one of AllSaints’ core brand values, “The Customer is the Boss,” SJ works to ensure a balance between service, operations, risk, and the Voice of the Customer in business decisions and projects. Prior to AllSaints, SJ worked in Retail management and also risk management.

Krish Iyer

Krish is the Vice President of Strategic Partners and Industry Relations for Auctane, which includes ShipStation, ShippingEasy, ShipEngine and Stamps.com. A respected expert in e-commerce, Krish is often quoted in publications such as The Wall Street Journal, Business Insider and the New York Times. An industry leader with over 20 years of experience, Krish brings perspectives from FedEx, Pitney Bowes, Neopost and Auctane. In addition, Krish serves as the Vice President of the Package Shippers Association (PSA), which serves as the voice of the package shipping industry.

Katie Searles

Katie is Editor of DeliveryX and Internet Retailing. A B2B journalist who has covered topics including ecommerce, marketplaces, the last-mile, urban logistics, zero-emission trends and technology, as well as robotic innovations. 

Katie has also worked as a broadcast journalist for radio stations covering the east coast of Scotland and BBC London. Additionally, she has chaired both in-person and virtual conferences.

Caroline Varga

Caroline Varga is the Head of Uber Direct in the UK and Ireland, responsible for leading the growth of Uber’s newest delivery business. She is focussed on being a true partner to the restaurants, supermarkets and retail merchants who work with Uber Direct and is passionate about finding new ways to work with merchants.

Prior to her current role, Caroline spent four years helping to scale Uber’s Rides business as the Head of Strategy for the UK and Northern Europe. Before Uber, Caroline was a strategy consultant at L.E.K. Consulting in London and New York. She holds an MEng in Chemical Engineering from Cambridge University.

Sophie Bernard

Sophie Bernard is the Senior Vice President of Auctane Operations for EMEA. Sophie has held a number of leadership positions throughout her career, most recently leading rapid growth initiatives as the Chief Operating Officer at both Packlink and Softonic. Sophie also held leadership roles focused on Customers and Revenue management at Amazon, eDreams ODIGEO and Groupe Carrefour. Sophie earned a degree from Ecole des Mines de Paris, one of France’s top elite graduate engineering and management schools, and is currently based in Madrid, Spain.

Jon Williams

Jon heads up partnerships for Zedify, the company revolutionising the last mile

Sahil Jaggi

Sahil Jaggi is a Marketing and Strategy professional and brings over 13 years of extensive international business expertise in supply chain and process improvements across multiple industry segments in USA, Asia and Europe. He was actively engaged in value proposition development through new supply chain products/processes in Asia to cater to customer and consumer needs. 

Additionally, he has a broad experience in market planning, market penetration and expansion, product conceptualisation and implementation through an industry segment approach.

Howe Gu

Howe Gu is a seasoned business leader and digital transformation expert with nearly 20 years of experience in technology and management consulting, serving enterprise customers across various sectors and geographies. He is currently the EMEA Regional Managing Director for Industry and Partner Sales at Microsoft, where he leads a team of industry advisors who deliver innovative cloud solutions to customers across Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. He also serves as an advisor for Microsoft for Start-ups, a board member of UBC Sauder School of Business, and a mentor and guest lecturer for several academic programs. Howe is passionate about helping enterprises and start-ups achieve their digital transformation and growth goals. 

Kirti Lalwani

Kirti Lalwani is a  technology leader with over 20 years of experience across e-commerce and telecom. 

She is responsible for Metapack’s technology strategy, delivering highly available & scalable technology platforms, driving organisational growth and developing high performing teams with a global footprint. 

Her current mission is to accelerate Metapack’s growth using technology to innovate and create solutions that delight Metapack’s customers.

Daniel Corbett

Daniel started his career in logistics at British Airways, holding a range of positions across operations, account management and pricing before joining Metapack. Over the last 7 years at the company, he has spent his time managing carriers, before focusing on growing existing UK customer relationships through additional product deployment. His most recent role is focused on managing the team responsible for acquiring new clients across Northern and Eastern Europe.  

Tom Forbes

Originally at Metapack from 2000-2003, Tom re-joined the business in January 2014 as part of the Executive Team. He is responsible for Metapack’s relationships with carriers. Tom’s 25-year career has all been in Supply Chain with international experience in 3rd party logistics, retail, manufacturing and software.

David Randall

For over a decade, David has accumulated expertise in global e-commerce and European parcel delivery industry trends. He has also been instrumental in assisting both marketplaces and small to medium-sized businesses in optimizing their delivery strategies. David’s efforts continue to focus on supporting the industry’s evolution and helping these businesses improve their online delivery experiences.

Emma Clarke

Emma joined Metapack five years ago and she is responsible for defining and delivering our strategy and products to enhance Sellers’ consumer delivery experience. Working alongside the world’s largest Sellers, Emma is building out market leading tracking, notifications and returns products designed to improve customer experience and loyalty. Emma has over 17 years’ experience in product and innovation, with the last 12 years working in ecommerce, fulfilment and logistics.