Venrex Investment Management

Al works for Venrex Investment Management, an early-stage venture capital fund focused on investments in consumer industries and B2B software. At Venrex, we have a strong passion for women’s health. We were early investors in Hertility, a company that offers at-home hormone and fertility testing for women, and BoobyBiome, which leverages cutting-edge breast milk research to develop solutions aimed at improving infant health.

founder, zulu group

Alexander is an entrepreneur and investor. He is the founder of Zulu Group, an investment firm that builds and invests in ambitious products that solve planetary challenges. Over a period of two decades, Alexander has founded several technology companies in the USA and Europe, including consumer electronics company Jawbone and women’s personal wellness company Elvie amongst others.

Alexander received his BSc & MSc in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University.

Director of Innovation and Impact, Improving Performance In Practice

Alison is an impact-driven charity leader and social entrepreneur with a strong communications and science background, respected for her natural ability to inspire, and to think outside of the box. She catalyses change through system thinking, innovation, and solution-focused co-creation.

She has led the development and deployment of multiple cost-effective innovative approaches to empower and inform, drive policy change, and transform the outcomes and experiences of diverse beneficiaries. She is passionate about social justice and the power of kindness, collaboration, evidence, and iterative data-driven learning to tackle seemingly intractable problems.

In 2006, building upon the knowledge and experience garnered at the University of Oxford, University College London, and the BBC, she founded the national charity Best Beginnings with a focus on reducing inequalities. For fifteen years, as Best Beginnings CEO, she worked nationally and internationally to improve the mental and physical health outcomes of children and their parents in ways that enrich statutory and charitable services. At Best Beginnings, she gained substantial experience growing and nurturing diverse teams, motivating audiences of all backgrounds, and securing multi-year funding from multiple income streams, forging and actively supported several national coalitions, partnerships, and alliances including the Royal Foundation led “Heads Together” campaign. Alison stepped down as CEO in 2022 and now holds the honorary role of President.

Alison works at iPiP (Improving Performance In Practice) as the Director of Innovation and Impact with a focus on supporting leaders to increase their organisation’s income and societal impact. She has recently qualified as a certified Denison Practitioner and able to enable for-profit and not-for-profit organisations to benefit from the data-driven benchmarked Denison Organisational Culture Model.

founder, extreme hangout

Driven by a lifelong passion for wildlife, the outdoors and adventure Amber extracts stories, highlights game changing people and projects and celebrates grassroots organisations and true business leaders through the creation of the environmental platform the Extreme Hangout. A passionate, gutsy and dedicated voice bringing her community and communication skills together to highlight a bold a beautiful future.

Amber is a great convener, challenger and seeker of truth she’s not afraid to shake up the conversation, seek out trailblazers and showcase grand visions as she is a big believer in highlighting dream scenarios to act as guiding principles for us all to go forth and create together the 2050 of our dreams, not our nightmares. With years of communications, marketing and business development skills, entrepreneurial flare and someone who credits years in the service industry as having delivered her work ethic she is very much a lady on a mission.

Anushka Fernando was born and raised in Sri Lanka and now lives in Chichester, West Sussex. Drawing on her own experience as a busy mother keen on wholesome and natural food for her growing young children and combining her interest in art and beauty, she is on a mission to share her personal story of how she combined art and beauty with food and healthy living for the mind and body. She has spoken and written to global audiences on “serving love and art on a dinner plate: discovering art and wellbeing in the kitchen”.

Anushka has written curriculum on socio-emotional learning skills and serves on the board of Learn for Life Lanka which teaches socio-emotional learning skills to disadvantaged adolescents.  Her educational background includes a Master of Education from Harvard University and a Bachelor of Arts cum laude with honors in sociology from Mount Holyoke College

Anushka shares content on food art, both her own original work and that of others on her Instagram account @stories_of_a_mama

She is open  to collaborating with brands and companies that have similar values to her- appreciating beauty and art, wholesome food, showing kindness to self, others and to the planet

Senior Corporate Client Manager, Vitality Health

Cassie is a Senior Corporate Client Manager at Vitality Health with an extensive career in corporate health and wellbeing. Cassie’s main aim is to work in partnership with corporate clients to help them influence and change employee behaviour, resulting in improvements in the health, wellbeing and productivity of the workforce.

Cassie herself lives and breathes health and fitness taking on her own challenges through various fitness events. She also helps others reach their fitness goals in her role as a qualified Personal Trainer.

Founder, belly bugs

After graduating from Edinburgh University in 1987 with a PhD in Ancient Greek, David worked in the marketing department of ICI in Manchester. He founded his own advertising agency, Cheetham Bell, in 1992 which was bought by WPP in 2000.

David was CEO of the Manchester office of JWT and Creative Director at global digital agency, Mirum. David left the advertising world in 2017 to develop Belly Bugs, the children’s IP he created that introduces kids to their gut microbes and, as research is showing, is the silver bullet for childhood nutrition.

FOUNDER, RANDOX

Dr FitzGerald founded Randox in 1982 in a converted ‘Hen House’ at the back of his parent’s house in Crumlin, Co. Antrim.  Since then, the company has grown to over 3,000 staff worldwide including 800 R&D Scientists & Engineers, with customers in over 145 countries. Randox develop, manufacture and market a wide range of clinical and veterinary diagnostic reagents and systems. Randox supplies 100,000 laboratories globally and is the fourth largest manufacturer of clinical chemistry reagents in the world.

Dr FitzGerald was awarded the Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 2011 for services to business in Northern Ireland. He has gained many other accolades in his career to date; named a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering (FREng) and Innovation Founder of the Year 2013 from the Northern Ireland Science Park, to name a few.

Director and Editor-In-Chief, Sussex World

Gary Shipton is Editorial Director of National World which publishes hundreds of quality newspapers and websites across the UK including The Scotsman, the Portsmouth News, and Yorkshire Post. He is also the Editor In Chief of Sussex World and its weekly newspapers and websites in this county, most locally the Chichester Observer and West Sussex Gazette.

A keen campaigner for freedom of speech and trusted journalism, Gary is a member of the industry’s Editors’ Code Committee and the News Media Association’s legal and policy group. Outside his work as a journalist, he is a Deputy Lieutenant of West Sussex and is the High Sheriff in nomination for 2026.

Gary lives near Chichester and believes passionately in the aims of the Health Summit.

Managing Director, Weleda UK

Appointed managing director in 2016 to Weleda UK, Jayn was voted No.1 in last year’s Who’s Who in Natural Beauty, for the 6th time.

In 2020 Jayn was appointed to the Advisory Board of the British Beauty Council, and in 2021 became Chair of the Council’s Sustainable Beauty Coalition.

In 2022 Jayn joined the board of the global B Corp Beauty Coalition, a collaboration of B Corp certified beauty brands and businesses. That same year, Jayn was presented with an Outstanding Achievement Award at NOPEX for her tireless efforts championing sustainable business practices and driving change for a more planet-positive future.

In 2023 Jayn was appointed ESG Pillar President for the British Beauty Council. She was also recently recognised in the CEO Today Business Women of the Year Awards as one of 100 inspirational female business leaders around the globe, and received an award for Outstanding Leadership for Health & Wellbeing Company of the Year, in the CEO Today Awards. For over a decade Jayn has ploughed her energy into Weleda, helping to drive the beauty industry towards social and environmental responsibility and more sustainable business practices – a mission she continues as a public speaker and columnist.

managing partner , Pollen & Co

Omar is the managing partner of Pollen & Co – a sustainable growth consulting firm. He previously founded and exited Wiser, the UK’s number one employer branding agency. Omar holds an MBA from the University of Cambridge and is currently setting up a fund dedicated to the food production system.

DIRECTOR, SASARE GROUP

Oni is an expert in Public, Private and Third Sector Procurement, Supply Chain and Logistics Management and is a Director of Sasare Associates, a consultancy advising on best practice Supply Chain and Logistics Management to Public, Private and Third sector organisations in the health, aviation, defence, transportation, Fin-Tech sector among others.

Former MP and Parliamentary Private Secretary

A former Member of Parliament, Government Minister, and Number 10 Parliamentary Private Secretary. Currently setting up a policy liaison group the “Con that is Ultra Processed Food” geared towards supporting policy reform and regulation of Ultra-Processed Food. Appeared on Radio 4 and national television talking about the impact UPF has on health outcomes and the negative role the food industry plays.

communications, belly bugs

Vicky studied languages at Cambridge University and upon graduation joined the Metropolitan Police in 1992.  As a detective, she dealt with a wide array of crimes, managing cases of serious crime through to their conclusion at Crown Court.

A career change in her 30s led her to work for Manchester City Football Club in 2001, the club she has supported from childhood where she became Director of Communications and a trustee at City in the Community, the club’s charitable foundation supporting the health of wellbeing of young people in cities of the UK and around the world.  She later became Chief Communications Officer for City Football Group, the world’s leading private owner and operator of football clubs.

In 2022, Vicky left City Football Group and founded her communications company, Straight Road Consultancy, which serves multiple cross sector clients. During this time she also joined forces with David Bell, founder and creator of Belly Bugs, a set of magical characters that inspires children to nurture a healthy gut microbiome for their lifelong physical and mental wellbeing.