Partner,  Pollen & Co

Anya Claxton is Partner, Deal Origination, at Pollen & Co – a sustainable growth consultancy helping businesses to secure capital from the right investors, assess their impact as they scale and ensure they have the right leadership team in place.

Anya is in the process of setting up a VC fund focussed on the UK food system, working with entrepreneurs that will benefit nature or human health through innovations across the entire system – from farm to fork.

CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, HELLIOS HOLDINGS

Colin is an experienced entrepreneur who has set up and established successful global IT Services businesses. In 1993 Colin together with a Norwegian partner established Achilles Group which went on to become the largest provider of supplier accreditation services globally with a staff of over 850 and offices in 30 countries. Colin organised the sale to private equity in 2008 and remained as CEO and then Chairman of the business until 2012.

After leaving Achilles, Colin founded a new IT Services company, Hellios Holdings that now employs around 80 people in four countries and works in the defence and financial services and sectors. Hellios works to improve the quality of suppliers in particular assisting them with improving their ESG performance as well as areas such as operational resilience and cyber security,

After Achilles Colin accepted a number of NED roles including being on the Board of a procurement software company Contiki which was sold to Private Equity and Manufacturing 2030, a company based on managing and measuring carbon emissions which has successfully grown over the last 5 years and has just received Series A investment from a PE investor.

Colin was a Board member of the Outward Bound Trust, a charity focused on providing leadership and organisation training to disadvantaged young people using outdoors as a means of building key life skills. In the Trust, Colin has served on the Audit and Nominations and Remuneration Committees as well as working on specific IT and procurement projects. Colin is also a member of the Board of Outward Bound International, an umbrella organisation for the OB Schools in 37 countries where he currently serves as Treasurer but takes over as Chairman in October 2023.

Colin became the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year for IT Services in 2010. He has lectured on procurement and supply chain management widely including on the Oxford Executive MBA course. Colin holds a degree in Economics, Government and History from the London School of Economics.

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.

CHIEF EXECUTIVE, soil association

Helen farms in a family partnership on a mostly tenanted organic farm in Wiltshire with dairy, beef, pigs, cereals, agroforestry and small scale horticulture. Her products are sold through the Helen Browning’s Organic brand in retailers as well as through her hotel and restaurant/pub on the farm.

Her book ‘PIG; tales from an organic farm’, written with her partner Tim Finney, tells more about the trials and tribulations of their farming and food life.

She has been Chief Executive of the Soil Association since 2011, after a long involvement with the charity in a variety of exec and non-exec roles. Prior to rejoining the Soil Association, Helen was Director of External Affairs for the National Trust.

She is currently a Commissioner and trustee of the Food Farming and Countryside Commission and has had a number of roles in agri-politics over the years, including the Government’s Policy Commission on the Future of Farming and Food (‘the Curry Commission’), chaired the England Animal Health and Welfare Implementation Group and the Food Ethics Council. Helen was awarded an OBE in 1998 for her services to organic farming

COO, Cibus Capital

Jeremy Alun-Jones is Cibus Capital’s COO with oversight of operations, valuations, finance and risk management.  Cibus provides investment advice to a series of sustainable food and agricultural tech funds. He chairs the firm’s Investment Advisory and Valuation committees and is a Board Director of five of the Cibus Fund’s largest investments: Prunus Nuts, The Flavour Farm, The Summer Berry Company, Innoliva and Amaretto Almonds.  Jeremy was educated at Oxford University, England where he received a MA in Human Sciences.

HEALTH AND NUTRITION, WAITROSE AND JOHN LEWIS

I have been working in the health and nutrition teams at Waitrose and the John Lewis Partnership for the past 14 years. I graduated with a degree in biochemistry and then specialised in nutrition, a subject that I have always been really passionate about.

I completed my PhD in 2005 at the MRC Dunn Human Nutrition Unit in Cambridge, where I spent 3 years investigating the link between what we eat and our risk of developing cancer. After receiving my PhD I was a Senior Nutrition Scientist at the British Nutrition Foundation for 4 years.

Executive Director,  Grosvenor Food &AgTech

Katrin joined Grosvenor Food &AgTech (formerly known as Wheatsheaf Group) as an Executive Director in 2019. Katrin has been a venture investor since 2004, including 10 years as a partner with a venture capital technology fund in the US and five years at Syngenta’s corporate venture capital group.

Prior to 2004, she worked with HSBC in both the UK and Japan in various trading and business development roles.

Katrin graduated from Somerville College, University of Oxford, with an MA in Mathematics; holds an Executive MBA from Duke University; and an MSc in Microsystems and Nanotechnology from Cranfield University

General Manager Catering J&I

Matt is the General Manger for Catering at Serco for the Justice and Immigration Business Unit. His responsibilities include Food Safety, Contract Support and new catering related initiatives along with bidding for and mobilising new contracts. Prior to this, Matt was the catering manager catering for 1200 prisoners in HMP Dovegate a busy, complex, and demanding prison. A previous career in the Armed Forces, serving on military operations and exercises across the world. Matt has worked his way up from a chef on the shop floor to senior management in his current role. His varied career means he has a wealth of knowledge and experience in large scale catering operations in all environments and climates.

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.

Director of Corporate Business, Vitality Health

Pippa is the Director of Corporate Business at Vitality Health and has had an extensive career in corporate health and wellbeing, incorporating Group Risk and Group PMI insurances, spanning over 30 years (including time with Aviva Health and Zurich Life). Pippa’s main aim is to influence and change behaviour resulting in improvements in the health, wellbeing and productivity of the workforce.

FOUNDER, SUSANNA LEA ASSOCIATES

In 2000, Susanna Lea founded SLA, a boutique, international literary agency. With offices in New York, Paris and London, SLA is honoured to work with a diverse selection of writers, from debut authors, prize winners, to bestselling authors of both fiction and nonfiction.

Charles Richmond, The Duke of Richmond and Gordon, is Chairman of the Goodwood Group of Companies and the founder of the widely acclaimed Goodwood Festival of Speed and the Goodwood Revival.

He took over the management of the Goodwood Estate in West Sussex from his father, the 10^th Duke of Richmond and Gordon, in 1994 after a successful career as a photographer in London. Having had a passion for film and photography since the age of 10, he left school at the first possible opportunity and at 17 worked for the film director Stanley Kubrick on the film Barry Lyndon. He went on to forge a world-wide reputation as a still-life photographer, producing award-winning campaigns for some of the world’s most famous brands.

Motorsport at Goodwood was started by his grandfather, Freddie Richmond (the 9^th Duke of Richmond and Gordon), who opened the Goodwood Motor Circuit in 1948. Having established the Festival of Speed in front of Goodwood House in 1993, Charles Richmond brought motor racing back to the Goodwood circuit (which had been closed in 1966) with the creation of the Goodwood Revival in 1998. Both events have since become recognised as some of the most exciting and creative events in the world.

The Goodwood Estate Company is one of a diverse portfolio of businesses which includes Goodwood Racecourse, a 4,000acre organic farm, two eighteen-hole golf courses, Goodwood Aerodrome and Flying School, a ninety-one-bedroom hotel and Hound Lodge, a luxury ten-bedroom sporting lodge. The Group employs over 650 people and attracts more than one million visitors each year. The Estate covers 12,000 acres and since 2003, has been the home and headquarters of Rolls-Royce Motor Cars.

In 2012, Nature Translated, a major exhibition of his photographic work (under the name Charles March) was staged at the Bermondsey Project Space in London. The exhibition was shown at the Marble Palace, part of the State Russian Museum in St Petersburg, in January 2014 and in Moscow as part of the Moscow Photography Biennale in April 2014. Two new exhibitions were held in early 2015: Wood Land at the Venus Over Manhattan Gallery in New York City and Abstract and Intentional which was held at Hamiltons Gallery in London.  In late 2016, Seascape was held at the Venus Over Los Angeles Gallery in the U.S.A. and was shown again at Hamiltons Gallery in London in September 2017.  An exhibition of highlights from his photography career, and a new body of work taken on the Scottish island of Jura, was held in the Palazzo Borghese in Rome in 2018.  At the same time, he launched a book of the Jura pictures called Gleann Badraig, published by Distanz and with poetry by Ken Cockburn.

Charles Richmond is President of the British Automobile Racing Club, Patron of the TT Riders Association, and an honorary member of the British Racing Drivers Club and the Guild of Motoring Writers.