Our Speakers

Meet the amazing people that will be speaking at our event!


Searsha Sadek

Chief Revenue Officer, ProQuo AI

Searsha is the Chief Revenue Officer at ProQuo. In this role, she is responsible for Sales, Marketing, Content, Design, Consulting, and Customer Success. With a background in Psychology - particularly forensic and evolutionary - she has always focused on how and why people do what they do. This naturally extended to how people feel about brands, and how to deploy them best to fuel growth.

She's worked in advertising with global powerhouse brands and new start-ups alike, to find and solve their problems in order to supercharge them. She's very into reading, tea, and kicking the hell out of training bags.

16.30 - Welcome and Opening

Carol Reay

Chair of The Advisory Board​ & Non-Exec Director on ProQuo AI Board

Carol is Chair of the Advisory Board at ProQuo AI. She is also Chair of the National Family Mediation Charity, and an Independent Trustee at Quiet Storm advertising agency – famed for its Create not Hate activist work.

Carol was the Founder and CEO of top 20 ad agency Mellors Reay & Partners. She was the first woman to be a named partner of an advertising agency. She has also enjoyed roles as CEO of Great Ormond Street Hospital and Global CMO of Odgers Berndtson. She was President of WACL, is a Fellow of the IPA, and is a qualified psychoanalytic counsellor. Carol is married with a grown-up son, daughter, and two step daughters, lives in Suffolk, loves foraging, cooking, and her rescue dog. 

16.30 - Welcome and Opening

Faris & Rosie Yakob

Co-founders, Genius Steals

Faris is co-founder of the nomadic creative consultancy Genius Steals. He is the author of Paid Attention, and a contributing author to both Digital State and What is a Brand? all published by Kogan Page. Previously Faris founded a digital agency, was Chief Innovation Officer of an advertising holding company, and Chief Digital Officer of the flagship office of the world’s largest advertising agency. Despite living on the road you can reliably find him online @faris and GeniusSteals.Co. Genius Steals issues a weekly newsletter of awesomeness, which was named an essential read for creative people by Hubspot. 

Rosie is the co-founder of the nomadic creative consultancy, Genius Steals, which helps brands, agencies, and rebels find the awesome at the intersection of new communication ideas, new product concepts, and new ways of thinking, especially about the impact of technology. She is passionate about moving the industry forward and she believes that brands can create and curate culture - and connect to people in ways that create value for both. 

16.45 - Keynote: Principles of Creative Effectiveness in Advertising

Matt Sadler

Strategy Director, Mother

Matt has always believed in challenging himself.  So, after graduating with a first-class degree in Zoology and Genetics, he decided to use his skills to understand people, instead of animals - and embarked on what’s become a nigh-on twenty-year career in creative strategy.

His past two decades have been filled with mould breaking work across all kinds of challenger brands, from big to small, from local to global.  Along the way, Matt has won the President’s Prize in the IPA Excellence Diploma, co-founded an award-winning charity craft beer brand, been awarded Fellowship of the Royal Academy of Arts, and raised two beautiful, but increasingly cheeky daughters. Yet, somehow, he’s always hungry for the next challenge.

17.15- The Creative Agency View

Edward Latham

Head of Marketing, Wahaca

Ed is head of marketing at Wahaca and a recent fledgling of the flying trapeze. Before turning his hand to taco tasting, Ed led communications for Pukka herbs, the UK’s #1 organic tea brand, and prior to that, Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, where he got stuck into ice cream with activism as the secret ingredient.

Ed passionately believes that business has the potential to make society a fairer and kinder place for people and our planet, and so he gets up every day asking what he can do that would make his grandma proud.

17.30 - Wahaca's carbon neutral story

Jessica Pinnick

Brand Manager, Belvoir Farm

My role as Brand Manager is to be the guardian and chief storyteller for our brand, bringing to life our amazing brand history, provenance, and product quality through creating engaging content, inspiring marketing activation, and market-leading innovation to ultimately delight our consumers.

Passionate about the power of brands and captivated by the infamous “here come the girls” Boots TV ads, I began my career with Boots in 2011 where I worked for 10 years across their portfolio of brands including Boots own label, partner brands, and Soltan sun care. I’m most proud of working on Soltan’s ‘tattooed child’ campaign, designed to raise awareness of the long-term effects of UVA damage. Along with a complete relaunch of the brand look & feel and an award-winning ATL activation plan, this resulted in double digit sales growth between 2018-2020 and overtaking key competitors to become No1 suncare brand in the UK.

Right now, I’m excited about the year ahead as we launch Belvoir Farm’s first brand campaign centered around our unique story and how our dedication to nurturing nature is reflected in the quality of our drinks.

17.45 - How Belvoir Farm capitalised on the low and no alcohol shift

Rob Brown

Freelance Journalist, Editor & Blogger 

Rob Brown has been writing about food, drink, business, environmental issues, health, and fitness for magazines and newspapers for more than 15 years.

He is a regular freelance contributor to The Grocer, Property Week and Balance Magazine, as well as providing communications consultancy services for a number of corporate clients.

18.00 - Fireside chat: Creating a captivating brand story for the press

Alexa Hershy

Vice President in the consumer practice,  Allison+Partners

Alexa Hershy is a Vice President in the consumer practice at Allison+Partners. As a San Francisco native, food and sustainability have always been a passion.  

At Allison+Partners, Alexa has worked with a range of different clients looking to tell their story – from Danone, supporting the company to announce their B Corp status, to most recently helping Corona launch their first non-beer beverage this month.

18.00 - Fireside chat: Creating a captivating brand story for the press

Lottie Unwin

Founder, The Copy Club

Lottie is Founder of Copy Club, a community of entrepreneurial marketers, with 1000 members and counting. The Copy Club gang are the marketing mates you’ve been looking for - they run Supper Clubs, events, have a huge range of resources, and an incredibly lively Slack Group.

She leads the marketing for luxury fashion accessories brand, Elizabeth Scarlett and healthy condiment brand Dr. Wills, and has advised a huge range of challenger brands, from Pip & Nut to VetBox.

18.15 - Let's redefine creativity!

Interested in partnering with ProQuo to create the future of
AI Brand Management?

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ProQuo AI's brand management platform analyzes your brand, every day from every angle, giving you a custom action-plan for sure-fire growth. Just set your brand's goals in ProQuo and we'll tell you the exact actions you should take to get bigger, faster. You'll know where your brand stands – and what to do to win – all in real-time.

“I can tell you that I love it. This is the future.” 
- Global VP, Keurig


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