Verity Jeffery is a CIPD‑qualified HR Leader with 20 years experience in asset management, investment banking, and professional services. Currently Head of People at DNB, she has held senior HR roles at Norges Bank Investment Manager and BNP Paribas, with early career experience at Baker & McKenzie LLP. Verity specialises in employee relations, talent acquisition, leadership development, performance management and succession planning, overseeing the full employee lifecycle to drive organisational performance.

Mark Hart (BA; PhD; AcSS; FRSA; MeRSA; CABS Fellow) is a Professor of Entrepreneurship and Enterprise Policy at Warwick Business School and Academic Lead for the national Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses Programme and delivers content on strategy and innovation and provides research support to determine the impact of the programme. He was awarded the Queen’s Award for Enterprise Promotion in 2014. He is Deputy Director of the UK national Enterprise Research Centre (ERC) funded by the ESRC and a variety of UK government departments, where he leads on research into fast-growing firms, productivity, business dynamism, growth ambition and the effectiveness of business support. He provides SME and entrepreneurship policy advice to the OECD and regular participates in their roundtables in Paris. He also directs the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) UK project which is part of a global research project set up in 1999 to investigate the drivers of entrepreneurial attitudes, aspiration and activity. At the request of the late Lord Young, he led the development of the Small Business Charter (SBC) for the Chartered Association of Business Schools (CABS). He is a member of the Expert Advisory Council for the Government’s Help to Grow: Management programme and an evaluation expert for the Department for Business and Trade (DBT) and reviews the evaluations of business support products and services operated by the Department.

Louise has worked for 30 years in the advertising industry, with 10 years experience in agency leadership as Director of Client Services, Chief Operations Officer and Managing Director. In that time she has developed a way of working that helps people and teams work better together by upgrading their resilience.

As well as working for 15 years at Saatchi & Saatchi, she has also worked at Vice Media Group, Dentsu Creative, Ridley Scott Creative Group and started her career at WCRS (now House 337).

Louise was part of the team that launched ‘Mumstock’ with Mumsnet, the first conference focused on marketing to Mums, and encountered Mr Wolf from Pulp Fiction in the form of Hollywood actor Harvey Keitel, when he reprised the role for Direct Line.

Louise is currently working at Forsman & Bodenfors London as Managing Director.