Michala Meiselles is a solicitor in England and Wales specialising in international business law, cross-border transactions and compliance. She has been working as a lawyer since 1994 and qualified as a solicitor in 1999. Starting off her career at Berrymans Lace Mawer, she has since worked in private practice and as in-house legal counsel for local government.

Over a decade ago, Michala created her own dedicated consultancy firm, which she presently directs, providing business and legal solutions to multinationals, public sector entities and international organisations. In her work as a solicitor and international lawyer (operating in England, France, Canada and the US), she advises on compliance (inter alia anti-bribery and corruption, anti-money laundering and sanctions), trade finance, import and export, licensing, distribution, agency and foreign direct investment.

Michala is also a senior law lecturer at Derby Law School, where she teaches undergraduate and postgraduate law, and a visiting professor of law at Université Jean Moulin (France) and the Law School of University of Western Ontario (Western Law).

She is author of a book entitled ‘International Commercial Agreements – An Edinburgh Law Guide’ published by Edinburgh University Press (2013) and has published several articles. She is presently writing a book on international licences covering technology transfer agreements, competition law and cross-border dispute resolution for Oxford University Press.

Manoj Nair is a Partner with SVM Contract Consultants. He has over 25 years of professional experience in consulting and training. He advises clients on how to improve their contracts and take preventative steps to reduce claims.  He has advised companies in India and around the world on procurement/contract management processes, tender/bid management, FIDIC conditions of contract, vendor management, supply-chain contractual risk, contract negotiations, contract administration, claims management, contract drafting, bankruptcy laws and US FCPA and UK Bribery Act, anti-money laundering and counter terrorism financing, and dispute resolution. 

He has worked with diverse clientele throughout his career including companies from the construction, energy, power, EPC, telecoms, IT, travel, insurance, manufacturing, media, banking and oil and gas sectors. 

He has extensive training experience and has to date conducted 350 + corporate training's, on topics including: contract drafting and negotiations, contract/procurement management, tender/bid management, outsourcing contracts, proposal writing, vendor management, negotiations for supply chain managers, FIDIC Conditions of Contract, US FCPA and UK Bribery Act, anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing, business case writing, claims management and negotiations. 

He is fluent in English and Hindi. 

Anna Harrington-Morozova is a regulatory, drug development and external relations professional with over 20 years’ experience gained working in a Regulatory Authority, academia and industry. Anna graduated in Russia as a pharmacist. After working in the Russian Ministry of Health and the Clinical Pharmacology Department of Moscow Medical University, she held regulatory and external relation positions in the pharmaceutical industry and CROs in Russia and the UK, including senior regulatory affairs posts in GSK,EISAI, ICON and PRA. Anna currently acts a a Scientific and Reguatory director at Regem Consulting Ltd – a consultancy which focuses on drug development, global regulatory advice, professional trainings and flexible resourcing solutions for the pharmaceutical, biotech and medical device industries in emerging markets.

Norah Lightowler is a partner in Lightowler Associates, an independent consultancy offering regulatory advice and support to pharmaceutical companies in or proposing to enter the European market for human pharmaceuticals. They are in their twenty fourth year of successful business. She has wide experience in the pharmaceutical and related nutraceutical, herbal and devices industries as a pharmaceutical assessor with the UK regulatory authority and as associate director of European regulatory affairs with an international pharmaceutical company. She is experienced in organising and presenting courses on European regulatory control systems, including requirements, procedures and strategy.

Dr Laura Brown is an independent pharmaceutical project management and training consultant and Senior Lecturer for the MSc in Clinical Research at the School of Pharmacy, University of Cardiff. Laura has more than 20 years’ experience of managing projects in the pharmaceutical industry and has worked for several companies including GSK, Hoechst Marion Roussel, Good Clinical Research Practices and Phoenix International. Laura has completed an MBA, with specialisation in project management. She is also the external project management expert for a pharmaceutical e-learning MSc module in project management and the author of two books on the subject including the leading title, Project Management for the Pharmaceutical Industry.

Human-Centric Communication Specialist

Expert in human interaction, the evolved communication landscape, the psychology of impactful messaging and unleashing our forgotten super-powers.

Nick’s message is for you if you’re drowning in an ocean of communication noise and your career depends on you being heard.

Nick suggests you can (and you must) take this even further.  In today’s overwhelming communication environment, you can’t afford to settle for being heard - you must ensure that you get through! 

We all want to enjoy stronger relationships at work and at home, secure incredible success with clients and loved ones and have the sort of fun we deserve through enhanced and impactful human communication.  It’s not much to ask but we have forgotten how.

Nick has been delighting audiences for over a decade with his power to inspire action.  Through focused observation, insightful humour and strategies that every audience can embrace and implement immediately.  

With his potent and unique approach to communication, Nick will not only alter the way you think, but, more importantly, transform the way you act.  Nick continues to help some of the world’s most influential organisations, including HSBC, Bayer Animal Health, Proctor & Gamble, PwC and the BBC to greater success by enabling them to communicate with more courage, influence and purpose.

"The pace of business change today has never been faster and the competition is global.  Everyone is looking for a technology silver bullet but it’s so often the case of smart computers and dumb companies.  Nick could be your answer.  He totally understands your most important but complex asset, your people, and his technique can unleash their true potential to let engagement and productivity soar."

Mervyn Middleby: Head of Technology & Operations, BBC Northern Ireland

Sarah Cowlishaw is a Partner at Covington & Burling LLP. She advises clients on a broad range of life sciences matters. She supports innovative pharmaceutical, biotech, medical device, diagnostic and technology companies on regulatory, compliance, transactional, and legislative matters.

Sarah is a partner in London and Dublin practicing in the areas of EU, UK and Irish life sciences law. She has particular expertise in medical devices and diagnostics, and on advising on legal issues presented by digital health technologies, helping companies navigate regulatory frameworks while balancing challenges presented by the pace of technological change over legislative developments.

Sarah is a co-chair of Covington’s multidisciplinary Digital Health Initiative, which brings together the firm’s considerable resources across the broad array of legal, regulatory, commercial, and policy issues relating to the development and exploitation of digital health products and services.

I believe that organisations led by emotionally intelligent leaders at all levels, whilst underpinned by a culture of care, can drive engagement. The output from engagement includes improved metrics on safety, wellbeing, quality, productivity, CSR, sustainability, retention, recruitment and reduced organisational risk. 

I’m a motivational speaker for organisations such as the Institute of Directors (IoD), Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (IOSH), British Safety Council (BSC), Institute of Risk and Safety Management (IIRSM) amongst others. I also speak at company events on leadership and culture.

I have a thorough understanding of risk and change management, essential for ensuring the successful implementation of cultural improvement programmes. The successful implementation of any programme, often hinges on the ability to engage, influence and work with numerous key stakeholders, including senior leadership teams and others.

Key talk topics:

• Modern leadership 
• Employee engagement
• Culture change

Recent projects include:

• HSEQ Culture Advisory Board for Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) 2018-2021
• Founder of a client thought leadership user group, with 20 major UK and European clients to share best practice and discuss innovative new ideas and challenges
• Co-creator of an organisational integrated improvement model, the HYG-GE Model (Hard-Yeoman-Girling Generating Excellence Model 2022) based on modern leadership, whilst all underpinned by care
• Advisory council for a rail organisations' culture change programme 2019- 2023
• Leadership lecturer at Glasgow Clyde College, 2023-2025
• Co-research with Dr Paul Pritchard on engaging for success/CIPD and the impact of engagement on sustainability and corporate social responsibility
• Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (RSA)
• Distinction as Reuters-accredited Performance Consultant (2018), to enable clients to make effective investment in improvement strategies through a consultancy style approach
• Level 7 CMI qualification in Strategic Management and Leadership 

“No culture has ever changed without its people.”

Mark Weston has run his own law firm, Weston Legal, since 1 January 2024. He is also a consultant at Hill Dickinson LLP where he joined in February 2016 as a partner and Head of its Commercial, TMT & IP Practice. Before that, he was a partner and Head of the Commercial/IP/IT Team at Matthew Arnold & Baldwin LLP and before that, he spent several years at Baker & McKenzie in London and Chicago and has also previously been seconded to Hewlett Packard and other technology businesses. He changed role to become a consultant in Hill Dickinson’s London office in January 2024.

Expertise: Mark’s practice covers both non-contentious and contentious matters in all areas of commercial law, intellectual property law, information technology law, Internet, electronic commerce and on-line services law. He specialises in commercial and Tech issues. Mark is used as a ‘trusted adviser’ by many clients in all sorts of businesses and often acts as ‘private practice in-house counsel’ for many clients. He specialises in tech and internet businesses.

Clients: Just some of Mark’s more well-known clients include Elstree Film Studios, RTL Group S.A., Sykes Cottages, Retailcorp Brands LLC, The Gulf Marketing Group, Moneynetint Limited and the BBC.

Some detail: Mark has extensive experience in advising clients on all manner of commercial matters (such as business planning and solutions, franchising, distribution, agency and marketing) through branding and intellectual property exploitation and licensing, to advice and documentation regarding hardware and software issues (such as development, licensing, maintenance and distribution, SaaS and cloud, Internet transactional solutioning, B2B, B2C and B2G electronic commerce, S-commerce and M-Commerce, social media, outsourcing, facilities management, procurement, IT policies, data protection (privacy), GDPR and freedom of information issues as well as artificial intelligence (AI)). He has a particular expertise in new digital business and revenue streams. He is also experienced in dealing with software disputes and IT litigation. The increasingly extensive media side of his practice relates primarily to publishing (both real world and digital content), to games and gaming platforms (and particularly transmedia technologies), advising companies about their advertising onscreen, online and in print and managing their public communications strategies generally (dealing with the CMA and ASA in the process) – and also a smattering of television, film and music exploitation. Recently he has been very active in AI advice.

More unusual: 

Mark has previously spent several months on secondment to Hewlett Packard and he has also been seconded to assist in the legal problems arising in new technology companies such as Symbian. From 2000 to 2001, Mark was resident in the Chicago office of Baker & McKenzie advising US clients on European and UK aspects of IT and electronic commerce law and practice.

Mark is the author of the Legal Practice Companion, a parallel text book used at several law schools, the editor of the IP and Media Law Companion as well as the rest of the Companion series of books published by Bloomsbury Professional, Tottels, Cavendish Publishing and Oxford University Press. He has noted numerous reports for the IT Law Reports and is widely published in Computing, Computers & Law, Computer Law & Security Report, IT Law Today, Intellectual Property World, Solicitors Journal and many other journals both online and offline. Mark has also authored articles syndicated in the national and trade press and is regularly quoted in national newspapers and is heard on radio as an expert in his fields. Mark is the author of the Business Names on the Internet chapter in the PLC Ecommerce Manual as well as numerous other articles on various Commercial & IT law topics.

Mark lectures regularly on all Commercial, IP and IT law topics, including at the IBC IT ‘Summer School’ Programme in Cambridge, England; the Falconbury and MBL two-day and three-day Commercial Contracts seminars (run several times a year) and IT Contracts seminars (run three times a year) in London; and he has previously lectured at the Annual On-line & Internet Commerce Law Institute seminar in Chicago and tutored at University College London.  He also runs a programme of bespoke training schemes on commercial law, IP law, IT law, AI law and data law as well as soft skills programmes such as negotiation skills and presentation skills.

Finally, you may have seen that Mark likes blogging and writing books, which are available at all good bookshops! He also appears regularly on BBC1 (usually providing advice on-screen to BBC Watchdog) and also on Sky News as a legal commentator, as well as trying to avoid the huge quantity of pink powder the TV make-up girls want to apply to his increasingly receding hairline.