associate, Geldards LLP
Sophie specialises in employment law and advises private, commercial and public sector clients on a wide range of employment issues, both contentious and non-contentious. Sophie completed her training contract at a large regional firm in Nottingham, before joining Geldards LLP in March 2014. She has a particular interest in the education sector and enjoys delivering in-house training for clients and presenting at external events.
associate, Geldards LLP
A specialist employment lawyer, Rachel provides pragmatic and strategic advice on all areas of employment law to employers and employees and also to charitable organisations. Rachel graduated from the University of Leicester in 1997 and qualified as a solicitor in 2001. Rachel provides practical employment law advice to both employers and employees and also advises on trustee remuneration issues for charitable organisations. She is a member of the Employment Lawyers Association and Charity Law Association.
external affairs manager, Direct Marketing Association
Zach Thornton currently works at the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) as the external affairs manager. He is passionate about politics and current affairs, having stood as a candidate for Borough Councillor in the May 2014 local elections in Tower Hamlets, London. Since joining the DMA he has focused on lobbying the UK and EU to achieve a balanced General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and now beginning to work on the revised ePrivacy Regulation. Working hard to ensure that the new legislation doesn’t cripple businesses.
partner and head of the regulation, data & information department, Winckworth Sherwood LLP and Telephone Compliance Council member
Having joined from Addleshaw Goddard, Toni’s considerable in-house experience enables him to o offer practical, commercially-focused solutions in what is often a technical and complex area. After starting his career in private practice, Toni has held a number of positions as a senior legal adviser, general counsel, head of legal and company secretary in household name businesses over the last 15 years, including IBM (where he was EMEA data privacy counsel), Virgin Media, YouView TV and BGL Group (owners of comparethemarket.com). He was also global privacy counsel at Willis Towers Watson.
Toni has assisted clients on a wide range of privacy and cyber security issues, including regulatory and compliance investigations, profiling, data monetisation and data breaches. He has advised on GDPR, e-privacy, PECR, net neutrality, RIPA, reputation management and cyber security. He has consulted with CEOP, the Home Office and NTAC and given evidence to a Joint Committee of Parliament on the Data Communications Bill.
director, PMA Ltd and Telephone Compliance Council member
Simon is marketing and data professional with a wide range of off-line and online experience with a solid background in financial services and GDPR consulting and for the past 14 years has been running his own consulting company working both client and agency side. His experiences include GDPR, data protection, change management, customer experience and delivering the full marketing mix across both traditional and digital media. As PMA ltd he has worked through a number of different marketing agencies, helping with the building and/or presentation of pitches through to delivering specific pieces of work.
Simon’s clients have included the Open University, Barclaycard, Nat West, DeafBlindUK, The Royal British Legion and Perry’s motor group. He is a member of the Direct Marketing Association and the GDPR Institute, a judge for the annual Loyalty Awards and has most recently written the core modules for the new IDM GDPR certificate.
head of cyber, Optimising IT
Having clocked up almost two decades in IT, Todd has spent 13 of them operating in information security related positions. With professional qualifications such as Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP, no. 540101) and ISO27001 Lead Auditor and PCI DSS expertise, Todd has experience working within both the public and private sector. Todd is now playing a leading role delivering for an holistic GDPR consultancy and implementation of compliancy measures for multi-site/multi-national public and private organisations ready for the arrival of the new regulations. Todd has experience working with automotive clients around information security with the company’s most recent cyber security and GDPR audit for a London-based prestige motor group, and is now engaged in the group’s continued cyber security strategy.
Former senior manager at Accenture, Ardi Kolah is recognised as one of the leading data protection practitioners in Europe and founder/editor-in-chief of the Journal of Data Protection and Privacy. He has cabinet office and ministerial-level consultancy experience and is in demand as a keynote speaker around the world on GDPR, having spoken and chaired 40 conferences in 2017. He consults for a number of multi-national clients in financial services, banking, automotive, technology and infrastructure sectors and his latest book, ‘GDPR Handbook: How to Implement the General Data Protection Regulation’ is published globally in April 2018 by Kogan Page. He also presents a special 60-minutes on-line interactive training video on GDPR and recently completed a 10-minute animation on GDPR for contact centre staff. A fellow of several institutes, Ardi is an advisor and examiner for the British Computer Society professional certificates in data protection and is Master of Laws, King’s College London and an elected member of BAFTA.
General Manager - EDM, Arena Group
Neil heads up the software division of Arena Group and has overseen the development of Arena’s mstore for automotive platform already chosen by 3 of the top 10 dealer groups to manage their documents and deal files.
As a technologist, Neil has been involved in the delivery of information management solutions for over 20 years and has been considering the impact of the GDPR for over 5 years. Neil has been a popular speaker on the GDPR at trade shows, seminars and webinars sharing insights and practical responses to the GDPR with the emphasis on people, process and technology.
Neil is also something of a petrol head and has recently completed a degree in self-driving car engineering which included cutting-edge artificial intelligence techniques similar to those featuring in the mstore platform.
View Neil’s webinar ‘Practical Insights on the GDPR for car dealerships’ here: https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/recording/812751684762125826?assets=true
Sign up for Neil’s webinar ‘Electronic deal files: case studies and insights from two top dealerships’ here: https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/6710305559297766403
Find out more about mstore for automotive and Arena Group at www.arenagroup.net/automotive or get in touch at automotive@arenagroup.net
