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Sara Davies MBE

Sara Davies MBE is the founder and creative director of Crafter’s Companion and one of the youngest entrepreneurs to join Dragon's Den.

Sara established Crafter’s Companion while studying for a Business Management degree at York University. During a placement at a small craft company, she spotted a gap in the market for a tool that could create bespoke envelopes for handmade cards. With help from her retired engineer father, Sara designed and launched a ground-breaking craft product called The Enveloper.

After securing a slot on TV shopping channel Ideal World, The Enveloper became an instant hit, selling 1,500 in the first ten minutes and 30,000 units within six months of the initial demonstration. This demand led Sara to develop
her first line of innovative products for the craft market. She left university with a first-class honours degree and a business turning over half a million pounds.

Today, Crafter’s Companion is a household name in the industry. It has expanded its range of papercraft products to include sewing and needlecraft items, in addition to its own brand of art materials, Spectrum Noir. The company
designs, manufactures and sells its craft-related products to customers across 40 countries and employs more than 200 people worldwide. To date, the business has proudly collected more than 25 awards for the company’s achievements and for Sara’s accomplishments as an entrepreneur, in addition to a multitude of craft industry awards for its innovative craft products.

Sara has also been recognised in the ‘Who’s Who of Britain’s Business Elite’ and CNBC’s UK’s ‘Top Ten Brilliant Entrepreneurs’ and received the Creative Entrepreneur of the Year at the Great British Entrepreneur Awards. In 2016, Sara was presented with an MBE in the Her Majesty’s Birthday Honours List, for services to the economy.

Sara regularly features on the Create and Craft TV channel in the UK, in addition to the Home Shopping Network (HSN) in the US and QVC Germany. She was the founding Chair of the board of directors at the Craft Hobby Association UK, now known as the AFCI-UK, which complements her role on the board of the affiliate US chapter.

The entrepreneur is passionate about championing women in business, mentoring and the North East of England.

Jamie Laing

Jamie Laing started his career as one of the key members of the show Made In Chelsea. He has since appeared on Murder in Successville, This Morning, 8 out of 10 Cats, and Hollyoaks, and made it to the final of Strictly Come Dancing.

An original digital native, Jamie has blazed a trail online with his new media content. On his highly successful podcast Private Parts Jamie and his friends dive deep under the covers of celebrities lives to find out their most intimate stories and naked truths. He also hosts the podcasts NearlyWeds and BBC Sounds’ 6 Degrees.

On his YouTube channel Happy Hour, Jamie’s mission is to bring the world a little bit of extra happiness every week.

In his memoir I Can Explain, Jamie writes movingly about his struggles off camera, which left him crippled with anxiety and led to his eventual burnout and opens up about the importance of friendship.

Jamie has worked closely with many charities including Comic Relief, and he appeared on Channel 4’s Celebrity Hunted for Stand Up to Cancer. He is an ambassador for the Young Minds organisation, which aims to help young
people improve their mental health.

As well as his media presence, Jamie has followed in his grandfather’s footsteps with his entrepreneurial skills and founded the vegan sweets brand Candy Kittens.

Ann Francke OBE

Ann Francke is Chief Executive of the Chartered Management Institute, the UK's leading professional body for management and leadership with an international member community of over 220,000. She started her career at Procter & Gamble and has held senior executive positions at Mars, Boots, Yell and BSI.

Ann is an expert in Management and Leadership in the workplace, and speaks frequently in the media; she is a regular columnist for The London Times. In 2020 she was awarded an OBE for services to Workplace Equality. She authored ‘Create a Gender-balanced Workplace,’ and the ‘Financial Times Guide to Management’. In 2023, she was awarded the inaugural Memcom Outstanding Contribution Award, for her work in championing the membership sector.

Blaire Palmer

Future of Leadership Expert Blaire Palmer has been helping organisations drive real change in their businesses and create places where people can come and do their best work. As a Producer on the BBC’s flagship Today Programme in the nineties, she spent a decade breaking stories and shaping the UK news agenda before her fascination with leadership and change led her to train as a corporate coach. Two decades on, she gives audiences unparalleled insight into what’s happening in the most innovative boardrooms in the UK and Europe, trends she’s spotting in her work, and what works (and doesn’t) when it comes to change and leadership in businesses.

Blaire realised early on that there is something about the workplace that stops people doing their best work and that the standard models about motivation, change, culture, and leadership were just academic theories. They didn’t work on the ground. And that is even more true today when we need to recalibrate how to lead our businesses in an unfamiliar and volatile post-pandemic world.

Audiences want to know what leaders in other companies are doing in these uncertain times, how to engage and motivate people, how to improve retention and attract the right talent in a competitive market, and how to confidently lead through change. Blaire draws on her experiences working with businesses across industry sectors and presents a new kind of leadership based on authentic human connection, trust, empowerment, and continual innovation.

She shares practical tips that mean audiences can start collaborating with each other more enthusiastically, support their teams to solve gritty problems, create safe spaces where people can speak up and speak out, and feel inspired and energised about the future.

Blaire is the author of three successful books on leadership and is regularly quoted in the media. She writes a monthly column for the UK's leading HR publication HR Zone, has a regular column with AccountingWeb, and is host of The Human Revolutionaries Show.

Kimberley Wilson

Kimberley Wilson is a Chartered Psychologist and author who works in private practice. A passionate advocate for the importance of mental health, she is the author of the book How to Build a Healthy Brain . The book draws on ways to give practical, holistic advice on how you can protect your brain by making simple lifestyle changes.

She is a governor of the Tavistock and Portman NHS Mental Health Trust and the former chair of the British Psychological Society's training committee in counselling psychology. She also managed the psychology service for Holloway Prison, which at the time was Europe’s largest women’s prison.

Kimberley believes the way we think about mental health – as separate from physical health – is flawed. Her philosophy of Whole Body Mental Health is a comprehensive approach to mental health care. Her degree in nutrition informs her approach of looking at the roles food and lifestyle play in our mental health.

Alongside Dr Xand van Tulleken Kimberley hosted the podcast Made of Stronger Stuff on BBC Radio 4. Each episode they went on a journey around the human body exploring a different body part and asked what it can tell us about our innate capacity for change.

A former finalist on the Great British Bake Off, and an award-winning food producer with a degree in nutrition, Kimberley’s work looks at the role food and lifestyle plays in our mental health. She was the featured mental health expert on several Channel 4 documentaries about the impact of Coronavirus, and is a regular contributor to Lorraine on ITV.

Paul Devoy

CEO, Investors in People

Paul is the Chief Executive of Investors in People (IIP). In 2016, Paul led the buyout of IIP from the UK Government and the organisation is now a Community Interest Company. IIP's purpose is to Make Work Better. Investors in People work with a community of organisations, employing over 1 million people providing digital diagnostic tools, advice, support and assessment against their internationally recognised Frameworks. Our network of 150 skilled and experienced Consultants works with organisations across 70 countries, but predominantly in the UK.

Prior to leading Investors in People, Paul was a Director at the UK Commission for Employment and Skills, an executive non-departmental body that offers guidance on skills and employment issues in the UK. He led the development and implementation of strategic programmes to create sustainable skills solutions with joint investment from industry and government.

He previously worked in the Scottish Prison Service for 4 years leading on change management programmes. He spent his early career working in local DWP offices. Paul studied Human Resource Management, graduating in 1994. He is a Chartered Fellow of Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development and a Companion of the Chartered Management Institute.