BCS Influence Board members

Currently engaged in various Board advisory projects, start-up mentoring and Non-Executive roles, Julian is a versatile, dynamic and innovative leader with significant experience of delivering digitally driven business transformation and growth.

He works at the forefront of integrated digital/physical commerce, an expert in optimising fast paced businesses, building high performing digital, tech and data functions to drive gains through customer and colleague experience. He has operated successfully at Executive level in the consulting, tech and consumer industries with expertise leading in diverse national and international sectors.

An experienced speaker and influencer, with a professional career spanning global brands including BT, BNP Paribas, Cap Gemini, Sainsbury’s, John Lewis Partnership and IBM, Julian brings confident, committed, and practical, people focused leadership to strategic change.

He believes passionately in the potential of all people, leading others to deliver outcomes often well beyond their own expectations. Julian is a Fellow of BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT.

Sam is an internationally recognised technology, data and cyber lawyer who is a partner at the Top 10 global law firm CMS Cameron McKenna Nabarro Olswang LLP. Sam has 20 years’ experience providing strategic legal and commercial advice to the C-Suite in cutting-edge technology and digital transformational projects in a number of countries.

Kathy started her clinical career in Medical Physics where she specialised in Cardiology. She has since gone on to hold very senior national management positions in healthcare both in New Zealand with the Ministry of Health and in the UK with NHS England. Her clinical and leadership skills and experience, specifically relating to the digital healthcare agenda, have been fundamental to her successful career.

She has focused on driving innovative transformational change in order to improve patient care and outcomes always mindful of the concerns regarding exacerbation of a potential digital divide. She has also been a proponent of the need to ensure that algorithm development is ethical, professional and ensures that bias is minimised as this is critically important in healthcare e.g. clinical decision support tools.

Kathy has held several Board roles with international organisations and is currently a Non-Executive Director of the University Hospitals of Derby and Burton NHS Trust and a member of the All of Government Open Standards Board.

Her extensive experience and knowledge of healthcare and how digital technology can be used to support and enable improved care pathways, and treatment options and transformative change resulting in better patient outcomes will be a key contribution that she will bring to the influence Board.

Danielle is Professor of RF Engineering and Associate Vice President for Blended and Flexible Learning at the University of Manchester. She was President of the Institution of Engineering and Technology in 2020/21. Her research is dedicated to solving one the 14 world engineering grand challenges of the 21st century; engineering the tools for scientific discovery. She has over 20 years experience in the higher education sector and has a number of non-exec roles across government and third sector organisations.

Charlene Hunter is the CEO & founder of Coding Black Females. Charlene has a strong academic background with a BSc in Mathematical Sciences and an MSc in Computer Science from the University of Birmingham.

She has over 10 years of experience as a Java and C# developer and technical architect, and has skills in requirements capture, technical architecture, testing and various other aspects of building successful software applications. She has a strong passion to increase and showcase the skills and talents of black women in tech and is determined to diversify the tech sector.

Charlene set up Coding Black Females because in her years as a Software Developer, she discovered black women were heavily underrepresented in tech. She wanted this to change and ensure that black women were able to discover role models and see familiar faces within the industry. Charlene has received multiple awards and recognition work she does to support black women in tech.

Basil is a Digital Forensics & Cybercrime Consultant, working as an Expert Witness for more than 13 years. He is currently the Manager of The Cyber Academy, at Edinburgh Napier University and he runs his own consulting firm, Strathclyde Forensics Ltd.

Coming from a diverse business background, that includes organisations like Abbey National, IBM, HM Government, Edinburgh Napier University, West College Scotland, West Lothian College, and the Greek Army, he has been recognised as a subject matter expert in Digital Forensics and in cyber-crime and cyber threat awareness.

He works closely with the academia, he is a regular speaker and contributor to Interpol’s training and he has been asked to help formulate the future strategy on Digital Forensics as well as Interpol’s training and guidance on Digital Evidence for Prosecutors.

Since 2017 Basil has been working as the Manager of The Cyber Academy at Edinburgh Napier University, leading the cooperation between industry and academia in the field of cybersecurity. He has organised international conferences, ran dozens of awareness events, and has successfully organised and implemented two Cyber Taster courses for Neurodiverse audiences with The Cyber Academy.

Basil has been a guest speaker and lecturer to numerous UK and international universities and colleges, including the University of Glasgow, University of Strathclyde, The American College of Greece (his alma mater), University of West of Scotland, Robert Gordon University, Spoleczna Academia Nauk (Poland) and many more.

Working with the legal profession, he has been called by The Law Society of Scotland to develop and deliver their Cyber Security Certification, the first and only one of its kind in the country. As an Expert Witness and a digital forensics consultant, he has created a solid reputation and his evidence has never been challenged successfully in court to this day.

Since the COVID-19 pandemic started, Basil has delivered dozens of public awareness, specialist and private webinars. His awareness work brought into light the new challenges from online fraud and fake news during the crisis.

Mark Martin MBE aka @Urban_Teacher is an Assistant Professor in Computer Science and Education Practice.

Mark is a thought leader in #EdTech and a hugely popular speaker, sharing his expertise and insights to educators around the world. He is a teacher/advisor for the major global tech brands and continues to advocate for home-grown talent, digital skills and education equity.

In May 2022, Mark was recognised as one of the top 50 most influential people in UK IT by computer weekly. In 2019, he was awarded an MBE for services to education, technology, and diversity in UK technology.

Freddie Quek is Chief Technology Officer at Times Higher Education. He is a disruptive, networked and agile leader who has worked in Singapore, US and UK across higher education, automotive, publishing, loyalty, insurance, travel and financial services industries.

He helped transformed the publishing industry from print to digital pioneering the use of NoSQL technologies and achieving large scale agile implementations. He started the #joiningthedots initiative to join up across the tech and other communities to address #digitalinclusion. He is a Community Board member of the Digital Poverty Alliance and Chair of the BCS Digital Divide Specialist Group.

Freddie is a Fellow of BCS and judge for the UK IT Industry Awards. He has Master of Science degrees from the London School of Economics and Henley Business School, alumnus of Oxford University and currently a Research Associate at Henley Business School undertaking doctoral research. He sits on the Board of University of Bristol and is a member of the Technology Advisory Group at the Royal Society of Chemistry.

Paul is a Cloud Engineer with a background in Enterprise Public Cloud delivery, having worked with and led numerous FTSE 100 and S&P 100 companies on their public cloud projects over the last 10 years. He is a founding member of the BCS Fellows Technical Advisory Group and a founding member of the BCS Influence Board.

Outside of work, Paul is a singer with the London Gay Men's Chorus, and a serial volunteer, previously serving on the Pride in London Operations Committee, Wikimedia UK Board of Directors, and getting involved in events for charity.