AMBA & BGA Excellence Awards 2022/23 - Judges

Meet the Judges

Here you can meet our illustrious panel of judges who will be reviewing the respective entries for our award categories. The full line up of judges will be confirmed shortly.

Learn more about the Excellence Awards

Book for the Gala Dinner

Andrew Wiseman

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Andrew Wiseman, Strategy Director, Mustard

Andrew is Strategy Director at Mustard, a global research agency based in Manchester, UK. Andrew brings over 25 years of measurement experience, from the worlds of primary research and data analytics and modelling.

A Masters graduate from University of Leeds Business School, Andrew has developed a keen interest in the area of Environmental, Social and Corporate Governance (ESG), leading the agency’s research in this area.

A strong believer in giving back to the community, Andrew works with the University of Leeds to share his knowledge and experience with current undergraduates, providing them with the necessary skills for the 21st-century workplace.

Babak Barkhordar

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Babak Barkhordar, The Curious Companies Consulting

A business strategist and operations expert. Helping startups and SMEs navigate the rapid growth landscape and expand internationally, with 20 years’ experience in the Consumer Product and Business Service sectors. Received an MBA from SDA Bocconi School of Management in Milan, having previously read for a Bachelors in Economics at the London School of Economics.

Bodo Schlegelmilch

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Bodo B. Schlegelmilch, Chair of AMBA & BGA; Head of the Institute for International Marketing Management

Prof. Bodo Schlegelmilch is Chair of AMBA & BGA and Head of the Institute for International Marketing Management at WU Vienna. He has been the Founding Dean of the WU Executive Academy and launched a number of MBA programs, including the Vienna Executive MBA, which he led into the global Financial Times Top 50 ranking. Bodo held tenured professorships in the US and the UK, and taught in over 30 countries on five continents. Initially educated in Germany, Bodo obtained two doctorates from the University of Manchester (UK) and an honorary Ph.D. from Thammasat University (Thailand). He serves on several university advisory boards in Europe and Asia.

Dan Harris

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Dan Harris, Neurodiversity in Business

Dan Harris is the founder and CEO of the Neurodiversity in Business charity. NIB has been set up to transform the employment prospects of the 15 to 20% of the workforce who are neurodivergent. The charity was set up by our founder and a small group of volunteers, who were passionate about changing their own businesses to become more neuroinclusive. This rapidly grew into a significant uptake across the corporate world, given there was such high demand to share best practice and support society generally move forward.

Daniele Pes

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Daniele Pes, Industrial Partnerships Officer, Serial entrepreneur

I have gained eclectic and entrepreneurial C-level competence, with over 20 years of global (Europe, North America, Asia) professional and educational experience. I have matured experiences in corporates and startups, which gave me the ability of concretely taking advantage of an agile, effective entrepreneurial attitude and the managerial, multi-disciplinary approach. I strongly believe in the long term value of investing in people I share my working and personal life with. I formerly contributed to create, from scratch, two new business functions (Risk, Innovation) inside of a top corporate. Contributed to the success of a non profit association active on innovation (€5mln funding raised by our startups).

Ella Rauen-Prestes

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Ella Rauen-Prestes, Fitbakes Founder and CEO

Ella Rauen-Prestes is the CEO and founder of Fitbakes. With a BSc is Computer Science, MSc in Marketing and an MBA, she worked for 20 years in the tech industry around the world. In 2018 Ella re-qualified in Nutrition Science by Stanford University and founded Fitbakes, a company making low sugar high protein snacks, with a mission to make healthy eating become indulgent. Fitbakes has sold over 2 million cakes, is listed in over 2k supermarket stores in the UK and abroad, has been featured in all major media outlets like BBC, Forbes, The Times, Daily Mail, Telegraph, etc, has won multiple awards, and is showing the world that you can have your cake and eat it too.

Geraint Evans

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Geraint Evans

Biography to be confirmed.

Kate Rhodes

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Kate Rhodes, Brand Activation Director, InSites Consulting

In her current role as Brand Activation Director at InSites Consulting – a global consumer insight agency – Kate works with leaders across the organisation and around the world, to define how to implement a global marketing strategy through regional brand activation. Kate is a Chartered Marketer, a Member of the Chartered Institute of Marketing, and advocates for long-term learning and development. In the real world, Kate reads a lot of books and walks up a lot of hills, but not at the same time.

Kelly Beaver MBE

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Kelly Beaver, Ipsos

Kelly Beaver is Chief Executive of Ipsos in the UK and Ireland. She has been with Ipsos for over a decade and was previously Managing Director of Ipsos’s UK Public Affairs division. Kelly holds several honorary positions external to Ipsos in academia and charities. She is passionate about the use of evidence in decision-making and her roles outside of Ipsos enable her to make a wider contribution to the social sciences discipline in promoting its use. Kelly was awarded an MBE in June 2022 as part of the Queen’s Birthday Honours List for services to academia, research and the COVID-19 response.

Manley Hopkinson

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Manley Hopkinson, Ocean Racer, Polar Explorer, Businessman, Executive Leadership Advisor, Author and Keynote Speaker

Biography to be confirmed.

Mark Griffiths

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Mark Griffiths, Climate Impact Partners

A purpose-led business leader. At Climate Impact Partners, we deliver high quality carbon projects to assist companies achieve their climate/ Net Zero goals. Previously Mark was Global Head of Climate Business at WWF. Mark has benefitted from working in both large multi-nationals & start-ups, including founding SecondNature Partnership, a London based sustainability advisory firm. Multinational experience includes Dimension Data ($7billion ICT company), whilst starting his career at Procter & Gamble. Mark holds a Bachelor of Commerce degree & an MSc in Intelligent Buildings. Mark currently advises a select number of sustainable start-ups as Non-Executive Director.

Miika Makitalo

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Miika Mäkitalo, CEO, HappyOrNot

Miika Mäkitalo is CEO at HappyOrNot, a company that offers an easy way to engage customers and track the pulse of their service experience through relevant, in-moment feedback for optimized customer experience and operations. Previously he was a CEO at M-Files and helped the company to 10x revenue. Miika has a PhD from Tampere University of Technology.

Mital Thanki

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Mital Thanki, Founder, CEO (Spark Academy)

Mital is a visionary leader, innovator, learner and educator. She founded the multi-award-winning tutoring organisation, Spark Academy, in 2009 whilst she was teaching as a qualified teacher in schools.

As a passionate educator with a strong social conscience, Mital’s firm ethos is about making quality education affordable; so that it provides pathways for social mobility and brighter opportunities in children’s future.

Identified with having dyslexia at the age of 21, Mital learned different ways to absorb information and think differently. This is why Mital is an advocate of non-conformist learning techniques that will help any child realise their infinite potential.

Monique Farquharson

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Monique Farquharson, Director, PetitSquares Ltd and Analytics & Optimisation Consultant, Accenture Song

Monique is the 2021-22 MBA student of the year. She has since launched her own company PetitSquares Ltd which specialises in the distribution of Matcha powder and the development and manufacturing of Matcha based products.

She is also employed to Accenture Song where she works as a consultant. In addition to this, she is the Events and Engagement lead for the Intelligence capability in Song.

Monique’s background is in Education, Insurance and Mathematics. She has an MBA, BSc in Actuarial Science, and Dip in Secondary Education.

Neil Gaught

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Neil Gaught, Author

Neil Gaught is a strategic adviser, business humaniser, author and speaker, who helps businesses to reorganise around sustainable ideas. He is best known as the conceiver of Single Organizing Idea (SOI®), a proven approach to organizational management that ensures purpose is made real for the benefit of all stakeholders. 

Neil is the author of CORE: How A Single Organizing Idea Can Change Business For Good (a Business Book of the Year Finalist) and CORE The Playbook: The Single Organizing Idea. 

A straight-talking former soldier, qualified designer and business founder, Neil is dedicated to applying everything he has learned over the past 30 years working in over 40 countries to help business become a force for good in a world that urgently needs radical change if it is to meet the challenge of providing a sustainable future for all.

Nicolas Sauviat

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Nicolas Sauviat, World Benchmarking Alliance

Benchmarking for a more sustainable future. Nicolas is currently part of the Nature team at the World Benchmarking Alliance which measures the 1000 global companies – across 22 industries – with the most impact on nature and biodiversity on their progress towards a nature-positive future. Co-creator of the Nature Benchmark, he focuses on strategy and corporate governance as well as the integration of biodiversity and the circular economy in the methodology. His experience has spanned internationally across America, Europe and Asia, working for organisations ranging from NGOs to businesses. He regularly acts as judge for sustainability competitions.

Paul Hargreaves

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Paul Hargreaves, CEO - Cotswold Fayre & Flourish Author & Speaker

Paul Hargreaves is a B Corp Ambassador within the UK and is one of the leading voices in the UK encouraging and inspiring businesses to make a positive impact on the world; this was the subject of his first book, Forces for Good, published in 2019. Paul’s main role is as CEO of Cotswold Fayre, a rapidly growing speciality food and drink wholesale business supplying over 1,750 retail sites in the UK. The company diversified in June 2021 by opening Flourish its first foodhall and restaurant. Cotswold Fayre was one of the UK’s founding B Corps in 2015 and the company has recently certified for the third time with a score in the top 5% of FMCG businesses in the UK. Paul’s team are constantly looking for ways to be generous and compassionate by putting people and planet before profit and as they do that more success comes year on year. Paul believes that to bring the radical and systemic change required to reverse climate change and the growing inequality in the world a new compassionate, loving and servant-hearted leadership is required and that is what he calls The Fourth Bottom Line, and the name of his second book published in May 2021.

Pavlina Proteou

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Pavlina Proteou, Beyondcsr

Pavlina is a sustainopreneur, a sustainable innovation- ESG expert, bringing a cross-sector knowledgeable experience, drawing on her expertise garnered in International Economic, Diplomatic, and Social Affairs. An international impact strategist with 20+ years of robust consulting experience on EU policies and projects collaborates with governments, international organizations, consulting firms, and leading private financial institutions in the fields of Foreign and EU Affairs, Social & Immigration Policy, ITC, Banking & Finance, Sustainable Development, CSR, Social Innovation & Entrepreneurship, Humanitarian Aid, Community & Capacity Building, Health, Public-Private -Projects (PPP), Consumer Issues, Communications. Pavlina is the founder and CEO of BeyondCSR, a data-based Sustainability/Impact organization, and a Sustainable Development and Impact Programs Developer at the Ecole des Ponts Business School in Paris. Pavlina is an international seasoned speaker; also a Board of the Harvard Business Review member, a member of the board of advisors at Smart Ethics UK on SDGs/ESG and AI policies, a Member of the Board at Global Alliance for Legal Aid on Integration, Inclusion and Diversity Policies, and a registered Expert in the OECD forum network.

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Ralitza Iordanova

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Ralitza Iordanova, ACCOR HOTELS

Ralitza is currently the Global Vice President, Brand Partnerships, Events, PR & Influence at Accor. She is marketing professional with 15+ years experience on corporate and agency side. International background with a strong focus on building global brand strategy, effective communication campaigns and PR-worthy partnerships

Rita Monteiro

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Rita Monteiro, Head of Carbon, GFG Alliance

Purpose driven senior Sustainability leader, with over 15 years of cross-industry experience. Previously global head of Net Zero program for Amazon, and now embracing the challenge of decarbonizing steel at GFG Alliance.

Rob Adediran

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Rob Adediran

Biography to be confirmed.

Rob McCargow

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Rob McCargow, PwC

Rob oversees the cloud and digital transformation market for PwC in the UK. He is a leading voice in the field of AI and an evangelist for the responsible and ethical adoption of technology and its impact upon society. He’s a Senior Visiting Fellow at Bayes Business School, and a founding board member of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on AI. HR Magazine ranks him as an ‘HR Most Influential Thinker’, Onalytica cites him as a ‘Who’s Who in AI’, and he was voted ‘Tech Community Leader of the Year’ at the CogX Festival. He was the winner of the Tech Women 100 Awards Editor’s Choice Award last year in recognition of his championing of the Women-in-Tech agenda.

Robin Gibson

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Robin Gibson, Marketing Director, Kortext

Robin has been working with Kortext for over 2 years following a storied, multisector marketing career. A graduate of UWE Business School and Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Marketing Robin has successfully led marketing teams and brands at Mondelez, adidas, the EFL, ITN and Samsung. Of his role at Kortext Robin states “An essential strength of (higher) education is the development of critical citizens equipped with the ability to question, learn, and innovate, working beyond the straightforward ability to replicate established ways of doing things, to bring creative approaches to solving complex problems. These people are difference makers. At Kortext we’re enabling universities to empower the next generation of difference-makers through our smart teaching and learning platform.”

Sarmini Ghosh

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Sarmini Ghosh, Own Your Talent

Sarmini is an Executive Coach and Co-founder of Own Your Talent, a career management consultancy helping professionals harness their talent to achieve career success. Sarmini has 20 years corporate experience in leading high potential recruitment & development schemes, and Executive & Career Coaching programmes. She is passionate about helping both organisations and professionals build high performance career development programmes tailored exclusively to them.

Simone Hammer

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Simone Hammer, Global Head of Marketing, Barco

Simone is a trilingual Austrian with extensive experience in Business creation and management, Marketing, Communications, Digital, Content strategy and Training having lived in several countries and always worked in international environments. After 15 years with GE Healthcare in various roles in Marketing, Communications and Strategy she has obtained her Executive MBA with HEC Paris majoring in Entrepreneurship and Innovation and created her own start-up: She has launched a brand-new business model for alternative education extending it to a school network in the social and solidarity economy. After this exciting experience, Simone joined Barco as Global Head of Marketing for the Teaching & Training division bringing her hands-on experience in education & pedagogy together with her competencies from the corporate world. Simone has three children and enjoys her life in Paris where she has been living most of her time.

Sotirios Ptochos

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Sotirios Ptochos, Senior Executive, Management | Co-Founder

Sotiris is a Senior Executive and co-founder of PEOPLE, a team of passionate people which envisions creating a Fully Connected and Net-Zero carbon emissions global freight transport. PEOPLE has created the eco-friendliest, lightest, strongest and only smart dry container in the world; Devices that can upgrade any logistics unit to smart and a customizable platform giving full visibility during cargo transportation, at the right time to all stakeholders (www.people-t.com). The team has already been granted ten patents and has received numerous recognitions from the industry, including the prestigious “AMBA Start-up of the Year” award from the AMBA & BGA association in 2022. Sotiris is engaged in day-to-day operations, business strategy and plans, and setting the team’s culture, ensuring their alignment with short and long-term objectives.

Stephanie Mullins

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Stephanie Mullins, Director of BlueSky Education, a specialist PR and communications consultancy for business schools

Stephanie Mullins is a formerly trained journalist and Director of BlueSky Education, a specialist international PR and communications consultancy for business schools. She helps business schools and universities to achieve their wider strategic goals through using the media.

Tim Ackermann

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Tim Ackermann, Director Global Talent Acquisition & Rewards

Tim Ackermann is a seasoned and passionate HR and talent acquisition leader with over 20 years of experience in various industries, globally and regionally, at companies such as Deutsche Bank, Microsoft, Swarovski, and Zalando and Lidl. As Director of Global Talent Acquisition & Rewards at Oda, Norway’s fast growing market leader in online grocery shopping, he is part of the rapid expansion and new market entries to provide people more space for life. He’s also a founding member of Queb e.V., the (German) Association for Quality Employer Branding, and actively engaged in the harmonization of European higher education with FIBAA.

Udochuku Richson

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Udochuku Richson, Eli Lilly

Udochuku Richson, an international MBA graduate from IE Business School currently works as Associate Director – Incretin Franchise, in the area of Diabetes & Obesity at Eli Lilly Germany. He has a strong focus on digital transformation, innovation, productivity and strategic communication. In his prior roles he served as Manager for Strategic Projects, Sales Manager & EU Program Manager amongst others. He is the founder of a Charity organization in Vienna, and is passionate about technology and innovation for improvement of health, wellbeing and sustainability.

Ximena Alema

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Ximena Aleman, Co-founder & CoCeo at Prometeo Openbanking

Ximena Aleman is co-founder and Co-CEO at Prometeo, the largest Open Banking platform in Latin America providing access to information and payments across 110 APIs from 50 financial institutions in 10 countries of Latam. Prometeo is an infrastructure fintech company striving to create an open and connected financial sector in Latin America through its single API. Over the last 6 years, Ximena has pushed financial innovation by building three fintech startups and pioneering open finance adoption across the region. As a leader in her field, she has used her voice to promote female entrepreneurship and create awareness of the funding gap for female-led startups.

Yael Nevo

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Yael Nevo, Founding Director and Senior Consultant

Yael Nevo is a Senior Consultant at Green Park, and Founding Director of Gender Rise. She is an LSE alumna with 20 years of experience in gender studies and international development work. Throughout her career, she collaborated with industry leaders such as Virgin StartUp, LSE Generate, The Guardian, UNDP, GIZ, and ASEAN, and was featured in Business Impact, BBC World News, Link Magazine, The Triple Bottom Line and DiversityQ, among others. As a Consultant, Yael developed an international, multicultural, paradigm-shifting body of work, revolving around the creation of strategic and action-oriented policy work and training, leading to sustainable change.

Learn more about the Excellence Awards

Book for the Gala Dinner

Meet the Judges

Andrew Wiseman, Strategy Director, Mustard

Babak Barkhordar, The Curious Companies Consulting

Bodo B. Schlegelmilch, Chair of AMBA & BGA; Head of the Institute for International Marketing Management

Dan Harris, Neurodiversity in Business

Daniele Pes, Industrial Partnerships Officer, Serial entrepreneur

Ella Rauen-Prestes, Fitbakes Founder and CEO

Geraint Evans

Kate Rhodes, Brand Activation Director, InSites Consulting

Kelly Beaver, Ipsos

Manley Hopkinson, Ocean Racer, Polar Explorer, Businessman, Executive Leadership Advisor, Author and Keynote Speaker

Mark Griffiths, Climate Impact Partners

Miika Mäkitalo, CEO, HappyOrNot

Mital Thanki, Founder, CEO (Spark Academy)

Monique Farquharson, Director, PetitSquares Ltd and Analytics & Optimisation Consultant, Accenture Song

Neil Gaught, Author

Nicolas Sauviat, World Benchmarking Alliance

Paul Hargreaves, CEO - Cotswold Fayre & Flourish Author & Speaker

Pavlina Proteou, Beyondcsr

Ralitza Iordanova, ACCOR HOTELS

Rita Monteiro, Head of Carbon, GFG Alliance

Rob Adediran

Rob McCargow, PwC

Robin Gibson, Marketing Director, Kortext

Sarmini Ghosh, Own Your Talent

Simone Hammer, Global Head of Marketing, Barco

Sotirios Ptochos, Senior Executive, Management | Co-Founder

Stephanie Mullins, Director of BlueSky Education, a specialist PR and communications consultancy for business schools

Tim Ackermann, Director Global Talent Acquisition & Rewards

Udochuku Richson, Eli Lilly

Ximena Aleman, Co-founder & CoCeo at Prometeo Openbanking

Yael Nevo, Founding Director and Senior Consultant

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