ISBA

38 www.theisba.org.uk CONFERENCE SPEAKERS D4 15.30 – 16.30 Is sustainability still affordable in the light of climate change and recent events? Nigel Aylwin-Foster, chair Nigel is director of business development at ReEnergise. He completed a full first career in the Army, including command of the 2nd Royal Tank Regiment. He retired as a brigadier. Despite being a philosophy graduate, his final appointment was director of the technology division at the Defence Academy, responsible for technology education and project management training across all four services. He has worked continuously for education sector clients since he left the Army in 2009. He joined ReEnergise in 2015, to lead on sales and harness his knowledge of the challenges facing the education sector. He is a keen advocate of tackling climate change, but sees his primary role as providing pragmatic advice on the potential risks and benefits of each project, rather than taking a purely evangelical stance. He is a regular contributor to the Bursar’s Review. Paul Bilton Paul Bilton has been chief operating officer at Worth School for four years. Prior to this he held senior commercial roles at the National Audit Office (NAO) and the Ministry of Justice and senior finance roles at Grant Thornton and Vertex. He spent four years as policy manager at HM Treasury which followed a period as senior auditor at the NAO. Laura Bishop Laura is a strong advocate for heat pumps and encourages councillors and developers wherever she sees new developments throughout the UK. She believes that heat pumps should be deployed in place of traditional heating and cooling systems. As a qualified CIBSE heat network consultant, she has influenced the use of heat pumps for low and ultra-low heat networks on local and national levels. She is a director of the Ground Source Heat Pump Association and chair of the Council. Laura is a Chartered Mechanical Engineer. She holds a BSc in computer aided product design and has completed an MSc in renewable energy systems technology. Laura is managing director at Infinitas Design and in 2020 was named in the Women’s Engineering Society Top 50. Greg Cole Greg Cole holds a degree in statistics and a masters in defence technology. He served for 23 years in the Royal Artillery and, since taking early retirement in 2010, he has been the bursar at St George’s, Weybridge, Surrey. He was an ISI compliance team Inspector between 2016-2019. D5 15.30 – 16.30 Assimilating, recording and responding to strategic business risk in threatening times Sam Coutinho, chair Sam is a qualified accountant and for 22 years provided internal and external audit, and advisory services to independent schools in three specialist audit firms. Since 2019 she has provided risk and governance advice to the education and charity sectors. She has a number of governance roles including a governor of an independent school, chair of a cancer charity, a member of a multi-academy trust, a governor of state school and, more recently, trustee of AGBIS. All these roles give her tremendous insight into the governance and risk challenges facing those charged with governance including the risks they need to manage. Sam has always questioned whether doing what we have always done in the way that we have always done it, is going to drive our schools to be the best they can be. She is passionate about building resilience in schools and working with bursars and their boards to get it right. She has never been afraid to positively disrupt and help her clients address some of the uncomfortable challenges they face. Guy Biggin (As before) Cheryl Connelly (As before) Robin Koolhoven Robin is a restructuring and insolvency partner at Harrison Clark Rickerbys. One of the reasons he enjoys what he does is the sheer variety – he specialises in both contentious and non- contentious personal and corporate insolvency, so no two cases are ever the same. One thread which is central to his approach is creating a partnership with a client, in order to work together for the right result as efficiently as possible. The more he understands a client's business and objectives, the better he is able to tailor advice and offer commercial solutions. He works closely with insolvency practitioners as well as acting for a wide range of companies, based both in the UK and overseas. Tilden Watson Tilden is an accountant and qualified internal auditor and since 2014 has been head of education at Zurich Municipal. He spent 17 years grappling with public sector finance, policy, audit and risk issues gaining broad experience in real risk and reputation issues, including joining the crisis response team for the 1991 Braer oil tanker grounding. Tilden subsequently spent two years in the Treasury drafting risk management policy particularly around embedding risk in government departments and major government projects. For the past 12 years Tilden has worked for Zurich, delivering risk, reputation and resilience related services to nearly 300 key Zurich clients. For three years Tilden managed Zurich’s strategic risk consultancy in the UK supporting clients to embed risk management at the heart of their operations. Outside of Zurich, Tilden is a vice-chair of governors at his local school and sits on the performance and audit committee of The Conservation Volunteers, a major UK charity. Keynote 16.40 – 17.15 Governing boards, which questions should they be asking of the staff involved in child protection? David Smellie, partner, head of Safeguarding Unit, Farrer & Co (See David’s biography on page 16) Keynote 17.15 – 18.05 Equality and diversity – creating chances for young people Baroness Floella Benjamin, DBE (See Floella’s biography on page 18) Wednesday 24 November 2021 Keynote 09.15 – 10.00 Independent education – does it have a future? Rt Hon David Lammy MP, Shadow Lord Chancellor and Shadow Secretary of State for Justice (See David’s biography on page 20)