Prior to Williams F1 Team, Richard spent 13 years working in operations and supply chain improvement consulting, initially with Newton Europe and latterly Williams Advanced Engineering. He worked with over 100 businesses from a range of sectors to deliver measurable improvements in cost, delivery and quality. He studied Engineering at Cambridge University and is fascinated by learning from sport and applying it in business.

Stephen is rated as one of the top 3 lecturers at one of Europe’s top MBA Business Schools; Cranfield. He has a reputation of taking complex management concepts such as Project, Programme Change and Crisis Management and being able to distil them down, into highly informative and fast moving lectures – often using “storytelling” techniques. His attitude is “if you haven’t done it – you shouldn’t be teaching it!”

Unusually, for an academic, he has actually has spent most of his working life in real business and still runs his own, highly successful, Project Management Company.

Stephen is an unusual blend of Academic, Businessman and Teller of Tales. He has taught across the World and has appeared on National Radio and TV.

A leader in the field of portfolio and programme management, Martin Parlett is currently Head of Programme Management Office for the Government of Montserrat, responsible for the delivery of the country’s ambitious portfolio of transformational change, including national infrastructure development. Prior to his Caribbean posting, he led the establishment of the Enterprise Portfolio Office, together with the portfolio management framework, for managing $2.5bn annual investment at Sellafield Ltd – the world’s most complex nuclear site. In 2018, he was named as one of Confederation of British Industry’s 35 Under 35 business leaders and served on its committee. Parlett was a campaign manager for Barack Obama’s presidential campaign in Virginia in 2008 and is a published author, charitable trustee, and board director. A proponent of contextualised, fit-for-purpose and people-centric implementation, he is the recipient of the Association for Project Management’s PMO of the Year Award 2020.

About Speaker:

Michelle Ward is an interim Programme Lead currently working at Defra and is responsible for the delivery of the Unified PMO Programme across Corporate Services plus parts of Defra group. Partnering with Wellingtone PPM, Michelle and her team have successfully deployed Project Online and Power Bi across Corporate Services Portfolio to enable a single way of working for the PPPM community. Michelle uses her experience in leadership, strategic thinking, PPM practice, business change and communications to facilitate the delivery of her stakeholder’s vision. Her previous programmes include Smarter Ways of Working, delivering PAS3000 initiatives across the Public Sector, & BT’s acquisition of EE, leading on pre-merger discovery & post-merger commercial efficiencies.

Presentation: Turbocharge your PMO

During this engaging presentation, Michelle will take you through the similarities between the roles within PMO and those within the Formula 1 pit crew and beyond. Focusing on the DEFRA journey, attendees will learn about the wins, the losses, and the overall championship to be the PMO that comes out on top.

About Speaker:

Over the last 15 years, Scott has gained extensive experience working in a number of PMO and Change Management leadership roles across various central and local government organisations, playing a key part in helping them deliver projects and programmes and their strategic transformation objectives. Two and half years ago, Scott made the move into the commercial sector by taking on the role of PMO Manager at NFU Mutual. He is focused on building a PMO service that delivers value-adding PMO functions whilst acting as the ‘conscience on the shoulder’ across a varied and complex portfolio.

Presentation: NFU Mutual – Our PMO Journey

At NFU Mutual we put our customers at the heart of everything we do, care about our people and strive to build a sense of community in our team. Our PMO has spent the last 3 years re-inventing itself from the ground up, through the development and implementation of an ambitious programme of continuous improvement whilst continuing to enable the successful delivery of our change portfolio. We want to share our journey, including what we have learned and what we are planning to do next and the anticipated challenges.

About Speaker:

Chad Robson assumed the role of Vice President of Strategy and Operational Optimisation for Ontic in January 2018. In this role, Chad was tasked with elevating the business by implementing a Global Project Management Office with teams based in the US and UK. This included recruiting a qualified cross-functional team at each site as well as implementing Microsoft Project Online and Project for the Web.

Prior to his current role, Chad was the General Manager for Ontic’s Chatsworth, California facility. Additionally, Chad has over 20 years of experience performing senior roles in Finance, Operations, Supply Chain, and IT. He earned a Bachelor of Science degree from Florida State University and a Master of Business Administration from Middle Tennessee State University. Chad lives in Florida with his wife Kristy and 2-year-old little girl, Kylie.

Presentation: Start your Engines: PMO Formation

During this engaging presentation, Chad will take you through what it takes for your PMO to go from zero to 100mph. With a focus on people and benefits realisation, Chad and his team successfully delivered not just systems, but governance, capability, and community to the PPM teams and the wider Business areas to drive a cultural change, fit for the future. Attend this session and you will leave inspired, thoughtful, and equipped to turbocharge your own PMO to drive better business value.

About Speaker:

PMO specialist, with extensive experience (15 years+) in creating, refining and producing high-quality PMO functions that enable the successful delivery of project, programme and portfolio of works. I’ve worked across both public and private sectors, and across a number of disciplines including Estates, Property, Healthcare, Education, Charity, Finance and IT.

Presentation: Turbocharge your PMO – Mencap’s journey into the world of a PPM solution – Project for the Web

Our vision at Mencap is simple – We want the UK to be the best place in the world for people with a learning disability to live happy and healthy lives. To enable us to deliver our strategy and look at new ways of working across the organisation, we needed a PPM solution to assist and enhance our capability. From day 1 our partnership with Wellingtone enabled us to not only pick a solution that was suitable but we built one that was bespoke to our induvial needs.

Scott is a creative PMO, Programme & Project Manager with 23 years of experience mainly within Financial Services and more recently Non-Profit Organisations. Before moving into project management my experience largely comprised IT Computer Operations & Programming working with programming languages such as Assembler and COBOL. Notable pre-Commission activity includes Global Credit Risk & Global Trade Finance implementations for Standard Chartered Bank and ESMA Regulatory Compliance for S&P Global. This extensive experience has resulted in the realisation that my best and most enjoyable work sits within the creation, and operation of, PMO functions. A willingness to learn precludes using the epithet ‘Expert’ and considers ‘point in time’ solutions as only opportunities for improvement.

Federico is an international facilitator with over 19 years of experience throughout Latin America, the US, India and Europe. As the CEO of GE360, Federico aims to transform the PPM world with firms dedicated to training and consulting, engineering, business management, occupational safety, IT, and Executive Training through a variety of methods including, Agile, Lego Serious Play, and Coaching. Federico is the Director of the Board of Accreditation Center for the PMI and is involved in various non-profit and education organisations.

Amy Lewis is a PMO specialist with extensive experience in Central Government and a particular focus on the value of the PMO as a strategic business partner. As Client Lead for Wellingtone, Amy is responsible for Project Online deployments namely within the Public sector. A key interest to Amy is both personal and professional development – and, significantly, how this can increase a PMO’s value. Having started off life as a Project Administrator as well as a former qualified teacher, Amy is well-placed to discuss the varied paths you can take to enter the world of PMO and accelerate your PMO career.

About Speaker:

Ricardo is a Project Management professional with more than 15 years of professional experience leading projects, programs, portfolios and project offices in more than 40 countries, in Europe, Africa, Asia, North and South America, in the technology industry, working for multinational companies like Ericsson and Telefonica. A firm believer of the project economy and promoter of the project manifesto principles, like: “We believe that ideas are made a reality through projects”. Involved in multiple pro bono activities like mentoring project managers, small and medium businesses and start-ups.

Presentation: Transformation: A Journey

During this engaging session, Ricardo will take you through the journey that transformation is on; reflecting on the past and looking towards the future. With a focus on how transformation can support organisations, teams, and individuals in a volatile world, this session is sure to inspire you to turbocharge your PMO strategy!

Mike has nearly 20 years of experience helping organisations across many industries establish or improve their project and programme delivery capability and maturity. As part of this work Mike has set up and managed several PMOs. He is proficient in the use of diagnostic tools such as the P3M3 maturity model and the APM Competence Framework to establish a baseline measure of delivery capability on top of which a meaningful improvement programme can be built.

Emma-Ruth Arnaz-Pemberton is the Director of Consulting Services at Wellingtone; a PPM consultancy with offices in Windsor (UK), Madrid (Spain) and Dublin (Ireland). She is a Fellow of the Association for Project Management (APM), is part of the PMI UK Board, member of IPMA AEIPRO, PMI Spain, an Axelos P3M3 Assessor, and an NLP Master Practitioner with a Diploma in Modern Applied Psychology.

Emma-Ruth is a PMO, PPM specialist with extensive experience in the change management industry and a particular focus on collaboration, reminding us that we should be human first and change champions second.

She is involved extensively with a number of organisations; notably the ResponsiblePM.Org, Project Management Without Borders, Project Managers Against Poverty, and PM4Change. Emma-Ruth organises Wellingtone’s two flagship annual events; the FuturePMO conference and Project Management Day of Service.