Our Advisory Group

Agnes taught her first maths lesson in 1984 in Scotland. She moved to Berkshire in 2002 as Head of Mathematics before becoming an Advanced Skills Teacher. She has worked in East Ayrshire, Bracknell Forest, Wokingham, Hackney and Merton in a range of pastoral and curricular roles.

Agnes's move into school leadership has seen her work across a range of contexts including single and mixed sex schools; areas with relative affluence and those with socio-economic challenges. In all these roles she has put a passion for young people to achieve at the heart of her work, which in turn has seen an upturn in the students’ academic and social outcomes.

Agnes has been headteacher of Ash Manor School in Surrey since January 2016 and is incredibly proud of what the young people in her school achieve.

Nick is passionate about realising a team’s full potential through effective leadership and has extensive cyber security experience across the public sector, start-ups and retail.

After 12 years in IT and security in the Royal Air Force in the UK and overseas, he worked with clients on their security operations and GRC while at Deloitte before moving to the Oxford University Press and then Oxford Nanopore Technologies, leading the information security team and was recognised with two finalist awards for his staff awareness and behavioural change programme.

Nick then took the positions of DCISO and Head of Cyber Security, and then CISO, at Holland & Barrett focusing customer trust.

Now with Assured as CISO in Residence, he is ensuring their continual resilience in growth and supporting their customers in improving their security.

Having entered the field of engineering having undertaken an MEng in Electronics, Evan joined London Underground under the TfL graduate programme working on Control & IT systems across an aged IT and control system infrastructure and was introduced into the field of Cyber Security when delivering capital upgrade projects for enhancing the Signalling Control systems back some 10 years ago.

Since leaving the Railway behind, Evan set out to establish a boutique consultancy aimed at offering security architecture and security consultancy services and has since had the pleasure in working in many areas through interaction with Clients in the finance, insurance, critical Infrastructure and e-commerce/retail sectors. Specialising in Cloud, Enterprise and Application security are the key areas that Evan enjoys and has recently began looking into defence tactics to further aid businesses in supporting themselves in an ever changing landscape.

An experienced professional, speaker, mentor, and podcaster; I spent 20 years in IT and has over 10 years’ experience leading information governance and security programmes in local government, the National Health Service (NHS) and the charity sector.

As founder of Cybility Consulting, I work with not-for-profit leaders to demystify cybersecurity and better protect their organisations. My podcast and YouTube channel, Cybility Savvy, offers bite-sized cybersecurity advice for not-for-profit leaders.

I have contributed to work with the UK National Cyber Security Centre, NHS Digital, and sat on the Management Committee of the BCS Information Risk Management and Assurance (IRMA)

After an extended career in the military, Steve is now Group Head of Operations for Branding Science. A global specialty care insights-driven consultancy supporting the worldwide pharmaceutical industry, helping teams successfully launch new medicines with confidence. Ultimately, Steve is responsible for creating the operational environment to allow his team to be creative and produce excellent market research.

Security, especially cyber is a huge part of his role and through the relationship with the company’s IT provider and education of his team, Steve strives to keep the companies data protected. His military career and previous experience working with Law Enforcement has enabled him to understand the risks associated with a commercial framework and to ensure business continuity.

With very limited previous experience in cyber, Steve sees this as not only a great opportunity to enhance his knowledge, but to promote the SECRC to companies across the region in a similar position.

Mark is an experienced Information security executive skilled in setting and implementing security strategy, leading security transformation programmes and building capability and teams to ensure sustainable improvement.

Mark has a wealth of experience gained over the past 25+ years leading, managing and implementing information security across a number of industry sectors including finance, banking, insurance, manufacturing, transportation, government and telecommunications.

Mark combines his experience with his passion for protecting customers and the wider public from cyber related incidents and losses. Mark’s crisis management credentials include multiple disasters from hurricanes to data centre loss, submarine cable breaks, dealing room relocation, fraud and abduction.

In a world where the only constant is change and where the pace of change is increasing, Mark embraces this and continuously looks for ways to help both individuals and companies make the step change in improvement that is needed.

Michael is a CISSP, CCSP and ITIL qualified Information Security Specialist with extensive expertise in the delivery of information security, complex IT services, ensuring efficiencies and leading change projects across large corporate environments.

With roles at HSBC, Royal Bank of Scotland and VTB Investment Bank, Michael has worked developed a varied range of technical skills with the ability to lead and engage with people of diverse and global backgrounds.

Michael is currently an Information Assurance Manager where he holds the responsibility for the development, implementation, delivery and support of the enterprise-level information security compliance strategy, with a focus on embedding ISO 27001 and being responsible for the Council’s compliance with GDPR, PSN and PCI-DSS.

Stephen Keslake is a specialist in security and risk management who currently leads the assurance of critical systems in the financial sector. He has a wealth of experience in intelligence and security, having led various initiatives in technical assurance, compliance, risk management, security architecture, and threat intelligence across the Armed Forces, Defence industry, and financial sectors.

In addition to his practical experience, Stephen has academic achievements that include an MSc in Risk, Crisis, and Resilience Management, as well as studies in Artificial Intelligence at Oxford University. He has played a key role in designing and implementing security policies, risk frameworks, and data protection measures, which have led to transformational thought leadership in large-scale projects and daily business operations. Stephen has been instrumental in designing and implementing security policies, risk frameworks, and data protection measures, fostering transformational thought leadership within large-scale projects and daily business operations.

Stephen is a member of the Security Institute, British Computer Society, and Institute for Strategic Risk Management.

Matthew is a security professional with a cyber and technology focus. His career has spanned a range of UK security related operational and policy roles across various Civil Service Departments.

Working closely with partners in industry, academia, law enforcement and the military in the UK and internationally, Matthew is experienced leading cyber security initiatives across the UK’s Critical National Infrastructure (CNI).

Currently he is Ofgem’s Senior Cyber Policy Lead, working on cyber resilience and emerging issues. Matthew is also a mentor for people looking to get into the cyber security field, a STEM Ambassador and is a member of the Security Institute. His current research area is the use of AI (Artificial Intelligence) in cyber security.

Rob May is renowned in business as a CyberSecurity figurehead. He has been the Managing Director of ramsac limited for nearly 30 years. He is the former Chairman of the Institute of Directors in Surrey. He is an international CyberSecurity Keynote Speaker and his TED Talk ‘The Human Firewall’ spawned two books. Rob is the UK Ambassador for CyberSecurity for the IoD. He has the Freedom of the City of London, is a Liveryman in The Worshipful Company of World Traders and was named as the first honorary lifetime member of the Cloud Industry Forum for his contributions to the sector.

Rob is passionate about helping people better understand CyberSecurity and he has won a number of speaker awards for having successfully done this, making the complex straightforward using real life examples, clear easy to understand explanations and humour.

Krista is the Business Development Manager for South East Grid for Learning (SEGfL), based at ESCC. A regional broadband consortia striving to improve delivery of education through innovative technological solutions, for schools and academies.

Tom is the Deputy Head of Southampton Business School and Director of Postgraduate Programmes. Tom has nearly 15 years experience of higher education with specific interests in digital marketing and the use of technology within higher education delivery mechanisms. Prior to his career in higher education, Tom held positions with Hampshire Constabulary, Dixons Stores group and SME enterprises.

Tom has also held the position of Associate Dean (Enterprise and Employability) in the Faculty, as well as Head of Department, and Head of School at other Universities in the UK.

His current role assumes overall responsibility for ensuring compliance of the Southampton Business School’s educational activity within quality assurance frameworks as well as the promotion and development of the business schools education strategy across its Postgraduate programmes.