20 years experience in Rolls-Royce, working across Civil Aerospace. Experienced commercial professional and contract account manager, having worked with customers, suppliers and partners in Europe, Asia, Africa and the Americas. Led a number of organisational change programmes within Rolls-Royce, including the creation of a Commercial Shared Service (providing transactional support to the General Counsel teams). Created a Digital Solutions Team within General Counsel, responsible for new technology improvements. Currently lead the General Counsel Capability Centre, accountable for early career strategy, commercial degree apprenticeships, training, outsourcing and digital solutions, business transformation and policy/process.

Adrian Furner has 30+ years' experience in the design, implementation, and delivery of commercial transactions using a wide portfolio of models from the simple traditional models though to new and novel business models. He has worked in a variety of sectors including defence and security, aviation, technology, infrastructure, banking and financial services, creative industries, public sector, and natural resources.

As an experienced practitioner Adrian is focused on 'Commercial Excellence', supporting organizations in developing and leveraging their 'commercial acumen' to gain better business outcomes. This includes: raising their commercial awareness; designing and implementing innovation models; and deploying relational contracting to enhance business performance.

Adrian held a number of VP/Director level commercial, procurement, and operations roles within FTSE30 organisations, giving him significant cross-border international experience ranging from complex capital intensive projects, thought to lower complexity operational opportunities. This includes: multi-billion £, long term Private Finance Initiative (PFI) bids; joint venture creation and management; outsourced training management; portfolio management; asset financing; civil aircraft sale, leasing and broking; M&As; technology innovation investment; and fully financed naval ship reactivations.

Adrian is a member of the Institute of Engineering and Technology (IET), and an Honorary Fellow of World Commerce & Contracting (formerly IACCM), where he is a former member elected Board Director. He has a BEng in Production Engineering and Management from the University of Nottingham, and has also completed the London Business School Corporate Finance Programme along with executive education programmes at both Wharton Business School and Oxford Saïd Business School. Adrian has contributed to a number of books on commercial and contract management and co-authored the Professional Services Leadership Handbook (www.koganpage.com/pslh).

Barbara Chomicka is a creative thinker and problem solver, named among the most inspirational women in contract and commercial by World Commerce and Contracting.

She is a registered architect and certified project, contract and commercial manager, combining the design and management disciplines for over 20 years, optimizing the delivery of projects and programmes.She has received two doctorate degrees from British universities and has produced a body of published work endorsed by the leading global professional associations.

Her professional, academic and voluntary work has been recognized with APM Herbert Walton Award, Women in Construction Project Manager of the Year Award and Communitas Making the Difference Award. Her approach to life exemplifies her belief that everything we face is a project – a collaborative enterprise requiring the right methods to resolve it. In her thought-provoking writing and presentations, she promotes a 360-degree duty of care inside and outside of work.

As Chief Procurement Officer at Proxima, Simon is accountable for driving product and product service innovation, market and media relations. His job means that he works with and advises executives procurement teams and vendors on all thing’s procurement now and next. He is a two-time failed tech entrepreneur, master shape shifter in PowerPoint and regular commentator in the media. As a father of two young girls when not working he spends his time moonlighting as a taxi driver, dinosaur or being ridden around his house like a horse.  

Chris has over 20 years’ experience in contract management working for BT managing major contracts with multi-national clients. He currently leads the contract management team for the Global Manufacturing sector within BT. He has extensive international experience working with clients and suppliers around the world to deliver BT’s cloud, networking, security, and collaboration services. He has a passion for partnership, collaboration, and relationship management in order to deliver effective contract outcomes.

Bernadette Bulacan is a frequent speaker regarding the digital transformation of global enterprises. As Vice President and Lead Global Evangelist for Icertis, the recognized leader in enterprise contract lifecycle management, she is charged with sharing contract management best practices with legal and contracting teams and evangelizing the use of innovative technologies like AI/ML and blockchain. Prior to Icertis, Bernadette was a co-founder and Assistant General Counsel of Serengeti Law, which created e-billing and matter management platform, Serengeti Tracker (acquired by Thomson Reuters.) She held leadership roles at Thomson Reuters and QuantAI, an intellectual property AI analytics start-up. Bernadette was recently named 2020 Women of LegalTech by the American Bar Association. Bernadette advised start-up technology companies at Graham & Dunn, a Seattle firm and Venture Law Group, a Silicon Valley firm. Bernadette received her undergraduate degree from Yale University and her law degree and LL.M from the University of Washington.

Sangeeta Khorana is a Professor in International Trade Policy in the Department of Entrepreneurship, Finance and Economics at Aston Business School. Currently, she holds the prestigious endowed Chair of International Trade Policy awarded by the Institute of Export and International Trade, a UK based registered charity that aims to support and promote international trade as a force for social and economic good.

Sangeeta joined Aston Business School in July 2023 from Bournemouth University, having previously worked at the Universities of Keele, Aberystwyth, St Gallen and ETF-Zurich. She is a former Indian civil services officer, having worked with the government of India. She holds a PhD in International Trade and Development from the University of St Gallen in Switzerland.

Sangeeta works at the intersection of WTO trade policy and bilateral agreements, focussing on free trade agreement (FTA) negotiations. She has established an international reputation for her research on FTA negotiations through economic modelling and impact assessment expertise. She has provided evidence to the UK, EU and Scottish Parliaments as well as the Welsh Assembly. In addition, she has been associated with projects that aim to build capacity of trade officials on trade negotiations, examples being Vietnam, Canada, Bhutan, Thailand, UAE, among others. Currently, her research agenda is focused on exploring ‘inclusive’ trade and ‘sustainable’ supply as well as procurement liberalisation through FTAs and policy reform in the Caribbean region.

Her policy expertise and commitment to inclusiveness in the area of international trade has resulted in working with the WTO Gender Hub, international organisations, corporates, business associations, and parliamentary bodies on trade policy matters. Sangeeta was on secondment to HMG Department for Business and Trade to support with trade negotiations.

Janet founded Cognia to integrate how legal services are provided by bringing creativity, trust and sustainable outcomes. Over nearly ten years she has built a diverse talented team who deliver clients integrated, digitised managed legal services.

She leads the organisation in listening to clients, adapting models to meet their needs and collaborating with partners to provide high quality solutions to banks, global corporations and law firms. Building on her varied, international experience developed at EY, Clifford Chance and Integreon, Janet is a hands-on operator who brings her informed business acumen to work with clients in designing solutions to their challenges. This is made possible by Janet’s commitment since Cognia’s launch to building diverse teams that thrive and give clients access to the best talent.

Julian Davis leads the operations team at World Commerce & Contracting in delivering the best service possible to members, encompassing learning management, marketing, member services, content and all elements of technology essential in delivering WorldCC’s services. Having spent 12 years gaining a grounding in all aspects of IT, he studied for a Post-Graduate Diploma in Business Administration from Durham University Business School. He has since held several IT Director roles and has more recently been providing interim leadership to organisations across a wide variety of industries. The increasingly outsourced nature of IT has required Julian to undertake numerous supplier selection processes, negotiate contracts, deliver transitions and ultimately performance manage suppliers to ensure benefit realisation. He is now applying this wealth of knowledge and experience to define and deliver the operations strategy for WorldCC.

John  has been involved in contract management for over 30 years. Crafting his career in BT Syncordia which then went on to become BT Global services. Having experience in managing large scale multi £m outsource contracts across many verticals globally, John took this experience into the BT Contract Management Centre of Excellence where he was involved in building standards across BT’s entire contract portfolio and authored the contract management playbook.

After leaving BT John continued to progress his passion in the build of contract teams into Student Loans, University of Edinburgh and now at Scottish Water where he heads the Digital Contract Management team.

Throughout John has achieved building many successful contract relationships as well as high performing contract managers, teams and practices.