Membership

Who we are

Innovators, disruptive thinkers, and change-makers challenging the status quo

About Chief Disruptor

Disruptive leaders believe like us, that disruption is a catalyst for opportunity and our name, Chief Disruptor, proudly embodies and celebrates that mindset. Since 2005, our membership community for business and tech leaders has brought together innovators, change-makers, and disruptive thinkers to share expertise, strategies and actionable insights.

Our purpose has always been to cut through the hype and enable our members to leverage these disruptive trends and technologies through our member-led insight reports, content, and community activities.

With ongoing geo-political unrest and a downturn in the economy, organisations now more than ever, need nimble, purposeful leadership that grasps the opportunities and proactively manages the threats of disruption. It’s not going to be easy but we are here to help guide you.

See all Activities

Join to access

Roundtable Discussion

Roundtable
Discussions

Expert Speakers

Expert Speaker-led
Activities

Quarterly Networking Activities

Quarterly Networking
Activities

Annual Benchmarking Reports

Annual Benchmarking
Reports

Research-led Thought Leadership

Research-led
Thought Leadership

Personalised Introductions

Personalised
Introductions

 

Connect.
Join and collaborate with the disruptors, change-makers and innovators across industry and remits shaping the way we live and work.

Become a Member

 

 

Learn.
Cut through the hype with the latest independent research, benchmarking surveys, thought-provoking content, and member-led activities.

Become a Member

 

 

Disrupt.
Develop your disruptive mindset and strategies to leverage the latest disruptive trends and technologies.

Become a Member

 

 

 

What Our Members Say

left-quote Created with Sketch.

A wide range of innovative topics delivered by a variety of talented individuals have added value during the Covid digital approach to the new working ecosystem.

Sean Taylor

Director, Canaccord Genuity Wealth Management
left-quote Created with Sketch.

Nimbus Ninety is about open and honest collaboration with a very diverse group. It is about the exchanging of information and opinions. A lovely way to learn.

Ian Bergin

Digital Project Manager, NHS Digital
left-quote Created with Sketch.

I attended ‘Navigating the Storm’ event and it added real value to me is being able to share learnings shared from different organisations and also connect with peers in breakout sessions to discuss and share ideas and challenges that you can take back to your own organisation.

Steve Goodyear

European Head of eCommerce Capability & Innovation, Mars
left-quote Created with Sketch.

Really good to hear different voices from different industries. Raing topics interested in on a personal level and professional level. A lot of nuggets of learning. Fascinating and diverse topics.

Clare Thompson

Agile Coach Manager, GSK
left-quote Created with Sketch.

Invaluable - Keeping people and the community connected. Nimbus Ninety offers a great platform to inspire the future with fantastic speakers and content.

Anjum Quayyum

Director - Chief Technology, Barclays

Members’ Advisory Board

They act as a sounding board for our plans for the Chief Disruptor community and support us to keep our razor-sharp focus on disruption in business and technology in everything we do.

 

Brandie Deignan

Brandie Deignan
Chief Executive Officer, Pier Health Group

Brandie takes a vision and makes it a reality through sound strategy development and operational excellence; intuitively identifying threads of opportunity that wind through an organisation, bringing them into a coherent whole and driving material business advantage.

Prior to joining the NHS in general practice as Chief Executive Officer at Pier Health Group, Brandie was Managing Director of Marco Pierre White Restaurants. She brought with her 19 years’ experience in the consumer service delivery across hospitality, retail and aviation, including time at British Airways, Tesco, Whitbread, Travelodge and Hilton Hotels.

Phil Scully

Phil Scully
Vice President of Technology, RS Group

Phil is the Vice President of Technology at RS Group. In his previous role as the CIO for Costa, he was responsible for corporate and customer systems globally. Phil joined Costa from the parent company Whitbread where he was Group CTO for 3 years with responsibility for Technology, Architecture, Data and Information Security functions.

Phil has 30 years of experience in the IT industry working in technology and delivery leadership roles on large, complex transformation agendas for BAA, Centrica, M&S and Whitbread.

James Wehner

James Wehner
Global Head of Digital Development and Experience, Avon Cosmetics

James is a visionary digital leader with extensive global product experience creating products and services for market-leading organisations. A human focussed problem solver, James believes in delivering technology solutions aimed at making the world a simpler and better place to live for everyone.

James Moore

James Moore
Chief Operating Officer, Shift

James is passionate about building innovative customer propositions at the intersection of marketing, data and digital products and putting together great teams and processes to run them. James has senior leadership experience at Trainline (General Manager of the UK Consumer Business), YourParkingSpace, Amazon, eBay, EA Games, Betfair and Sky. He is currently COO at Shift and is also an investor/advisor at multiple marketplace aggregator businesses including Wombat (easy investments app), and Jigsaw (dating marketplace app).

Maneesh Kaushik

Maneesh Kaushik
Senior Director Strategic Growth Insight, PepsiCo

Maneesh is a senior leader who leverages 21 years of experience across Insights & Strategy to drive business growth. He has a global remit, and a depth of experience across key markets in US, Europe, Middle East, Asia, LATAM & China. He is an industry Thought Leader, was a speaker at Cannes Lions 2018 on "Social Prediction: Understanding What Consumers Want", and was author of an ESOMAR paper on "How cultures influence shopper behaviour".

Ann Roberts

Ann Roberts
Chief People Officer, Flo Health

Ann is building rocketship companies in the high-growth tech space. She is the Chief People Officer of Flo, the #1 most downloaded Health app on a mission to improve the health and wellbeing of every girl and woman worldwide. Before Flo, Ann was the Group HR Director at Bumble, with previous gigs in Goldman Sachs and Rolls-Royce. She is interested in all things at the intersection of modern human capital practices, emerging tech, brands that are dripping with purpose, and business results .

Nick Lisher

Nick Lisher
Chief Marketing Officer,
Flo Health

Nick spent six years in the early 2000s producing websites for MTV, before joining successful UK dating site mysinglefriend.com, where he was Strategy Director for four years. Nick then joined mydeco.com as Marketing Director, before becoming Chief Marketing Officer for Massive Media, which was sold to IAC in December 2012. Most recently, Nick served as Chief Marketing Officer of Depop and UK Country Manager of Nextdoor. Nick is currently Chief Marketing Officer at Flo Health.

Ben Legg

Ben Legg
Chief Executive Officer &
Co-Founder, The Portfolio Collective

A seasoned technology CEO, Ben has lived in nine countries (worked in 60) and reinvented multiple industries. He is passionate about using technology, data, fresh thinking and awesome teams to build pioneering organisations.

Lieutenant General Tom Copinger-Symes CBE

Lieutenant General Tom Copinger-Symes CBE
Deputy Commander, UK Strategic Command

Tom spent his early career on operations with The Royal Green Jackets (now The Rifles) on operations in Northern Ireland, Bosnia, Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan. In 2014 he formed and commanded 1st Intelligence Surveillance & Reconnaissance Brigade and then, as a Major General, he commanded those capabilities. In 2019 he was appointed Director Strategy and Military Digitisation at Defence Digital, accelerating Defence’s digital transformation and increasing its adoption of digital technology. In May 2022, Tom took up the post of Deputy Commander UK Strategic Command on promotion to Lieutenant General.

Ange Johnson de Wet

Ange Johnson de Wet
Director | Head of Engineering, NatWest

Prior to working at NatWest, Angela worked At Deutsche Bank in the Cloud, Anti-Financial Crime Analytics, Data Quality and Finance Risk and Regulatory Reporting change and transformation teams. Prior to this, Angela worked as a Senior Manager at EY across Asia Pacific and EMEIA within the Financial Services Organisation. Angela started her career at IBM in Australia working as a developer, tester, designer and then business analyst and project manager. Angela has an honours degree in Mechanical Engineering (Mechatronics / Robotics) and Computer Science from the University of Melbourne, Australia.

 

Join our mailing list.
Subscribe to the Chief Disruptor Insights for latest insight and upcoming events.

Subscribe

 

Disruptive Insights

October Insights with Impact: Which cybersecurity threats pose the greatest threat to your organisation?

2024 has been a roller coaster year for the cybersecurity industry, and a very eventful period for cybersecurity leaders around the world. According

Why do organisations struggle to get ROI from technology?

The struggle for ROI from new technologies is real, with leaders all too often reporting a disconnect between the hype of new tools and the cold

May Insights with Impact: Will Disruptive Technologies in 2024 Augment Human Experiences, Replace Humans, or Create New Jobs?

From smartphones to 5G, and blockchain to the metaverse, disruptive technologies have changed the world of work in ways that were previously

June Insights with Impact: Embrace adaptive strategies and technologies to pivot and capture competitive advantage

At Chief Disruptor LIVE in June, we welcomed a lively and dynamic group of disruptors, innovators and change-makers to share ideas and brainstorm

July Insights with Impact: What's your greatest concern about your data?

There isn’t a person reading this who hasn’t experienced the fallout of poor data practices and governance. Recently I spent many frustrating and

August Insights with Impact: What is your greatest use case for AI?

AI continues to be a flavour of the month for Chief Disruptor members and was the hot topic of conversation at Chief Disruptor LIVE in June. During