Santiago Navarro
Santiago Navarro is a serial entrepreneur with previous startup experience in the wine industry. His first start-up in 2011, Vinopic Wines, was an online retailer which was the first to use science to judge and score wines for their intrinsic quality. Following this, he went on to co-found Nightly.travel, the world's only hotel booking site to split a traveller’s stay across two hotels to enable them to save as much as 70%. Santiago’s now focused on Garçon Wines, as CEO and co-founder, innovating the 35 billion bottles used annually in wine and aiming to make flat, sustainable bottles the dominant primary packaging in wine.
Rebekah Hall
Renowned for its cold-pressed Performance Juices, non-dairy Grown Up Milkshakes, first-to-market adaptogenic Hotshots and the UK’s first Cannabidiol (CBD) soft drink Dutch Courage, Botanic Lab products are unapologetically taking over the shelves of Waitrose, Selfridges, Holland & Barrett, Ocado, Co-Op and EAT.
Since 2014, Rebekah’s strategic vision and business acumen have been the driving force behind Botanic Lab, rewriting the rulebook on stereotypical ‘health drinks’ and catapulting the business to success in a very competitive landscape.
Rebekah followed her studies in economics with a successful 10-year career as a city corporate financier. She has a tough and pragmatic approach to business, developed and fine tuned in a challenging and sometimes ruthless environment. She is a firm believer that one of the key personality traits required in a successful entrepreneur is an abundance of resilience, preferably accompanied by a sense of humour. Rebekah is a regular speaker at female focused and entrepreneurship events, providing an honest and refreshing insight into the process of launching and building a brand. Like her drinks, what you see is what you get.
As a somewhat unexpected counter to this, Rebekah is also an experienced yoga teacher, having practiced traditional ashtanga yoga for many years. She knows the health and wellbeing sector inside
out, both as a consumer and also a business owner, but is unashamedly cynical about it.
She says, “I’m no health pin up. Our products were developed for someone just like me. Yes, I’m health aware, but with the best will in the world I drink, never restrict what I eat and don’t have time to devote
my existence to food prep and gym selfies. I won’t feel guilty about that. I am also a stickler for quality. I want the best that my money can buy and I want it to be convenient, taste good and if it looks great
as well, that’s a bonus. Life is too short for bad drinks, whatever your lifestyle choices. That’s why we create drinks that use ancient botanicals in a new way. Drinks that look to the future. Drinks that do
something.”
Tim Vehling
Adrian Ong
Andy Sage
Joji Waites
Joji Waites has been involved in aviation flight safety for 23 years, 20 of which were spent at the UK Civil Aviation Authority in the areas of safety analysis, research, project management, safety planning and leadership roles culminating in becoming Head of Safety Intelligence. On leaving the CAA in 2016, Joji undertook a number of safety consultancy roles including assisting drone operators in producing operational safety cases. Joji also gave a key note speech on drone safety regulation at the Farnborough International Airshow in 2018. He now works at the British Airline Pilots’ Association (BALPA) as a Flight Safety Specialist. In his spare time Joji is a keen GA pilot with interests in travel, health and fitness and motorsport.
Tim McCarthy
