Meet our March speakers
Principal - WorkVisible
Andy works with senior leaders and teams to facilitate change. Articulate and smart, Andy has a knack for bringing clarity to complex situations, finding a way through tough problems and creating an environment where things get done.
Whether working with client leaders or consulting teams, Andy has a history of helping people see clearly how they contribute, where they fit, and helps them play to their strengths and get great results - for them personally and for the team. Andy provides a broad range of skills from a varied career spanning technology, business consulting, transformation and change.
Andy De Vale
Head of Business Performance - Radtac
Alan Furlong
Alan Furlong (MBA, BA Hons, Cert Pos Psych) is the Head of Business Performance at Radtac and previously co-founder of Sherpa People Systems, a company that focused on executing 'people science' interventions to improve all human aspects of Agile Leadership, teams and culture.
With his previous business partner, he has built two successful seven-figure start up companies. One focused primarily on on-line learning and the second, focused on developing cloud-based small business performance dashboards.
In his previous corporate role he was responsible for the people aspects of over 1,800 staff in a large financial institution and was a key senior leader, helping to transform under-performing business units, supporting large acquisitions and coaching senior banking executives.
Alan is accredited in Positive Psychology studying with Tal Ben Shahar from Harvard University, world leading Positive Psychologist. Alan’s talks and presentations are always entertaining, engaging and real opportunities to
learn hard science in an easy way.
Chris Bexon
Associate Agile Coach and Trainer - Calba
Chris has over 20 years’ experience as a Product Owner, Scrum Master, Agile Transformation Coach, and Scum.org Professional Scrum Trainer (PST). He is passionate about building high performing organisations and teams, growing Agile cultures, and enabling teams to deliver value.
Chris has worked in both the public and private sector business domains. His focus is to transform organisations to achieve a sustained competitive advantage by adopting agile principles, practices and enable a culture of continuous improvement.
Chris is certified to deliver Professional Scrum Master (PSM), Professional Scrum Product Owner (PSPO), Professional Scrum Foundations (PSF), Professional Scrum Developer (PSD) and Professional Agile Leadership Essentials (PAL-E) training.
Cloud Native Transformation Specialists
Armakuni have extensive real-world experience leading and supporting people-process-technology transformation to cloud-native, removing the delays associated with traditional software development, focusing instead on more engaged, collaborative teams, application velocity, maximising business value from technology, and creating differentiation at scale, quickly.
Armakuni Team
Dan Connors
Co-Founder and Principal Consultant - Applied Influence
Dan joined the Applied Influence Group after 22 years in the British Army, where he served in a variety of specialist intelligence roles around the world. In addition to his operational work Dan spent time training the future generations of military influencers and analysts. Having spent the last 4 years applying the Applied Influence Group methodology alongside a wide spectrum of clients he now takes the lead on research and innovation.
Debbie Murphy
Chapter Lead Agile Delivery - Lloyds Bank
Debbie is currently coaching and Scrum Mastering at Lloyds Banking Group with a focus on working with people during periods of change or digital transformation.
Etzali Hernandez
Web Developer
Etzali is a web developer with a background in graphic communication design. Their professional experience includes wide-ranging projects for third sector organizations such as the Scottish Refugee Council, City of Sanctuary and Kinning Park Complex. They currently work at Passion4Social and Icecream Architecture.
Etzali is also involved with different migrant-led organisations as a community organiser and social action trainer working for greater representation of migrants and the QTBIPOC community in Scotland. During their free time, they volunteer at CodeYourFuture, DJ for community events, and write and perform poetry.
Gary Fleming
Agile Development Coach/Software Consultant
Gary is an agile coach, software crafter, and systems thinker. His main hobby is to try and help companies to build better software in better ways.
Sometimes this is by helping them with the messy human communication side of agile, sometimes its helping them reflect on their processes, and sometimes it's through teaching better software crafting practices - usually some of each. Coaching, mentoring, teaching, and showing; whatever helps in the context. You'll find him at various local meetups and international conferences trying to both share what he knows and learn from his peers
Founder and Head of Engineering - andEnds.
Joe Macleod is founder of the worlds first customer ending business. A veteran of product development industry with decades of experience across service, digital and product sectors.
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Author of Ends.
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Head of Endineering at AndEnd.
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TEDx Speaker
Wired says he is "An energetic Englishman, Macleod advises companies on how to game out their endgames. Every product faces a cycle of endings, from breakage to customer burnout to falling behind consumption trends. It's important to plan for each of them. Not all companies do."
Joe Mcleod
Karl Scotland
Agile Transformation Services Practice Manager - Teksystems
My name is Karl Scotland and I help businesses become Learning Organisations.
Over the last 15 years I have been an advocate of Lean and Agile approaches to achieve this, working with companies including the BBC, Yahoo!, EMC Consulting, Rally Software, Cisco and Legal & General. During this time, I have been a pioneer of using Kanban Systems and Strategy Deployment for product development, a founding member of both the Lean Systems Society and Limited WIP Society, as well as being active in the community and a regular conference speaker. As a result I was awarded the honorary Brickell Key Community Contribution Award at the 2013 Lean Kanban North America conference.
I am currently leading the Agile Transformation Services Practice for TEKsystems Global Services.
Kathy Thomson
Agile Coach - Blue River Consulting
Kathy is respectfully radical and radically respectful. She thrives when helping teams and individuals unlock their potential.
Kathy has worked in a software and change environment for over 20 years, first as a developer, then moving gradually to supporting, coaching and mentoring others. This is where her passion lies; creating a safe space for others to learn, explore and grow.
Lauren Cahill
Agile Coach - Lloyds Bank
Lauren is an experienced Agile Coach and Digital Transformation specialist, working with teams and executives on how you can use small changes to make a big difference.
Staff Technologist - Pivotal (VMware)
Michael Coté focuses studies how large organizations get better at building software to run better and grow their business. Most recently, he’s published Monolithic Transformation on this topic. He’s been an industry analyst at RedMonk and 451 Research, done corporate strategy and M&A, and was a programmer. He also co-hosts several podcasts, including Software Defined Talk. Cf. cote.io, and is @cote in Twitter. Texas Forever!
Michael Cote
Head of Interactive Play - Lego
Melissa Pickering heads up the Interactive Play Center at LEGO, leading a team of designers that work across the LEGO portfolio to blend digital and physical play. She has worked in the field of interactive kids products for 15 years, from innovating theme parks as a Disney Imagineer to founding an edtech startup.
For the last 5-years at LEGO she built up a team to innovate LEGO play through digital experiences. Examples include gamified play like NEXO Knights and learning through play like the Star Wars Droid Commander. The overarching principle for these experiences are to use technology to engage kids in play with the physical LEGO brick.
Melissa Picking
Natal Dank
Director and Founder - Southern Blue Consulting
With the aim of disrupting HR for the good of humans, Natal is an Agile HR pioneer and one of the first to provide Agile HR coaching, training and consulting in the UK, Europe and Australia.
Natal combines her extensive background in HR, organisational development and workplace learning with innovative Agile practices, to offer a truly unique and transformative approach. The more she witnesses the energy Agile HR ignites, the more convinced she becomes of its restorative power, not just for the HR profession but for the future of work.
Natal is the co-founder of the Agile HR Community, as well as chief HR Agillist at Southern Blue Consulting, and provides Agile HR training, certification and regular meetups across the globe.
Natal works hands-on with HR teams and leaders to help them embrace an Agile mindset, revolutionise their results and guide Agile organisational transformation.
Per Hammer
Vice President - JP Morgan Chase
Per Hammer has been building software for large and small companies, working in large and small teams, for 25 years, and is now applying the skills and techniques more commonly associated with agile development and product management to the larger organisational challenges of employee engagement, innovation, and culture change.
For the past 3 years, Per has been co-leading the communities of practice initiative across J.P. Morgan’s Global Technology organisation, and is the Social Learning Practice Lead for the company. He works in the Chief Technology Office and is based in Glasgow.
Head of Diversity and Inclusion - Monzo
Listed as one of the UK's Top Most Influential Women in Tech and an international multi-award winner for her services to Diversity and Inclusion in industry, Sheree is the Head of Diversity and Inclusion at Monzo; Board-Appointed Global Ambassador, Women Who Code; Contributor, Forbes.
Sheree is a global Diversity and Inclusion leader, having worked in many regions providing leadership and training to C-suite/Executive leadership to develop fully formed focused diversity and inclusion strategies. As an industry leader, she has spoken at many global events, conferences and leadership sessions and is regularly profiled for her work.
Sheree and her work have been featured in many publications, such as Forbes, FastCompany, Evening Standard, HuffPost, Business Post, Marie Claire, Wired, ComputerWeekly, The Guardian, Sunday Telegraph, Newsletter & many more. The aim of her career is ensuring people are aware of the fantastic opportunities the industry has to offer and make certain that all humans are able to benefit from these and reach their full career potential.
Sheree Atcheson
Stephanie South
Global HR Business Partner - HSBC
Steph is an HR Business Partner for HSBC Technology and is passionate about bringing agile principles into HR. Experienced in transformations, and particularly the people and culture aspects, Steph enjoys sharing lessons learned and how they can apply in the HR space, in order to transform our own function.
Stephen McAinsh
Founder and Agile Coach - Calba
Stephen is an agile coach, founder of Calba, and started Lean Agile Edinburgh in 2013.
He strongly believes in focusing on people before process and tools, influenced from his past experience as a personal development leader with charities Venture Scotland and Raleigh International – 4 overseas expeditions.
Stephen started his professional career back in the 80’s with Hewlett-Packard, writing software to automate manufacturing processes. First day on job was being shown a Kanban system. After HP, he moved into process improvement consulting and change management, travelling across Europe, Japan, and lived in Silicon Valley for a while.
Stephen started Calba in 2008, shortly after starting a family, to focus on providing agile coaching and training in Scotland. Loves the outdoors and tries to surf occasionally.
Senior HR Business Partner - BT
Tanya is an Agile HR enthusiast, scrum master, and coach who has supported tech leaders and HR departments in various stages of transformation. Specialising in starting with the mindset and making Agile principles and techniques accessible, digestible, and practical with teams who are new to it, particularly support functions and the people side of Agile.
Tanya Spencer
Valerie McLean
Director - Because Agile
Valerie is an agile geek, she loves to learn and help others flourish. She gets a buzz from the small things, the little changes that make a positive impact on individuals and teams.
She has knowledge and expertise in the area of organisational agility, helping organisations adapt to keep up with the fast-paced world we live in. Coming from a background in Scrummastery and Agile ways of working within software teams, Valerie is passionate about enabling organisations to find new and better ways of working to improve their flexibility, reaction to market changes and ultimately create the right solution, for the right people, at the right time.
Valerie is a consultant and an active member and organiser within the Lean Agile community in Glasgow.
Chief Operating Officer - Armakuni
In this talk, we will discuss what is agile HR, how the people function (human resources) can help your (business) transformation, and what we have learned in our own agile HR transformation. After all, agile is about people first.
Zenon Hannick
You can buy tickets for our March event on Eventbrite.