Evolve

A lively pedagogical engagement with how to embed enterprise in the curriculum.

About Evolve

Evolve is an annual conference for all academic and enterprise practitioners.

It provides a time and place to enjoy a range of workshops, presentations, and cross-disciplinary discussions on many topics, and is designed to let you explore the different ways you can develop enterprising skills among staff and students, develop inclusive curriculum for enterprise and entrepreneurship education what ever your discipline and enhance your own learning in the area. 

In 2022 it explored how the Fourth Industrial Revolution could support enterprise and entrepreneurship education for a smarter future.

Attend Evolve to:

  • better understand how to close the opportunity gap in your future professional pathways
  • see a range of case studies
  • network among peers 
  • attend workshops and develop your own skill set
  • take a fresh look at how to develop enterprise and entrepreneurship educational offerings

Evolve 2023


Keep in touch about Evolve 2023


Download the Evolve 2022 Programme

Previous Conference Speakers

Arigit Mitra

Arijit Mitra

Presenter 2022

CEO  Alturis.AI

Mitra is an experienced technologist working in fields applying data, artificial intelligence, time series and natural language processing to knowledge management since the late 90’s. His company, Alturis.AI,  is a UK based Health Tech company, offering software products to primary and secondary healthcare care organisations for clinical and patient data administration which was founded through receipt of an Oxford Brookes Catalyst award.  Previously he was the head of Innovation at the Institute of Ethical AI at Oxford Brookes University.

TITLE: A.I Entrepreneurs Reshaping Healthcare

The last decade has seen exponential growth in cloud computing, big data and analytics products and services. A.I permeates in the products and services we use, what we watch, eat, how we travel and how we look after our health.  A.I has a place in this system and has the potential to dramatically impact how we discover new drugs, administrate and deliver our heath-care. This talk describes the areas in which A.I can be applied to healthcare. The role of the start-up and the healthcare data challenge offered by the NHS today and the potential benefits to the patient if these challenges were addressed. 

Mbakeh Camera

Mbakeh Camara

Presenter 2022

Director of International Relations at The University of the Gambia

Camara is an award winning social-entrepreneur. He is experienced in regulatory and statutory compliance as well as the set up of a social enterprise and charity (not-for-profit). He holds great enthusiasm for partnership, development and sustainability and currently leads the Enterprise initiative and SDG forum at the University of The Gambia in partnership with The Ministry of Finance and UNDP.

Title: Enterprise, Entrepreneurship and Digital challenges of Industry 4.0 in the Gambia

The Gambian landscape for employment is changing with more Gambians now looking at self-employment as a viable option with the development of micro, small and medium sized enterprises (MSMEs).  With the right support and infrastructure, these MSMEs can play a vital role in the economic development of the country.  In order to provide a sustainable enterprise ecosystem, and the development of entrepreneurial mindset and skills,  the education establishments (including universities) can play an important role formally and informally.  

Professor Tim Vorley

Professor Tim Vorley

Conference Welcome 2022

Pro Vice-Chancellor and Dean of Oxford Brookes Business School

Vorley is the lead for Enterprise and Entrepreneurship on the Vice-Chancellor’s Group. He has a reputation as an engaged academic, having worked with a wide range of public and private partners. 

His current research focuses on enterprise and innovation policy and practice, and currently leads the Innovation Caucus (ESRC/InnovateUK), Co-Director of the Productivity Insights Network (ESRC), as well as partnering on several projects under the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund. 

Victoria Milne

Victoria Milne

Presenter 2022

CEO Tenshi Consulting. 

Milne is an ISO technical expert for innovation, a BSI design management expert committee member and expert coach for IDEACT Design Thinking.  She heads up Tenshi Consulting which is the field leader in embedding open innovation and design technology into business in order to enhance operations.

Title: Creative thinking is essential to 4IR, but can its effects be quantified through an RCT for business?

During the pandemic BEIS funded our PoC with Imperial College London's Dyson School of Design Engineering. We tested whether we could quantify the effects of Design Thinking as a skill for business. Lessons learnt and key findings of the ‘Design Thinking Training for SMEs’ grant winning project, will help to build up the evidence base around what does and doesn’t work in encouraging SMEs to adopt innovative technologies and management practices for improved productivity. 

Nikita Lukianets

Nikita Lukianets

Presenter 2022

Founder, Open Ethics

Lukianets works in R&D with interests related to the fields of AI and cognitive computing.  As a consultant, he is typically involved in working with the founding teams to develop product and technology roadmaps that help in building a user-focused culture. He brings hands-on experience in human-computer interaction, machine learning, and cybersecurity  He is the Founder of the Open Ethics initiative (www.openethics.ai) a company that fosters inclusive dialogue between experts and citizens to design systems where humans and AI successfully work together. He also a co-founded  PocketConfidant AI (www.pocketconfidant.com), a 24/7 coaching technology powered by artificial intelligence.

Dr. Frindolin Wild

Dr Fridolin Wild Keynote 2022 Professor at The Open University.

Dr. Wild is a Professor at the Institute of Educational Technology of The Open University, where he also leads the Performance Augmentation Lab (PAL).


Bridging the Skills Gap for Industry 4.0 with Human Performance Augmentation Tools

Augmented Reality has its firm place among the key enabling technologies for cyber physical systems. Many want to deploy guidance and training systems in the overlay reality, where our physical surroundings are transformed into a canvas for digital augmentation, so we can embed knowledge directly right where the action happens, where performance is needed. It is easy. Is it?

Danielle Roberts

Danielle Roberts

Panel Guest

Danielle Roberts is an entrepreneur from Birmingham who is the founder of Unlimited You, an online fitness platform that provides accessible and inclusive workouts for disabled people. She is a graduate of both Newman University and Aston University. She was a semi-finalist at the 2020 Santander Universities Entrepreneurship Awards where she won a Judges Choice award.

Adil Delwar

Adil Delwar

Panel Guest 

Adil Delwar is a Bangladeshi born in Saudi Arabia, living in the UK. He is the founder of PALM LIFE and Ask a Startup. He is a self-driven entrepreneur who holds a firm vision of contributing towards the world’s journey to sustainability. 

PALM LIFE is a new British brand bringing you up-cycled environmentally friendly products to replace single use plastic products.

Ask a Startup is a digital community platform for entrepreneurs, by entrepreneurs. The focus being a podcast show where we have conversations with budding entrepreneurs from different parts of the world.

Julia Pedersen

Julia Pedersen

Session Presenter 

When founder and managing director Julia Pedersen went back to work after having her daughter in 2016, she wondered how she would combine a successful professional life with parenthood. The answer is Sandburg’s concept of transforming work-life-balance into work-life-combination.

Sandburg is a small team of highly qualified and highly-motivated professionals with a wide range of expertise. We are based in Germany, Austria, England, and Denmark, and we work towards translating the Sandburg concept into reality for working parents. All Sandburg’s contributors share Julia’s passion and work pro-bono.

Haleh Moravej

Haleh Moravej

Session Presenter

Haleh Moravej, Senior Lecturer in Nutritional Sciences at Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU) and National Teaching Fellow (NTF).

Haleh is the founder of MetMUnch, a global award-winning, student-led social enterprise based at Manchester Metropolitan University. At the heart is a passion for healthy, sustainable and nutritious food.

Dr Jackie Brodie

Dr Jackie Brodie

Session Co-Presenter

Dr Jackie Brodie is the Business School’s Head of Learning and Teaching and an Associate Professor in Entrepreneurship and Innovation at Edinburgh Napier University. In 2019 she was awarded a National Teaching Fellowship and in 2020 her team was awarded an Advanced HE Collaborative Award for Teaching Excellence. 

Jackie has led several funded Learning, Teaching and Assessment (LTA) research projects and her most recent publication is looking at the value of supporting belonging in the online Entrepreneurship classroom.

Dr Renata Osowska

Dr Renata Osowska

Session Co-Presenter

Dr Renata Osowska Graduated with a PhD in Entrepreneurship from the University of West of Scotland. She is a Senior Fellow of the HEA and her main research interests are related to entrepreneurship and small business development and the influence of culture and socio-economic environment on entrepreneurial behaviour, including entrepreneurial mobility. 

Renata’s most recent accepted Journal paper is looking at belonging in online entrepreneurship spaces.

Ezechi Britton

Ezechi Britton

Panel Guest

A serial entrepreneur with over 15 years experience in FinTech. Ez’s journey has taken him from Software Developer to Co-Founder and CTO to Venture Capital.

He is currently a Founding Member, Principal and CTO in Residence at Impact X Capital Partners LLP a venture fund focused on supporting underrepresented entrepreneurs.

He is the Co-Founder of Code Untapped, a digital skills accelerator that helps companies find innovative product solutions by giving them access to diverse and underrepresented technologists through their innovation labs events.

He is a former Co-Founder of Neyber, a multi-award-winning Fintech firm focused on financial wellbeing, where he was the founding CTO and held numerous roles during his tenure including brand ambassador and NED.

Melanie Woolfenden

Melanie Woolfenden

Panel Guest

Melanie is chair of the Fujitsu Pride Europe network and has played a significant part in helping Fujitsu launch its global Pride network and maintain its recognition as a Stonewall Top100 employer for over 5 consecutive years. 

This has Included improving support for bi and trans employees, increasing visibility, senior leader engagement and empowering allies. 

This year she initiated and helped deliver Fujitsu first global virtual Pride event, uniting individuals and groups across the globe in a social media campaign #passtherainbow, promoting Fujitsu Pride’s values with the ‘Pride Pledge’, virtual Pride parade etc. 

Melanie is a founding member of the ‘Pride in Tech’ network of networks, where tech companies collaborate to help promote LGBT+ inclusion within the technology sector. Melanie is also involved in a steering group to address faith\belief inclusion within Fujitsu too.

Clairine Chan

Clairine Chan

Panel Guest 

Clairine was recruited into J.P. Morgan Chase to work on the modernisation strategy for the Athena Platform as a product manager. 

Athena is the main platform used by thousands of developers and is the primary trade and risk management system across all Investment Banking businesses globally. 

Athena is at the forefront of JPMC’s strategy to modernise applications and infrastructure through automation, toolchain and cloud technology adoption. 

In her role as a product manager, Clairine is driving the modernisation of Athena through the development of new trading applications, through analysis of the runtime platform for the migration to the cloud, and through engaging a community of developers to learn about the platform.

Dr Yuliana Topazly

Dr Yuliana Topazly

Session Presenter 

Dr. Yuliana Topazly is an Enterprise Educator, Business Adviser, Mentor and an award-winning social entrepreneur. 

She is a Student Start-Up Lead at Kingston Business School and lectures in Enterprise and Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Development and Growth of SMEs. She also mentors PhD students on the EnterpriseTECH STAR programme at Cambridge University.

In 2016, Yuliana was named ‘Top 100 Most Inspiring Mentors in the country' by The Sunday Times and the Centre for Entrepreneurs. 

Yuliana was featured in the Alison Rose's report on Female Entrepreneurship in 2019 and won Croydon Business Awards in 2018. Most recently she has been included in 'WISE 2020 Inspiration List': Women of inspiration: 100 social enterprise leaders showing Covid who's boss.

Cheryl Cole

Cheryl Cole

Session Presenter 

An editor specialising in, and passionate about, diversity and inclusion in the workplace.

Cheryl has accomplished across many mediums including online traffic, in-house publications, regional, national and international magazines, newspapers and websites with over 20 years of experience across the board.

Cheryl was awarded the GSK Silver Award for creating and delivering a commemorative book that covered 300 years of GSK, was runner-up in the GSK Winning Performance Awards and a finalist for Business Journalist of the Year at the Midlands Media Awards.

Professor Monder Ram

Professor Monder Ram

Keynote Panel Host

Professor Monder Ram OBE is the Director of the Centre for Research in Ethnic Minority Entrepreneurship (CREME). He is a leading authority on small business and ethnic minority entrepreneurship research and has published widely on the subject.

He has extensive experience of working in and acting as a consultant to small and ethnic minority businesses. 

Monder is a regular keynote speaker at international conferences and advises the government on the importance and value of ethnic minority businesses through his position on the APPG for BAME Business Owners. He also holds visiting positions at Warwick University and the University of Turku.

John Barker

John Barker

Session Presenter 

John Barker worked previously in the public sector, third sector, and health education in a variety of roles. John has most recently managed research and knowledge exchange across the University Enterprise Zone at UWE Bristol. 

At Simply Do Ideas, John manages a portfolio of research and innovation projects with clients including Rolls-Royce and the NHS. He is a published author in the domains of innovation, social mobility and widening access to Higher Education and is completing a PhD in Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Cardiff Metropolitan University.

Dr Nicolette Michels

Dr Nicolette Michels

Session Host

Currently Nicolette consults and researches in the area of entrepreneurial management, enterprise education and knowledge transfer between higher education and industry.

Nicolette has secured, worked on and supported a number of government-sponsored Knowledge Transfer Partnerships between the university and regional fast-growing SMEs as well as funded projects such as the NESTA 'Enterprising Colleges' Programme which worked to help embed enterprise into the UK South East's 80 plus Further Education colleges.

Dr Sola Adesola

Dr Sola Adesola

Session Host

Sola is a Senior Lecturer in Business and Management at Oxford Brookes Business School. 

Sola is an Athena SWAN and EDI Champion in the Oxford Brookes Business School, and acts as a catalyst to institutional policy on race and diversifying leadership on the Race Equality Steering Group and Race Equality Action Group.  

Toluwani Akaehomen

Toluwani Akaehomen

Session Presenter

Toluwani is the Founder of HerGenuityAfrika! an organisation with a mission to encourage, inspire and support entrepreneurship and leadership development among women of African descent.

She is also Lead Consultant at Vantage Dymensions Leadership & People Development and Head of School at Roegate College, an EdTech.

A doctoral candidate at Coventry University, UK, her research interests centre on leadership, migrant entrepreneurship and entrepreneurship education. 

Contact us

General enquiries and support

enterprise-support@brookes.ac.uk

Enterprise event enquiries

enterprise-events@brookes.ac.uk