Meet our 2022 speakers

Dr Toni Sant is Director of the Digital Curation Lab at MediaCityUK with the University of Salford. Between 2014 and 2020 he was the Artistic Director of Spazju Kreattiv, Malta’s National Centre for Creativity. Toni has written widely about digital curation and media archaeology, starting with his book Franklin Furnace & the Spirit of the Avant Garde: A History of the Future (Intellect, 2011). Other recent books include Documenting Performance: The Context and Processes of Digital Curation and Archiving (Bloomsbury, 2017) and The Spazju Kreattiv Art Collection (Fondazzjoni Kreattività, 2020). In 2021 he was awarded the National Book Prize of Malta for literary non-fiction for a book of Facebook posts called Jien-Noti-Jien (Klabb Kotba Maltin, 2020), which he co-authored with EU Literature Prize winner Immanuel Mifsud during the first Covid-19 pandemic lockdown. He is also an Associate Editor of the International Journal of Performance Arts and Digital Media, published by Routledge.

Deeply passionate about living a life that is the fullest, most authentic expression of who you are as human beings, Dr Alisha is committed to helping you rediscover your inner light, design a career that you’re proud of and live a life of ultimate freedom and purpose. As a Medical Doctor, High Performance Coach and Entrepreneur, having lived her journey from breakdown to breakthrough she understands exactly what it takes to recreate your identity, step into your greatness and serve at your highest level – both in your professional and personal life.

She is the host of The Medic Today Podcast where she is inspiring our very own NHS doctors to empower their own identity and well-being, and serve from their deepest level of authentic expression.

Dr Paul Comfort is a Reader in Strength and Conditioning and programme leader for the MSc Strength and Conditioning at the University of Salford. He is also an adjunct professor at Edith Cowan University in Western Australia and is currently serving on the National Strength and Conditioning Board of Directors. Paul is a founder member and accredited member of the United Kingdom Strength and Conditioning Association. He is a senior associate editor for the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research and an associate editor for the European Journal of Sport Science, the Strength and Conditioning Journal and Sports Biomechanics. Paul has authored / co-authored >150 peer reviewed journal articles and is also co-editor of the textbooks, ‘Advanced Strength and Conditioning: an evidence based approach’ and ‘Performance Assessment for strength and Conditioning.’

Nuala Walsh is a board advisor, behavioural scientist, and award-winning marketeer. After three decades in investment banking and asset management, she advises Fortune 500 clients as CEO at MindEquity, and is a Founding Director of the Global Association of Behavioural Scientists. Her Non-Executive appointments span commercial, sports, and non-profit sectors including UN Women, World Athletics, the Football Association, and the Innocence Project. Recognized among the Top 100 Most Influential Women in Finance, she now publishes in the Harvard Business Review, Forbes, and Psychology Today, and has been interviewed by BBC, Fox Business, and The Telegraph. She is a Visiting Speaker at the London School of Economics, Harvard Kennedy School, and INSEAD.

Lovelda Vincenzi is a world-renowned Speaker Coach, Moderator and MC. She helps female leaders get invited and paid to speak on their dream stages without pitching, discounting or wasting precious time. Lovelda is frequently found introducing and facilitating conversations with political figureheads, celebrities, business executives and entrepreneurs. Tom Daly, Margrethe Vestagar (European Commissioner for Competition), Monica Lewinsky, Kunal Nayyar (Big Bang Theory), and Paul Polman (Former Unilever CEO) are just some of the well-known people she has worked with. 

Born in the Caribbean, developed in Papua New Guinea, and refined in the UK, Lovelda’s international upbringing means she intuitively understands the dynamics and benefits of true diversity. Having noticed the gender imbalance on prominent international stages, Lovelda’s mission became to ensure that authentic, powerful female voices were much more widely heard in the world.  Her venture World Class Female Speakers was born; Lovelda teaches female business owners and experts how to increase their visibility and profile, so that they can be found, booked and paid to share their expertise.

Lovelda also hosts The Lovelda Show – Women of Power Podcast, showcasing the breadth of female power.

Jim McVeigh joined Manchester Metropolitan University as Professor and Co-Director of the Substance Use and Associated Behaviours Research Group at the Department of Sociology in January 2020.  Prior to this he was Director of the Public Health Institute at Liverpool John Moores University. While he has an interest in all forms of drug use, his main area of research is human enhancement drugs, in particular, the use of anabolic steroids and associated drugs. Over the last 30 years he has published extensively on the topic, organised and hosted several international conferences and has recently seen his co-edited Routledge book Human enhancement drugs published in paperback form. He is the founder and chair of the UK anabolic steroid academic network and founder of the parallel practitioner network under the banner www.anabolicsteroids.org.uk. He remains committed to a harm reduction approach to substance use and is section editor of the Harm Reduction Journal.   

Fay is a social entrepreneur who has worked in Manchester for the past thirty years leading an organisation to fight inequality by creating opportunities for people and communities to help themselves. Starting in a community that was fed up waiting for public services to get their act together, the Big Life group has developed innovative services and challenged traditional approaches to how things are done. As well as CEO of the Big Life group, Fay has also worked for twenty years as a Non-Executive Director on a variety of public sector boards – in the NHS, Social Care and Housing. She is currently Chair of the International Network of Street Papers – a membership organisation of 100 street papers in 35 countries across the world. She is also Chair of Jigsaw Housing Group which is one of the top 30 housing developers in the UK.

Professor Joe Sweeney Dean – School of Science, Engineering and Environment University of Salford Joe was a first-in-family to university, reading Chemistry at Imperial College, before completing a doctorate in synthetic organic chemistry at the University of Oxford, working with Prof. Sir Jack Baldwin, FRS. He then started his professional career as a Royal Society Fellow at the ETH Zürich, before returning to the UK to become a lecturer at the University of Leicester. He then worked at the Universities of Bristol (as lecturer) and Reading (becoming Professor in 2007), before moving to take up a research chair at University of Huddersfield in 2011. In 2018 he took up a chair at Lancaster University, where he was head of Chemistry, and co-chair of the EDI Strategy Group of the faculty of Science and Technology. He moved to the position of Dean of SSEE in July 2021.

Claire-Marie Boggiano is a Lecturer in Leadership at the University of Salford. She is also a Director and Coach at Lurig Ltd, specialising in business change and leadership development. Claire-Marie is a Chartered Engineer and works to support Women in Business and Women in STEM. She is a member of WIN (Women’s International Network) and co-founded WIN Manchester. She is an ambassador for Women on Boards and GM4Women2028, a 10yr project led by Prof Helen Pankhurst focussing on using Data, Deeds & Determination to improve life for women and girls across the city region. She is on the steering group of Queen Bee Coaching which provides free leadership coaching to women across Greater Manchester. Claire-Marie believes organisations succeed by working with the talents and imagination of all their people.

Kevwe Olomu is currently a third-year PhD student in Environmental Studies at the University of Salford; her primary research area is Environmental Management. For her PhD, Kevwe focuses on public perceptions and responses to air pollution, its management strategies, and the benefits this brings to better understand and address air pollution problems and issues. Kevwe received a Certificate of Associate Fellowship (AFHEA) from Advanced HE, which recognises professional practice for teaching and learning support in Higher Education. She is also the 2021 Three Minutes Thesis (3MT) winner at the University of Salford, a research communication competition. In her role as an Hourly Paid Academic, Kevwe tutors and supervises master’s level students across different modules in the Geography and Environmental Management department in the School of Science, Engineering and Environment. Kevwe completed her M.Sc. in Environmental Assessment and Management at the University of Salford in 2018; she earned her B.Sc. in Biochemistry from the University of Port-Harcourt in Nigeria back in 2012.