The Virtual Events Awards Judging Panel
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Yemi Adeshiyan
Director of Strategy & Operations, Times Higher Education
Yemi Adeshiyan
Director of Strategy & Operations, Times Higher EducationYemi, is Director of Strategy, Partnerships and Operations at Times Higher Education (THE). He is responsible for the strategic development and expansion of THE global events division. Before THE he was Head of Commercial Events for News UK and Group Director of Operation at London Business Conference Group (LBCG)
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Thom Barnhardt
CEO, CEE Business Media
Thom Barnhardt
CEO, CEE Business Media -
Chris Carroll
CEO, The Eventful Group
Chris Carroll
CEO, The Eventful Group -
Jason Cenamor
Chief Product Officer, SINC USA
Jason Cenamor
Chief Product Officer, SINC USAWith over 12 years experience launching, hosting and building events across various industries and regions, Jason currently serves as the Chief Product Officer at SINC USA, a 3rd party event organiser and media company focused on serving Information Technology and Information Security leaders in North America and the United Kingdom. In 2016 Jason Co-Founded CAMSS World and served as President of the company until it’s acquisition by SINC USA in 2018.
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Rupert Collins-White
Co-CEO, Burlington Media Group
Rupert Collins-White
Co-CEO, Burlington Media GroupRupert is co-CEO of Burlington Media Group. Over 10 years at Burlington he’s launched various event, publishing and data products, as well as led the creative side of the business. Before Burlington he was a B2B journalist for many years working in legal and technology publishing.
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Nicole Cooper
Managing Director, Touchpoint Live Media
Nicole Cooper
Managing Director, Touchpoint Live MediaNicole runs Touchpoint Live Media, specialists in consumer and trade events, conferences and awards. The portfolio includes the award winning conference, the VET Festival, a CPD conference for the veterinary industry; the DogFest events which attracts over 75,000 visitors across the UK; the Big Dog Walk Series and launching in 2021, the SuperDog Award. As well as events, Touchpoint now includes the online platform, DogLife 360. The company, formerly Fitz All Media, has grown from three events in 2017 to 14 events in 2021.
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Matthew Finlay
CEO, Rising Media
Matthew Finlay
CEO, Rising MediaMatthew Finlay is founder and CEO of specialist technology conference and tradeshow producer, Rising Media. Founded in 2005, Rising Media produces events in North and South America, Europe and Asia, ranging in size from 80 to 2000 participants. Events include Building Business Capability, Machine Learning Week, Search Marketing Expo and many others.
Matthew has been involved with the Internet since 1993: from 1994-99 as Managing Director of Mecklermedia Corp’s European subsidiary including the Internet World portfolio of trade shows across 12 European and Middle Eastern countries; 1999-2001 as part of the management team of a European online comparison shopping startup and from 2001-2005 as producer of various technology-focused events before founding Rising Media. Originally from New Zealand, Matthew has a BA in Political Science from Victoria University of Wellington. He currently lives just outside Munich, in the Bavarian countryside, with his wife and two children.
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Orson Francescone
Managing Director, Financial Times Live
Orson Francescone
Managing Director, Financial Times LiveOrson Francescone has worked in the b2b media and events industry for over 15 years.
He has led global conference and exhibitions businesses for Euromoney Institutional Investor, the Daily Mail Group and Haymarket Media. Since November 2019 he is Managing Director of FT Live, the global event business of the Financial Times. Throughout his career he has specialised at enabling publishers to monetise their audiences and drive high margin revenues via all formats of events. From conferences, to awards to large scale exhibitions and trade shows and more recently through digital events. He has launched and run some of the world’s most successful and award winning events including Gastech, the Festival of Work and, more recently The Global Boardroom . He is an Irish Italian national and an economics graduate of Trinity College Dublin.
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Henry Fuchs
Co-Founder, we.CONECT Global Leaders
Henry Fuchs
Co-Founder, we.CONECT Global LeadersSince the foundation of we.CONECT, my main interest is the further development of our employees, according to our motto “we.People – Simply the best!”, the digitalization of the B2B event industry, rapid prototyping & rapid product development, agility & new methods to work and besides the business bla bla – a lot of fun… 🙂
If you want to know more about me – please check my we.CONECT Profile: http://we-conect.com/staff/henry-fuchs/
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Clare Gossage
COO and Co-Founder, The PIE
Clare Gossage
COO and Co-Founder, The PIEClare Gossage is COO and Co-Founder of The PIE – a media, events and recruitment company serving the global education industry. The PIE was founded in 2011 and has now reached in excess of 6 million people around the world. Clare has worked in the international education industry since 2000 and held marketing roles at both private and public sector educational institutions prior to The PIE. Her positions included Head of International Marketing at University of the Arts London and Group Marketing Manager at St Giles International. She was also a member of the English UK Enterprises Board.
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Ros Irving
Divisional Director, Events
Ros Irving
Divisional Director, EventsRos Irving leads the FPS events group, made up of more than 20 events businesses across the financial, telecoms and technology and professional services brands. She joined Euromoney in 2009. Ros also leads the Events Centre of Excellence, a shared service for event operations for the whole group.
Ros has extensive experience working in international events groups in information businesses. Before joining Euromoney, Ros spent 15 years leading and growing events businesses for companies including IIR, Risk Magazine and Eurofinance. Ros has a BA in Anthropology from Durham University
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Gargi Iyer
Managing Director - Events, IR Magazine
Gargi Iyer
Managing Director - Events, IR MagazineGargi Iyer is the Managing Director of Events at IR Media Group, a B2B events and business intelligence provider. Gargi directs the creation and execution of industry-leading events across a range of markets and geographies. She is responsible for company P&L, strategy, growth, and delivering shareholder value.
Over 10 years, Gargi has successfully launched and developed event portfolios spanning multiple formats and business models – from training courses to large-scale annual conferences.
Gargi is currently leading IR Media’s expansion strategy, focussing on rapid organic growth to deliver next-gen digital experiences to new communities, which complement the company’s strong presence in the publicly listed space.
Prior to joining IR Media, Gargi held positions in conference production, marketing and sales, and general management at T.A.C Events, Terrapinn, and FC Business Intelligence (now Reuters Events). Gargi has a background in media studies and a Master’s degree in business management from Warwick Business School.
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Jamie Leonard
CEO, The Recruitment Events Co
Jamie Leonard
CEO, The Recruitment Events Co -
Jennie Moss
Founder & Managing Director, Rethink Events
Jennie Moss
Founder & Managing Director, Rethink EventsJennie founded Rethink Events in 2011 and led the launch of the World Agri-Tech, Future Food-Tech, and World Water-Tech summits, which today take place around the globe and attract more than 8,500 delegates annually.
She has over twenty years’ experience in conference production and management gained in London and New York. She began her career at the CWC group, where she was head of the Middle East division, launching energy and investment conferences in Saudi Arabia, Iran and Egypt. She subsequently set up and ran the Finance IQ team for IQPC in New York, returning to the UK to develop renewable energy events for a series of clients including the Financial Times and Green Power Conferences.
In 2020, Rethink Events was one of the first companies to transition successfully to virtual events, hosting nine summits online, as well as an extensive portfolio of webinars and podcasts.
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Adam Raleigh
Managing Director, Markets Group
Adam Raleigh
Managing Director, Markets GroupAdam Raleigh is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Markets Group, the world’s leading live event and virtual meeting platform serving the investment management industry. Mr. Raleigh founded the firm in 2009. Since then, Markets Group has grown to 90 team members and offices in New York, London and Singapore. Markets Group has run nearly 500 in person conferences in the Americas, EMEA, APAC, over 250 virtual events and the organization has been recognized as one of the fastest growing private companies in the U.S. through ranking in the Inc 500.
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Daniel Sheriff
Managing Director, TXF Media
Daniel Sheriff
Managing Director, TXF MediaSpecialist in B2B events, editorial, publishing and social media, with a decade of experience in content delivery – specifically within the finance and commodities sectors. The majority of my career has been spent covering the trade, commodities, project, ECA and aircraft finance industries.
As of 2013 I am Director of TXF Media and tagmydeals
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Ruth Yarnit
Chief Executive, LeadDev and White October Events
Ruth co-founded White October Events with Dave Fletcher in 2013. White October Events creates content and conferences for the leaders and changemakers in software engineering teams around the world, developing their tech, team and tools to advance their businesses. Their flagship conference brand is The Lead Developer, with events in London, New York, Berlin, and San Francisco.
With a background in international event management before founding the business, Ruth has experience across the private and public sector, and has run events around the world.

Judging Information
- The Virtual Events Awards will be judged independently by an esteemed panel of conference, event & venue professionals across a wide range of market sectors.
- The scoring will all be conducted online, without any reference to other scorers and based solely on the submission of the entrant. This will ensure the scores are unbiased and judges are not swayed by the opinions of other panel members.
- Each entry will be scored by at least 4 independent judges. The organisers will collate the individual scores and use the average marks given to initially decide the finalists and ultimately to determine the award winners.
- If there is particular information contained within your entry that you do not wish to be made public please state this in the appropriate section on the entry form.
- Judges will absent themselves from any discussions where they have a vested interest.
- The judges’ decision is final, no correspondence will be entered into and no reasons given for decisions.
If you need help with your entry or require any clarification, please contact Sian Jones on 020 8788 3710 or via email sian@globalconferencenetwork.co.uk.