The theme of the event this year was Perception and Reality. Involved the local community as participants and had 16 live speakers including the youngest aged 11.

Hoffmanns Way
Anglia Ruskin University
Chelmsford, Essex, CM1 1GU
United Kingdom

Dan Foxx

Dan Foxx is the owner of an executive coaching company, Unlock Your Leadership. He has been an international executive coach for the last 18 years. During this time, he has coached over 3,000 business executives, including 400 CEOs. The focus of his work includes: creating human connection, conflict resolution, team building, corporate strategy, executive team offsite facilitation, business speaking, the ignition of passion in the heart which leverages commitment, and “working with the Board of Directors. Prior to this, Dan owned an advertising agency for 12 years, and has experience as a: VP of Marketing, VP of Sales, and President of an American manufacturing corporation. He lives with his family in Grass Valley, CA.

David Shore

David A. Shore is a leading authority on innovation and managing change to gain competitive advantage. Throughout his career he has built constructive links between theory and practice by combining research, consulting, and teaching. He is on the faculty of Harvard University and adjunct professor of organizational development and change at the School of Business, University of Monterrey, Mexico. He has held visiting professorships including in Amsterdam, Santiago, and Shanghai and has consulted on six continents. He is also Executive in Residence at Enable East. Shore spent two decades at the Harvard School of Public Health, where he served as associate dean. His most recent book is Launching and Leading Successful Change Initiatives in Health Care Organizations: (2014). Along with innovation and change, his work focuses on building and rebuilding trust; re-engineering meetings; and, strategic marketing and branding.

Gillian Riley

Gillian Riley is an author whose work focuses on the mindset behind overeating. She teaches techniques that break patterns of eating behavior, delivering control that lasts. Weight loss, when appropriate, is one of many benefits. Motivated by the effectiveness of this approach, she’s inspired by the practical application of the theory into the everyday lives of those who struggle with food. Based in Leicestershire, she has a worldwide clientele. Gillian has been delivering her EATING LESS seminars in London since 1997, and is currently creating an online version. Her books, EATING LESS, DITCHING DIETS and WILLPOWER are steady bestsellers

Irrah Carver-Jones

Irrah Carver-Jones is currently a sixth-form student at Chelmsford County High School for Girls. She is thoroughly invested in her education, with a passion for literature and the performing arts. This is demonstrated by her lengthy shower-singing sessions. Irrah hopes to one day achieve complete happiness, and very much feels that this opportunity at TED is a step towards this.

James Sinclair

James’s business life started with entertainment, James created his alias “Jimbo the Partyman” – a family entertainer and magician, when he was just 15 years old. With this character he went on to create the multimillion pound business that is now “The Partyman Company”. The group now encompasses a family entertainment and events business providing entertainment and corporate events, a chain of play centres, a chain of day nurseries, an online party shop, a chain of Laser arenas, a family fun park and a 70 acre farm attraction in Essex. Partyman looks after over a million guests every year-and this is growing. James is the author of “The Millionaire Clown” – a book which describes essential business rules for any entrepreneur. On the back of this and his business story James is an in-demand public speaker, often asked to speak at business events and seminars. He shares his philosophy through his Entrepreneurs network.

James St Pierre

Over the last 16 years James has been a driving force within the UK Health & Fitness industry. He worked for multiple gym and health club operators before starting his own business ‘Unique Results’ in 2007 and has seen it go from strength to strength (pardon the pun). James’ mission is to help people ‘FEEL healthy, LOOK healthy and BE healthy’ so they can have the best quality and experience of life possible. His passion is reaching people in a relaxed, friendly and informal way who are usually turned off by the lycra clad, airbrushed and elitist fitness message. His vision for Unique Results was to create the ‘Cheers’ bar of the fitness world – a place where everyone knows your name.

Jane Malyon

Jane Malyon lives in Essex with husband Roger – and their two grown sons now live in Canada. Whilst co-running their catering company and Tudor venue, Jane has also been an NLP master practitioner helping people to communicate and build rapport well. Four years ago she created The English Cream Tea Company delivering chilled Afternoon Tea hampers and picnics UK wide (www.englishcreamtea.com) plus delicious postable goodies and branded preserves/teas for export/retail. Claims to fame include books e.g. ‘Play Nicely (Best Behaviour in Business)’, BBC TV and a Guinness World Record for the largest English Cream Tea party ever!

Jeremy Nicholas

Jeremy Nicholas is an angry man. He used to be on the TV and now he runs Talking Toolbox, teaching dull business speakers how to make marginally less boring presentations. So that makes him angry. In his spare time he likes to go on about how he used to be a top BBC presenter and won awards, but now is best known for being the voice of the FIFA 15 video game. He once reported on the face of Elvis appearing on a bit of cheese for TV. That won’t be in his talk though.

Lailah-Tul-Anne Choudhry

Lailah-Tul-Anne has just finished year 13 at Chelmsford County High School, and is aspiring to study English (BA) from September. The first in her family to progress to higher education, Lailah believes family background should never hinder dreams and prospects. She has always been obsessed with words; writing is her therapy. Lailah regularly performs open mic at poetry gigs, as she loves the universality of human perspective that spoken word allows. Inspired by the cosmopolitan social landscape of her hometown, London, her poetry explores the beauty of diversity and comes from the heart of an East Londoner

Maya Patel

Maya is a pupil at St. Cedd’s School in Chelmsford. She is about to leave Year 6 and enter Chelmsford County High School for Girls in September. A talented pupil, she is an accomplished musician, achieving Grade 8 recorder, Grade 5 piano, Grade 3 clarinet and Grade 6 LAMDA. She enjoys sports, representing the school in the Year 6 Netball A Team. Her main hobby is reading; her favourite authors include John Grisham and Malorie Blackman. She lives in the town with her younger sister Eesha, her parents and her pet rabbit, Crunchie.

Nick Looby

Over the last 10 years Nick has been responsible for assisting numerous corporate giants with their communication expertise, enabling them to deliver greater clarity, more success and essential business growth. 1000’s have heard Nick talk at conferences and seminars and he has trained teams from 100’s of the country’s leading companies including HSBC, BBC, Clarins, Proctor & Gamble and Disney. Nick says “My personal mission is to enhance the way we all communicate, how we deliver our ideas, our information and even ourselves both at work and beyond.” Nick is the owner of Feet on the Ground Training, a speaker, author and communication specialist

Nikhil Shah

Nikhil Shah is fifteen years old and attends King Edward VI Grammar School in Chelmsford. He is an integral part of the school fraternity and is Deputy Editor in Chief of the KEGS Student Newspaper, The Ambassador. He has also founded the KEGS Film Club at the school. His interests include politics, film, music, the performing arts and literature. Nikhil aspires to follow his father’s footsteps into a career in Law.

Paul Martin

Paul is a former world record-holding mixologist and author of The World Encyclopaedia of Cocktails who appeared on TV regularly during the 1990’s before moving in to the field of communication skill training 15 years ago. He is qualified in British Sign Language to level 3 and has worked as a sign language tutor and theatrical interpreter on productions such as Blood Brothers, Fame & Treasure Island. He now travels widely with his unique brand of communication skills development training to work with everyone from the staff of global companies to individual clients, helping them to become truly engaging and expressive communicators.

Susannah Howard

Living by the seaside in Harwich in Essex, Susannah is married to Darrell and they have five children between them. Both keen sailors, they enjoy sailing their yacht ‘Hacketts’ and spending time with their family and friends. Susannah originally trained as a psychologist and has spent her career working in a range of roles linked to the delivery of improvements in the health sector. She has worked with the World Health Organisation in several trauma affected countries and has led two major Big Lottery Funded well-being programmes delivering outcomes to hundreds of thousands of people in the east of England. As Director of Enable East she has established the organisation as a current leading provider of improvement support to the public sector and was named Colchester ‘Business Woman of the Year’ in 2013.

Tatiana Stotz

Tatiana Stotz is a Business and Human Rights advocate and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) specialist. Having held a number of roles in Australia, Asia and Europe as a refugee advisor and CSR consultant, she is now the Programme Manager of IMPA ACT – the first industry initiative to be based on the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. Hailing from Uruguay and Australia, Tatiana now lives with her partner in Colchester. She is a podcast and coffee addict who enjoys (unsuccessfully) doing crosswords and pub trivia with mates.

Tony Kerley

◾Lives in Suffolk, UK ◾Has two gorgeous kids ◾Runs an upbeat Management Training Company ◾Plays piano ◾Loves chocolate ◾Needs to lose a little weight (but not to detriment of chocolate) ◾Doesn’t believe you really want to read a long Bio! Can’t believe he’s actually giving a TED talk!!! Lucky so-and-so!