LEAD North 2025

Biography

Gamal Fahnbulleh is an experienced anchor with ITV Granada Reports – ITV’s regional award-winning news programme for the North West of England.

Born in West Africa, Gamal moved to London with his family in 1986. After graduating with a BA Honours from Manchester University in Politics and History he went on to do a Masters Degree in International Politics before enrolling on a postgraduate diploma course in Broadcast Journalism at City University. While at City, he was one of only ten candidates nationally to be selected for the ITV News Group Bursary Scheme in 2005.

He has worked extensively with the British Army as two North West regiments trained and prepared for a six-month tour of Afghanistan at home and overseas. In the summer of 2010 he was embedded in Nad-e Ali, Afghanistan with the First Battalion, The Duke of Lancaster’s Regiment. In that year ITV Granada received the award for Best Regional Story, ‘Our Troops in Afghanistan’ at the RTS North West Awards.

Gamal has also worked for Sky News where he held both solo and co-anchor positions across the day’s output, including flagship programmes Sky News Breakfast, Sky News Tonight and Sky News at Ten. When Gamal was not conducting interviews with high profile politicians and celebrities or carrying out the morning and evening newspaper review, he was delivering ‘Breaking News’ in a fast-paced journalistic environment handling rolling news and live updates.

Gamal has also worked for ITV Breakfast as the Northern based Correspondent for Good Morning Britain and worked extensively on the Hillsborough enquiry. He has also worked as a reporter for ITN. When not working, Gamal has a love of all things history and spends his free time reading fact based novels from the classical and medieval period. He is also a self-confessed film buff and will happily lose an evening to some classic cinema or the latest blockbuster.

Having specialised in African and Middle Eastern politics and history at university he maintains his interest in these areas and travels back to West Africa when he can, visiting family. He looks to combine his passion for travelling with his love for food and enjoys experiencing new cultures and destinations with his wife Liz, whenever possible. Both have an interest in emerging themselves in new cultures and traditions.

A talented sportsman growing up, Gamal represented his school, county and region in Rugby and hockey. He remains a keen fitness fanatic, living by the mantra that a healthy body is a healthy mind.

Biography

Bev became Leader of Manchester City Council on 1st December 2021.

First elected in 2011 as a Burnage Councillor she held a range of responsibilities on Manchester City Council including as Executive Member for Adult Social Care and Health and Deputy Leader.

Since becoming Leader her focus has been on Manchester’s ambitious plans to build a more inclusive and sustainable economy, increasing investment into neighbourhoods across the city, better outcomes for children and young people, tackling inequalities, building more housing and working to meet Manchester’s net zero ambitions.

Bev is a Deputy Chair of the Local Government Association and Chair of Core Cities UK. In Greater Manchester she holds a range of responsibilities on behalf of the city including leading on the Economy, Business, and International Portfolio for the Combined Authority. 

Originally from Belfast, she moved to Manchester in 2003 for university. After graduating from the University of Manchester she began her career in Local Government, before working in higher education and then a national trade union leading on social care. She holds postgraduate degrees from Warwick Business School and the University of Manchester. Outside of politics she enjoys sports and being outdoors, music, culture and enjoying all that Manchester has to offer.

Biography

Biography

Sarah joined Saatchi & Saatchi in December 2019. She works with Chris Kay our Chief Executive Officer, to both shape the strategic direction of the agency and drive the day-to-day business.

Previously a nine year veteran of Grey London where she held the role of Chief Marketing Officer and Head of Account Management and was responsible for some of the agency’s flagship creative accounts – including The British Heart Foundation and Lucozade.

Sarah has worked in both global network agencies and start ups and across organisations as diverse as Mars, GSK, P&G and the Home Office.

A staunch believer in the need for greater diversity of talent at all levels across advertising, Sarah has been a driving force behind the industry wide Advertising Diversity Task Force, which brings together the most progressive agencies across the communications industry to use their combined energy, expertise and skills to shift the diversity dial.

Biography

An experienced, commercially minded former equities analyst with over 20 years’ experience working in the City, including involvement in M&A and IPOs. Recognised and highly regarded for his industry knowledge across all parts of media, digital and marcoms.

Founder: Founder and managing director of Liberty Sky Advisors, providing bespoke advisory and consulting services in the media, digital, tech, marketing, and related areas to a variety of partners, including corporates, private equity, venture capital and start-ups. With a proven track record of identifying the latest digital trends, understanding industry dynamics and the implications for companies, he brings this together with his financial and markets expertise to provide advisory and consultancy services to companies, at both a strategic and financial level.

Award-winning analyst: Twice City AM Analyst of the Year, the only analyst across all sectors to have won the award twice.

Regular columnist: Monthly columns with City AM, leading agency trade publication Campaign, and the video-focused trade publication VideoWeek.

Content producer: The Bigger Picture, a subscription service to help those working in creative agencies, advertising, broadcasting or the media and tech industries in general who are short of time and who want to get ahead of the game by seeing the bigger picture and understanding how it all comes together. Using his extensive financial knowledge, as well as knowledge of technology, media, stock-markets, regulations, politics and ither areas, it links in the numbers with the trends.
https://ianwhittakermedia.com/insights/

Media spokesman and commentator: Regularly featured, interviewed, and quoted in the print and broadcast press, including Bloomberg, Sky News, CNBC and Radio 4.

Speaker: He speaks regularly at major national and international industry events and conferences, as well as being a dinner speaker.

Board member: Chair & Board member on several organisations, and a member of the board of advisors at Songtradr, Inc. He is also an Advisor in Residence at the Project X Institute and a consultant to JCDecaux UK.

Biography

Sharon Lloyd Barnes is Commercial Director and Inclusion Lead at the Advertising Association, which represents the UK advertising industry and includes advertisers, agencies, media owners, tech platforms and production companies in its membership. Previously, she ran magazine ad sales teams in London and New York before co-founding The Drive Partnership, a consultancy working with businesses across a range of sectors to build profitable growth. Outside of work, Sharon co-founded a school for autistic children in 2000 – now called Beyond Autism – serving children from most London boroughs.

Biography

As Business Development Director since 2011, Jason has led the growth in revenue of ITV’s commercial teams across the UK outside London in delivering creative business solutions through working closely in partnership with advertisers and their agencies. After starting his career at Manchester Evening News, Jason spent much of his career at media agencies – from media planning roles at Carat and PHD in London to running PHD North in Manchester. Beyond this, Jason is leading ITV’s Upriser partnership with Salford City Academy (in collaboration with Saatchi & Saatchi), and sits on the Arts & Humanities Employer Advisory Board at Sheffield University.

Biography

Imogen began her career at McCann Manchester, working across many clients including Aldi, Scholl and Durex, before heading down to McCann London.   There, Imogen worked with brands such as Subway, Bisto and MasterCard before moving over to Karmarama to create some of the most awarded, talked about and effective work in the UK for The British Army and Confused.com.  Her work has been recognised at all the major award shows including Creative Circle, Cannes Lions, D&AD, Campaign Big, IPA Effectiveness and the DMAs. She also sits on the Global Creative Council for Snapchat, and was a recipient of Campaign’s Female Frontiers award for Conquering Creativity in 2020.  Imogen finally came full circle, returning to McCann Manchester as ECD.

Biography

Pete is a strategic end-to-end marketing specialist with extensive experience of building high performing solutions across the entire communications ecosystem that build brands and grow businesses by creating transformational customer experiences. A graduate of the IPA’s prestigious Excellence Diploma, Pete started his agency career 15 years ago in digital channel planning and activation before evolving his planning capabilities across wider media, technology and creative practice areas in order to serve the needs of high performing brands in a converging and increasingly digital economy.

Having launched and multiplied the value of the iProspect brand in Leeds, as well as successfully leading the integration of regional operations (including Newcastle) for the brand during dentsu’s 2021 UK-wide business transformation programme, Pete has extensive experience of building high-performing, multi-skilled teams that operate successfully across a broad geographic footprint.

A huge advocate for the digital potential of the North of the UK and the development of early careers talent from all academic backgrounds, Pete has built his career in global agencies outside of London and has a track record of driving brand value and business growth through innovative and commercially successful solutions for regional, national and global clients across a broad range of verticals.

Biography

I am a warm-blooded Spanish motion designer and creative director living in Hebden Bridge, UK.

I could spend hours telling you how great I am but to save us all some time, I’m just gonna list my skills and achievements here.

I am skilled in VFX, motion graphics, grading and editing for short films, documentaries, music and explainer videos, commercials, adverts, children’s TV programs, corporate videos, theatre projections, compositing artists and social media, among others – using a variety of digital and analogue applications and techniques such as Nuke, Cara VR, tracking systems and After Effects.

I’ve been selected to participate in several mentor programs such as Evolve 21/22 and Female Founders 22/23 (Creative England), Purpose lead (Natwest) 22/23, Ad:Venture 21/22 and most recently WECAN (Leeds Beckett University). I have also been selected by the Yorkshire post as part of the 42 under 42 business entrepreneurs and invited as a guest speaker by the Calderdale council or the International Film Trust.

When I am not out enjoying the beautiful nature of West Yorkshire, I run a new Ethical Media Production Company, Flying Duck Studio Lab.

Biography

Miles spent his first years out of university working for Saatchi&Saatchi and Mediacom on a range of clients including Toyota, P&G and Tesco. He transitioned to government through the Civil Service Fast Stream 2018. After delivering projects in the Home Office and the Government Digital Service, he became a senior policy advisor in DCMS for advertising. He was briefly head of Designer Fashion during the pandemic, but my wardrobe remains irredeemable. Miles is currently policy and engagement lead in the Financial, Professional and Business Services team in the Department for Business and Trade. He builds, maintains and leverages a network of stakeholders in the private and public sector and provide policy advice to government on matters impacting advertising, PR, market research, architectural and engineering services. In this role I have worked on various issues, including business rates, the AI Skills Funding pilot, and services export sanctions.

Biography

Ete Davies is Dentsu Creative’s Chief Operating Officer, across Europe, Middle East and Africa.

Prior to joining Dentsu Creative, Ete was CEO of Engine:Creative (now House337) where he transformed the agency – culminating in it being recognised amongst ‘Fast Company’s 100 Most Innovative Companies 2021′ and collecting the Cannes Lion Titanium Grand Prix 2022 for the highly impactful Kiyan Prince Foundation’s #longlivetheprince campaign.

With over 24 years’ experience in the creative sector working at some of the world’s premier creative agencies including AKQA, Tribal Worldwide, Digitas and AnalogFolk where, while as Managing Director, the agency consistently ranked amongst the UK’s top creative agencies and was recognised in the Financial Times ‘UK Future 100’. His experience spans many sectors from Financial Services, Travel, Technology, FMCG to Automotive, for both national and global brands. He’s led multi-national, multi-disciplined teams scaling from project to global network level with specialisms in Brand Advertising, Digital Experience, Innovation and Business Transformation.

Ete is also Non-Executive Director for both the Guardian Media Group and global comms agency Manifest; as well as Trustee for  both the Creative Foundation (UK) and MediaTrust, as well as Chair for the Advertising Associations ‘All-in’ working group for Black, African and Caribbean heritage communities and a member of the Effie’s UK Council.

Biography

Danny is now the Managing Partner at mFUSE and has spent nearly 30 years working in the UK’s best agencies: TBWA, Ogilvy, CHI and Saatchi and Saatchi. For more than 20 years, he’s had Multiple Sclerosis, a progressive neurological condition leading, in most cases, to significant disability.

Biography

Paul Cooper is a renowned and well-respected leader in the digital media and creative sector and has 25+ years industry experience. He has been considered a digital pioneer since 2011 when he launched the specialist digital service of MediaCom, the UK’s largest marketing and communications agency. Progressing to MD of the North office (based in Manchester), Paul was responsible for overseeing the company’s growth and evolution into a market leader for digital activation and growing D2C clients and dot.com brands. He also led the acquisition and integration of digital transformation specialists Code Computerlove. Paul is currently Chief Operating Officer of EssenceMediacom North the driving force of WPP North and has overseen its growth to the largest regional network and integration with our UK operation.

In October 2023, Paul was selected to join a new @Greater Manchester Combined Authority employer integration board that aims to drive the city-regions education, skills, and work ambitions, representing the creative, culture, and sport industries. Greater Manchester will become the first integrated technical education city-region with the ambition to connect the dots between skills and employment, creating a solid future workforce in the region.  More recently, Paul has been elected to join the IPA Council I and will serve for a three-year term helping to ensure the northern advertising industry remains current and gives its members a platform to share insights and voice opinions that will shape the industry’s future.

Biography

Ewan leads Channel 4’s  commercial relationships across the Nations, Regions & Ireland a with Independent agencies across the UK.

His teams promote the benefits of the Channel4  product ecosystem as they  partner with advertisers and agencies. He also leads the business development strategy for Channel 4, planning for future investment from both existing advertisers plus the new advertiser pipeline.

Ewan’s teams are located across the various  Channel 4 office throughout the UK , and as the Head of the Channel 4 hub in Manchester , he is passionate about the developing talent  and opportunities in the tv and advertising industry in all locations.

Biography

Having worked for over 35 years in both  media agencies and media owners, John is now Commercial Operations Director at Global. The key task is to oversee the delivery of the many aspects of Global’s advertising output, including Radio, Outdoor and DAX, the Digital Ad Exchange.

In recent years attention at Global, in parallel with that of the wider industry, has turned to considerations of ‘how we are’ at work as well as to what we do. John has helped create the Mental Health Allies cohort at Global and more recently been much involved in Global’s approach to becoming an AA All-In champion company.

In recent months, John has been the chair of The All-In Social Mobility group helping to create the next iteration of the AA’s All-In Action Plan.