CC Insight Evening – Change & Climate

Thursday 9 January 2025, 6pm – City of London

Join us as we explore how individuals, companies and professions are enacting change to support our climate. We will also explore why humans’ resist change, even in the face of clear evidence, using climate change as a working example.

Following our opening keynote speaker, the evening will follow a café networking format with an esteemed panel of experts who between them span a broad range of professional sectors.

This event is open to parents and alumni – please use the sign up form below to reserve your place.
Sixth Form pupils may also attend and details will be given in school. 

Our thanks to Caterham parent Mr Paul Rix and UBS for hosting this event.

Jane Wall
Jane has 25+ years of management and leadership experience in academic publishing and membership organisations.  Currently, she is Managing Director of the BioIndustry Association (BIA) https://www.bioindustry.org/ – the UK’s national association for the innovative life sciences and biotech sector – leading on strategy, P&L and growth to ensure that BIA is a sustainable, impactful, and ever-evolving association.  Prior to becoming Managing Director, Jane was Director for Business Development and Membership Services at for 8 years, during which time the Association doubled its membership from 300 to over 600 member companies.

Previous experience includes roles at Oxford University Press, Taylor & Francis (Informa), Oxford Brookes University, the Fire Protection Association and Food and Drink Federation. Jane holds a first degree in Italian and European Literature from Warwick University, MA in Social Anthropology from SOAS and MBA from Oxford Brookes Business School.

Simon Virley CB FEI
Simon Virley is Vice Chair and Head of Energy and Natural Resources at KPMG in the UK. He leads on energy, climate change and green issues for the UK firm and is part of KPMG’s Global Energy Leadership Team.  He advises some of the world’s largest companies on all aspects of the energy transition and the shift to Net Zero.

Simon has over 30 years’ experience advising on energy and climate issues. Before joining KPMG in early 2015, he spent 25 years in the UK Government, including at No10 Downing Street (where he was Private Secretary to Prime Minister Tony Blair), the Cabinet Office, HM Treasury (where he led work on ‘green taxes’) and latterly as Director General for Energy in the Department of Energy and Climate Change between 2009-15, where he led the Electricity Market Reforms (EMR) under the Coalition Government, which resulted in the share of renewables in GB power generation rising from 6% in 2008 to over 45% today. 

Simon is a Fellow of the Energy Institute (FEI) and was made a Companion of the Bath (CB) in the 2014 Queen’s Birthday Honours for his work on energy and climate change issues.  He is also chairs UCL’s Centre for Net Zero Market Design, is on the Markets Advisory Council of the National Energy System Operator (NESO), the CBI Net Zero Board and the Executive Council of the Parliamentary Group on Energy Studies (PGES).

Debbie Hindle

Debbie Hindle is the Chair of the International Centre for Responsible Tourism global a new non-profit dedicated to education, training and knowledge sharing in the travel and hospitality industry, particularly in the global south. She has also acted as a trustee and vice chair of The Travel Foundation charity for a decade and wrote the industry version of an academic research paper on global climate challenges for the sector called Envisioning Tourism in 2030.

Debbie is also a Non-Executive Director of the Responsible Travel company, a volunteer-for the Working With Cancer social enterprise and a Special Advisor to the Inclusive Travel Forum. She has also had a marketing and communications career spanning more than three decades when she ran agencies working for clients such as tourist boards, airlines, agents, tour operators, hotels and transport providers.

Glen Gowers
Glen Gowers is the co-founder and CEO of Basecamp Research, based in London and Boston. After leaving Caterham, Glen has pursued research in engineering biology (MBiochem, Oxford University. PhD, Imperial College, GSK) and spearheaded the first fully off-grid DNA sequencing expedition in polar regions with (his now co-founder) Oliver Vince.

This led to the founding of Basecamp Research in 2020. Today, Basecamp Research, has raised over $85M to fuel the single largest commercial biodiscovery program ever, with proprietary genomic data from more than 100 locations in over 20 countries worldwide. Access to this novel data allows the company’s foundational biological AI models to outperform across multiple protein and genome design tasks, giving them unique access to intellectual property and solutions inaccessible to others.

David Swindin
David has been at Cubico since its inception a decade ago and has been CEO for 3 years having previously been responsible for the company’s activities in Europe and Australia. As CEO he is responsible for the execution & formulation of the company’s strategy and day-to-day management of the company reporting to its Board and Shareholders.

David has 30+ years of global infrastructure and structured finance experience, bringing a wide knowledge of the debt and equity markets to the Company. The earlier part of his career was spent advising multinational corporations and governments in structuring complex financing transactions at various financial institutions

Cubico is one of the world’s largest privately owned renewable energy companies with operations in 9 countries, more than 3 GW of operating assets and a pipeline of new projects of more than 18GW.   It has more than 500 employees globally and is owned by two of the largest Canadian pension funds.