Gareth Rhys Williams was appointed Government Chief Commercial Officer at the Cabinet Office in 2016, having previously served as Chief Executive Officer of PHS Group, a leading provider of outsourced workplace services in the UK. Gareth is an experienced CEO and Non Executive Director, with a consistent record of reinvigorating and reinventing listed and private equity backed companies through creative growth strategies. He has a strong record of driving transformational change in large, complex and federated organisations. Before joining PHS, Gareth was CEO of Charter International, the FTSE 250 engineering group, until its successful sale to Colfax Corporation in 2012. Prior to that, he was CEO of Capital Safety Group Ltd, since sold to KKR, and CEO of Vitec Group plc, the supplier of broadcast and photographic equipment and services.

Jane is a Professor in Procurement for the Logistics and Operations Management (LOM) section of Cardiff Business School, Cardiff University. Jane’s subject areas for research and teaching include innovation and social public procurement, supply chain management, and collaboration. Jane is the strategic lead for Procurement Labs in a WEFO funded project, Infuse (Innovation of Future Public Services). Jane is Programme Director for the UK Government funded 'Help to Grow Management' programme delivered at Cardiff Buisness School aimed at supporting SMEs with business growth. Additional Roles: Member of IRSPP (international research study on public procurement) Branch Chair of the Chartered Institute of Procurement & Supply (CIPS) South Wales Associate Director (MICW) of Institute for Collaborative Working (ICW), Cymru.

The HCSA promotes the work of procurement and supply chain staff at all levels in healthcare. The Association provides training events and educational seminars, sponsors awards and hosts two high-profile annual conferences. The governance of the Association rests with the board of Trustees. The Executive runs the day to day business of the Association supported by a National Council of Regional Coordinators, Specialist Area Coordinators and National representatives from across the U.K. HCSA is a registered charity in the UK, is entirely self-financed through a combination of income from conferences, seminars, other training events and advertising.

Professor Jo Meehan is a Professor of Responsible Procurement and the Director of the Centre for Sustainable Business at the University of Liverpool Management School, and a visiting professor at Lappeenranta-Lahti University of Technology in Finland. Jo’s research centres on modern slavery in supply chains, social value in public procurement, and power. It explores commercial practices that allow social inequalities and environmental harm to persist, and crucially, what might be done to enable systemic change. Her work has won numerous international awards, and she is a regular public speaker committed to challenging business responsibilities and delivering impactful research. Prior to joining academia, Jo had extensive procurement experience in the private sector working for a global blue-chip company and she has been described as “one of the UK’s most influential procurement academics."