London Campus Professional Advisory Board

International Higher Education Specialist, Dept International Trade

Aisling Conboy

Aisling Conboy is an advocate of study abroad and passionate about providing access to opportunities for young people irrespective of their background. In her role at the UK Department for International Trade, Aisling is the sole Higher Education Specialist focusing particularly on transnational education, teacher training and chartered professional bodies. Aisling leads the department’s work in developing commercial partnership opportunities for UK higher education providers and chartered bodies, and supports UK education exports and the UK government’s International Education Strategy.

Previously, Aisling was International Partnerships Director at the University of Greenwich with oversight for transnational education and global mobility. She has worked for over fifteen years managing international partnerships including roles at the US-UK Fulbright Commission; Strathclyde Business School and the John Smith Trust. Aisling studied at both the UK and US universities, and is personally committed to lifelong learning and development.

Aisling has travelled to and worked in almost fifty countries, and currently volunteers as a recipe tester with Migrateful, a UK charity with a mission to empower and celebrate refugees and vulnerable migrants on their journey to integration, and volunteers annually with SEEDS, an Icelandic NGO promoting environmental protection and intercultural understanding. Aisling loves to cook and travel, and makes the most of London’s cultural offerings – regularly enjoying art exhibits, films and concerts. When not in London, she loves to get to the coast and explore.

Aisling is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and a founding member of the Business Women in Education Group established by Education Investor.

Chief Pharmacist and Clinical Director at King’s College Hospital NHS

Roger Fernandes

Roger is Chief Pharmacist and Clinical Director at King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust. He has been a Trust Chief Pharmacist for over 12 years managing Pharmacy departments in acute district general hospital, teaching hospitals and tertiary specialist centres. He has over 22 years of total NHS experience which includes various management and specialist clinical pharmacist posts. 

He has won two HSJ Awards for developing innovative Pharmacy services that has benefited patient care through collaboration with health and social care and delivering best practice. He represents London Chief Pharmacists at various regional and national Committees that generally inform workforce strategy and local training and development delivery. 

Roger is a Fellow of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society and is the current systems lead on the Pharmacy and Medicines workstream in the South East London Integrated Care System. 

Mark Huxley

Mark is a City of London veteran, having supported its insurance sector for 45 years. Originally a Lloyd’s specialist practitioner, Mark left its frontline and for the last 25 years has been known and respected as an active entrepreneur. This journey has ultimately seen him become defined as a respected advisor and mentor to many organisations, all with one thing in common; a strong sense of  purpose and values. In 2017 this was recognised when he was admitted as a Freeman of the Company of Entrepreneurs, where he now balances his day to day work with helping others, especially those from underserved communities realise their own ambitions. He will serve as the Company’s Master in 2024. 

Mark is a regular speaker on the topics of entrepreneurship including brand, purpose and leadership, working with a broad range of academic and commercial organisations. He is also an active voice in the area of social mobility and serves on the Company of Entrepreneur’s charitable trust board as well as advising other social mobility charities including City Gateway, helping them best consider their strategies.

Away from his day jobs Mark is a lover of all forms of sports and the arts. A keen cyclist and walker, photographer, instagrammar and music lover, especially with his lifelong passion for all things David Bowie!

Sadiq Islam

Sadiq obtained a BSc Honours Business Information Systems degree from the University of East London back in 2007. He currently, works at the London campus of the University of the West of Scotland (UWS) where he heads up the campus development and partnerships team. A driven individual, Sadiq is always on the lookout for ways to create value and opportunities for students and partners of the university.

Before joining UWS, he was a Business Development Partner for The City Law School, part of City University of London, where he made a significant impact on revenue generation for the school by implementing new/lean systems & processes and expanding the provision of short courses. Sadiq achieves this by leveraging the strong relationships he has built, to plan and deliver strategic projects and programmes that fulfil the Continuing Professional Development (CPD) requirements of students and commercial partners.

Outside of work, Sadiq enjoys spending quality time with his young family and is a firm believer in a healthy work-life balance. A humanitarian with an adventurous spirit who enjoys cycling and hiking, Sadiq has raised thousands of pounds for charity over years. Some of his more recent fundraising activities include climbing the highest peak in North Africa (Mount Toubkal), trekking to the Everest base camp, and 100km across the Sahara and the Wadi Rum Deserts, as well as cycling over 300 miles in 3 days across 3 eastern European cities.

He is already planning his next charity adventure, a cycle across 3 major cities on a different continent.

Chief Consultant, Oxford Management

Keith Luo

Dr Luo obtained his PhD in Economics from the School of Oriental & African Studies, University of London in 1993. He subsequently worked as Research Officer at the University’s Contemporary China Institute, involved in providing business consulting and training services for government officials, diplomats and senior business executives from the UK and EU countries. Leading clients included the Department of Trade and Industry (UK), British Airlines, British Aerospace, Rolls Royce International, BP, Swire Group, Glaxo, British Oxygen, Shell, Aerospatiale, Philips, and Heineken. In 1999, he co-founded the Oxford Management Consultancy Ltd, extending his services to Chinese companies wishing to invest in and/or trade with the UK.

Keith holds a chartered fellowship with the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport in the UK and a Postgraduate Certificate in Learning and Teaching in Higher Education from Leeds University. He also has a long track record of working in British and East Asian universities, including the National University of Singapore, University of Leeds, Tsinghua University, Sungkyunkwan University, Renmin University of China (RUC), and University of Leicester. In particular, he played a leading role in achieving EQUIS accreditation awarded by the European Foundation for Management Development (EFMD) for the Business School of RUC while serving as a Guest Professor there in 2009-2012.

Over the years, Keith has been active in helping several charity organisations to facilitate Chinese immigrants to integrate themselves into mainstream British society. His hobbies include hiking, swimming and cycling. He lives in Oxfordshire with his wife, daughter and a cat.

Paul Morrison

Paul Morrison is an enthusiastic and passionate leader in education, with over 25 years’ experience within the IT sector. He serves as the UK&I lead for Primary, Secondary and Further Education for Zoom Video Communications, Inc. where he helps schools and colleges to use video communications technology so that teacher and student can participate in classes no matter if they are in the school or at home.

Prior to Zoom he was the Microsoft Education Industry Solutions lead for Education in Scotland, Wales and the Educational institutions in London including London Grid for Learning (LGfL).

Paul has a proven track record of success, transforming educational establishments using technology and providing professional development of academic staff and students.  

Paul also served nine years at Hewlett Packard Enterprise UK&I as the Education Sector Lead, UK Black Employment Network Lead and Black Employee Leadership Council Regional Coordinator for EMEA. He has been nominated for many awards including the National Diversity Award, Black British Business Award, The Diversity Power List for The Inclusive Award and won a Global Recognition Award, presented to him by Rev Jesse Jackson in the USA.  

Outside of work, Paul provides ongoing leadership, mentoring and support to students in the education system through a number of programmes. These include topics such as Mental and Emotional Wellbeing, Mentorship and Raising Aspirations. In 2018 Paul founded the company Idare2inspire, a social company designed to empower and support underrepresented young people from socially and economically challenging backgrounds.  

Paul currently serves as the Chair of the Advisory Board for the University of the West of Scotland and is part of the Multicultural Committee at the House of Lords.

Head of Organisational Development, NHS England

Jason Nair

Jason has over 30 enjoyable years’ of working in the NHS and as a senior manager he is currently working on an exciting transformational agenda that sets to embed a practice of working smarter.  This will lead towards better use of space and technology, and a drive towards finding new and more effective ways of productivity and performance.

Jason has a background of leading major change and improvements in general practice (family doctor services).  This role led him to being appointed as the London lead and deputy for a successful positive action leadership programme, which over three cohorts set about to develop the next cadre of NHS leaders. His role was to support talented NHS people in reaching very senior levels within the NHS. Diversity and Inclusion remains a key focus area for Jason and he is very active in supporting this agenda.

His work led him to understand and evaluate India’s health care system, and he has also engaged with the media in the form of interviews and debates, appearing in The Guardian, The Independent and CIPD – People Management magazine.

Jason is also a Human Resources professional with a keen interest and passion for Organisational Development.  His most rewarding specialist activity is executive coaching where he has made significant successes in client results from personal and team achievement to supervision.

Outside of work Jason is very much committed to family life and aspiring to maintain a manageable level of work life balance, as a leader he sees this as fundamental in role modelling positive behaviour.  Other interests include supporting charities and annually coaching a younger person.

Jessica Roper

Jess has over 10 years of experience in operational and people management. Kickstarting her career in Australia, straight out of school, Jess completed certificates 1 to 5 in retail management and quickly climbed the management ladder, and leading in a fairer, kinder leadership style.

After taking a side step in 2016 to work in New Zealand’s Health and Safety industry, which was responding to a Workplace Health and Safety crisis, Jess completed multiple health and safety courses and worked with some of the industry leaders to ensure health and safety standards were being met and that employees would go home safe.

At 27, Jess took a break from her career and travelled through Latin America for 15 months before moving to the big smoke, London. Pursuing her passion for changed capitalism, Jess now is Co-COO of The Trampery after starting as a regional workspace manager. Very quickly, The Trampery faced a pandemic and challenges to it’s business, in which Jess played a key role in overcoming, therefore within 2 years, was offered this leadership position.

The Trampery is a purpose-led enterprise that provides workspaces and training for businesses and entrepreneurs; plus advisory services for governments and landowners. The Trampery believe capitalism must evolve to help solve the world’s social and environmental problems. Alongside the work that Jess does at The Trampery, Jess volunteers for a charity that empowers young vulnerable women in local communities, career mentoring to help and encourage these women into jobs.

Jess works with partners and stakeholders to realise the potential of spaces to support entrepreneurship to be harnessed to combat poverty and discrimination in society, and support entrepreneurs from under-represented backgrounds through low-cost local workspaces and free access to training. Most recently, in Partnership with UWS and Trilogy property developers. The Greenhouse has a mission to offer space and business support to local people, Republic tenants, graduates of the UWS and impact-focused businesses. It is home to Entrepreneurship students from the UWS and The Trampery’s Evo Pioneers which offers free desk space for six months alongside workshops and a network of business support to entrepreneurs from refugee backgrounds in partnership with The Entrepreneurial Refugee Network. By working together, we are able to provide opportunities and make connections that benefit the people that live in our neighbourhoods.

When not at work, or volunteering, Jess can be found with her wife and dog, in their campervan travelling far and wide.

NTT Ltd, Senior Vice President, Alliances, Sales & Channel

Jason Tomlinson

Jason Tomlinson is NTT Ltd.’s Senior Vice President of Alliances, Sales & Channel, based in London. His role ensures NTT Ltd.’s success through leading edge technology, innovative and drive growth initiatives, and by technological advancements within its cloud portfolio. Jason and his team work with the distributed global sales organization and strategic technology partners to provide optimal industry-specific solutions tailored to the needs of customers’ businesses, industries and the public sphere.

Beginning as a Product Engineer spanning 10 years, Jason has proven adept at cloud product, marketing, and alliance leadership throughout his company tenure. Jason’s acumen and vast knowledge within business transformation and leadership segments has yielded operational excellence, earning him his current role with NTT Ltd.’s global senior leadership team.

NTT Ltd. (Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation) is a leading global technology services company, headquartered in Tokyo, Japan. NTT Ltd works with organizations around the world, achieving business outcomes through intelligent technology solutions. NTT Ltd. provides unique offerings in cloud-enabling networking, hybrid cloud, data centers, digital transformation, client experience, workplace and cybersecurity. NTT employs more than 40,000 people in a dynamic workplace that spans 57 countries and delivering services in over 200 countries and regions.

Jason grew up on the beach in South Africa and holds a MBA from the University of Greenwich. Jason has worked in both public and private sector, holding positions in retail, manufacturing and technology. His hobbies include golf, running and cycling, mainly any activity outdoors. When he left school, he was a paramedic and he has also completed an Ironman challenge.

Dean of London Campus

Dr Mariana Dodourova

Dr Mariana Dodourova is the Dean of UWS London and her mission is to ensure the best possible quality of education that supports excellent student outcomes and student experience. With long-standing experience in UK academia, Mariana has occupied a variety of roles spanning most academic activities and developed extensive knowledge and understanding of the different facets of Higher Education. She is a subject expert in strategic management, innovation and change management, and has worked with large and small companies on consultancy projects responding to a range of organisational needs. Her work has been presented at national and international conferences and published in peer-reviewed journals. She has delivered funded research in the ICT industries, the UK creative industries, and the European automotive industry. Several Doctoral students have achieved successful completion under her supervision in the areas of change management, strategic growth and strategic development processes. She is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.