Surrey 2023 Conference

Kate Nicholls OBE has been CEO of UKHospitality, the powerful voice representing the broad hospitality sector, since its inception in 2018, having previously worked as CEO and Strategic Affairs Director of the ALMR.

Kate is Chair of the Tourism Alliance and co-Chair of the London Tourism Recovery Board, representing the needs of the wider tourism sector in discussions with Government and the Mayor of London. She sits on the Government’s Tourism, Hospitality and Food & Drink Sector Councils and has previously Chaired the London Night-time Commission. She is a Board member of Best Bar None, PASS and is a trustee at Hospitality Action. In July 2021, she was appointed as the first Government Disability Ambassador for hospitality, promoting inclusivity.

Kate initially worked as a researcher in the House of Commons and European Parliament on food, employment and environmental policy before joining Whitbread to work in Strategic Affairs. She has extensive experience as a political and strategic communications consultant and is a graduate of Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge and Kings College London.

As Head of Sustainability at Booking.com, Danielle D’Silva leads the development and execution of the company's holistic global sustainability strategy – covering sustainable operations, making it easier for travellers to book sustainable trips and collaborating with partners and peers to catalyze sustainable travel growth.

Danielle was instrumental in the creation of Booking Holdings' inaugural Climate Action Plan and will use her deep topic knowledge to oversee Booking.com's progress against the targets set out in the plan. A passionate advocate for all aspects of sustainability, Danielle is also leading the integration of sustainability into the company's culture and its products. 

Previously, Danielle led Booking.com's operational sustainability programme and was responsible for a number of important milestones – including Booking.com becoming carbon neutral in its operations in 2020, overseeing the removal of single-use products from the company's global office infrastructure and the sourcing of 100% renewable electricity for Booking Holdings' operations. 

Danielle has a BA in cultural anthropology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a masters in international development from the University of Amsterdam. Born in the USA, she embodies the intrepid travel spirit, having lived in five countries across three continents. She currently resides in Amsterdam with her partner and their golden retriever, Lola.

Toju is a Responsible AI Programme Manager at Google, with over 16 years experience spanning across Advertising, Retail, Not-For Profits and Tech. She designs Responsible AI programmes focused on the development and implementation of Responsible AI frameworks, processes and tools amongst Google’s product and research teams, with a focus on Large Language Models, Natural Language Processing, and Generative models.

Toju is also the Ambassador for Women in AI UK, a not for profit organisation with a mission to build diverse and inclusive AI globally. Toju provides consultation and advice on Responsible AI practices to organisations worldwide. She is the founder of VIBE - a women's community focused on personal and professional development using the underlying principles of emotional intelligence.

Jamie-Lee Abtar has worked in travel for more than a decade, developing marketing strategies for travel and lifestyle brands. She recently joined leader in responsible travel Intrepid as marketing manager, looking after brand and tourism board partnerships.  

Jamie-Lee also works with a number of travel industry organisations and associations (Women in Travel CIC and ITT Future You)  to champion, consult and speak on the importance of diversity, equity and inclusivity in the travel industry, specifically focussed on encouraging and supporting diverse talent and how brands can engage and attract Black, Asian and minority ethnic travellers. She has been featured in Forbes and Harpers Bazaar for her working in promoting diversity, equity and inclusion in the travel industry. 

She is also creator and host of the In The Travel Know Podcast sharing insights from travel's most influential leaders.

Professor Honggang Xu is the Dean of the School of Tourism Management at Sun Yat-sen University, China. Her research interests are mainly in sustainable tourism, as well as gender and accessibility issues in tourism. She has published over 100 articles in academic journals including TM, ATR and JOST. She is an elected fellow of the International Academy for the Study of Tourism. She is also the chairperson of the Chinese Tourism Geography Commission and the vice chair of the Sport Leisure and Tourism Commission of International Geography Congress. Professor Xu is a key expert in UNWTO sustainable Tourism Monitor Center (MCSTO) in China. She obtained the Roy Wolfe Award from the Tourism Commission of American Geography Association for contribution in tourism geography researches.

Professor John Ravenscroft, PhD (Chair of Childhood Visual Impairment) is a Psychologist, Educationalist, and uses philosophy into his work. Prof Ravenscroft is Director of the Scottish Sensory Centre, which provides career Long Professional Development for Teachers of Children with Sensory Impairment. He is based at the Moray House School of Education and Sport, University of Edinburgh and he is also the current Editor in Chief of the British Journal of Visual Impairment. He is the President of the International Council for Educators of Children with Visual Impairment (ICEVI) Europe) and lectures on cerebral visual impairment, inclusive education as well as research methods. He is known for his work on cerebral visual impairment and his “Conversations about CVI” have been views thousands of times on Youtube. Professor Ravenscroft is often found on twitter and welcomes any discussion about the nature of representation.

Professor Geoffrey Lipman is President SUNx Malta - Strong Universal Network, Envoy for Sustainable Tourism Global Centre and lead for TPCC – Tourism Panel on Climate Change.

Previously, Professor Lipman was Executive Director IATA, First President WTTC, and Assistant Secretary General UNWTO.

He has played a key role in emergence of Tourism as a serious socio-economic sector.

• As Executive Director at IATA in the 1970's helped drive a new liberalization agenda, responding to airline deregulation.
• As first President of WTTC throughout the 1990's, he worked to pioneer new systems of measuring the sector, creating CSR Certification and supporting China’s efforts to open Tourism markets.
• As Assistant Secretary General of UNWTO, in the first decade of this millennium, he spearheaded new development support systems, including the ST-EP Program, led the Davos Climate Summit and launched G20 Summit recognition program.
• As Co-founder of SUNx Strong Universal Network - a legacy project of Maurice Strong This is a global initiative to support Climate Resilience, related SDG’s and Emergency Response through Climate Friendly Travel ~ Measured: Green: 2050proof.

He has served on public/private sector Boards in Africa, Europe, Middle East and Canada: Tourism Envoy to UNDP Administrator; Member EU Commissions on Airline Liberalization and on Tourism Employment: Environment Advisor to the Governor of Jeju Island, Korea: President ICTP (International Coalition of Tourism Partners). Worked closely with the World Economic Forum since the early 90's on its Competitiveness and Smart Travel activities.

He has written/lectured widely on tourism strategy, sustainability & liberalization; co-author/ editor of two books and numerous journal articles on Green Growth & Travelism as a visiting Professor, Victoria U. Australia and Hasselt U. Belgium. Co-author two major EIU studies on airline liberalization.

Debbie is an Associate Professor in Human Geography jointly appointed between the School of Geography and the Environment, and the Sustainable Urban Development programme in the Department for Continuing Education. She completed her master's degree (Geography, with distinction) at King's College London, and PhD at the University of Otago / Te Whare Wānanga o Ōtākou (Aotearoa New Zealand), and undertook postdoctoral training at the Centre for Sustainability, University of Otago, (2014-2016), and the Transport Studies Unit, University of Oxford (2016-2017). Debbie is the Editor-in-Chief of the Association of American Geographers Review of Books and sits on the editorial board of the Journal of Transport Geography, Applied Mobilities, Tourism Geographies, Journal of Sustainable Tourism and Global Networks. Her research centres on just decarbonisation, geographies of sustainability transitions, and mobile working lives. 

Debbie currently leads a three-year (2022-2025) ESRC-funded project, 'Trucking Lives', that seeks to uncover the complexities of logistical work, and works with colleagues in Norway and NZ on PATHWAYS, a Norwegian Research Council-funded project focused on sustainable tourism mobilities. 

David Leslie is the Director of Ethics and Responsible Innovation Research at The Alan Turing Institute. Before joining the Turing, he taught at Princeton’s University Center for Human Values, where he also participated in the UCHV’s 2017-2018 research collaboration with Princeton’s Center for Information Technology Policy on “Technology Ethics, Political Philosophy and Human Values: Ethical Dilemmas in AI Governance.” Prior to teaching at Princeton, David held academic appointments at Yale’s programme in Ethics, Politics and Economics and at Harvard’s Committee on Degrees in Social Studies, where he received over a dozen teaching awards including the 2014 Stanley Hoffman Prize for Teaching Excellence. He was also a 2017-2018 Mellon-Sawyer Fellow in Technology and the Humanities at Boston University and a 2018-2019 Fellow at MIT’s Dalai Lama Center for Ethics and Transformative Values.

David has served as an elected member of the Bureau of the Council of Europe’s Ad Hoc Committee on Artificial Intelligence (CAHAI). He is on the editorial board of the Harvard Data Science Review (HDSR) and is a founding editor of the Springer journal, AI and Ethics. He is the author of the UK Government’s official guidance on the responsible design and implementation of AI systems in the public sector, Understanding artificial intelligence ethics and safety (2019) and a principal co-author of Explaining decisions made with AI (PDF) (2020), a co-badged guidance on AI explainability published by the Information Commissioner’s Office and The Alan Turing Institute. He is also Principal Investigator of a UKRI-funded project called PATH-AI: Mapping an Intercultural Path to Privacy, Agency and Trust in Human-AI Ecosystems, which is a research collaboration with RIKEN, one of Japan’s National Research and Development Institutes founded in 1917. Most recently, he has received a series of grants from the Global Partnership on AI, the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, and BEIS to lead a project titled, Advancing Data Justice Research and Practice, which explores how current discourses around the problem of data justice, and digital rights more generally, can be extended from the predominance of Western-centred and Global North standpoints to non-Western and intercultural perspectives alive to issues of structural inequality, coloniality, and discriminatory legacies.

David was a Principal Investigator and lead co-author of the NESTA-funded Ethics review of machine learning in children’s social care (2020). His other recent publications include the HDSR articles “Tackling COVID-19 through responsible AI innovation: Five steps in the right direction” (2020) and “The arc of the data scientific universe” (2021) as well as Understanding bias in facial recognition technologies (2020), an explainer published to support a BBC investigative journalism piece that won the 2021 Royal Statistical Society Award for Excellence in Investigative Journalism. David is also a co-author of Mind the gap: how to fill the equality and AI accountability gap in an automated world (PDF) (2020), the Final Report of the Institute for the Future of Work’s Equality Task Force and lead author of “Does AI stand for augmenting inequality in the COVID-19 era of healthcare” (2021) published in the British Medical Journal. He is additionally the lead author of Artificial intelligence, human rights, democracy, and the rule of law (2021), a primer prepared to support the CAHAI’s Feasibility Study and translated into Dutch and French, and of Human rights, democracy, and the rule of law assurance framework for AI systems: A proposal. In his shorter writings, David has explored subjects such as the life and work of Alan Turing, the Ofqual fiasco, the history of facial recognition systems and the conceptual foundations of AI for popular outlets from the BBC to Nature.

Kathleen Richardson is Professor of Ethics and Culture of Robots and AI at De Montfort University and Director of WERAID (Women, Ethics, Robots, AI and Data). 

Kathleen is author of An Anthropology of Robots and AI: Annihilation Anxiety and Machines (2015) and Challenging Sociality? An Anthropology of Autism, Attachment and Robots (2018). She has another book in the pipeline on ‘sex’ robots. 

In 2015 she launched the Campaign Against Porn Robots to draw attention to problematic effects of new technologies on human relations, and their potential impact to create new layers of inequalities between men and women and adults and children. She is co-editor of Man-Made Women: The Sexual Politics of Sex Dolls and Sex Robots (Springer 2022).

Dr Ansgar Koene is Global AI Ethics and Regulatory Leader at EY (Ernst & Young) where he leads the AI related public policy team and contributes to the work on AI governance and EY’s Trusted AI framework. As part of this work, he represents EY at the OECD Working Party on AI and Governance and the Business at OECD Committee on Digital Economic Policy (BIAC CDEP).

Ansgar chaired the IEEE P7003 Standard for Algorithmic Bias Considerations working group and is a co-convener for the CEN-CENELEC JTC21 “AI” committee’s work on AI conformity assessment. He is a trustee for the 5Rights foundation for the Rights of Young People Online and advises on AI and Data Ethics for the pan-African NGO AfroLeadership and the smart-mobility start-up Hayden AI.

Ansgar has a multi-disciplinary research background, having worked and published on topics ranging from Policy and Governance of Algorithmic Systems (AI), data-privacy, AI Ethics, AI Standards, bio-inspired Robotics, AI and Computational Neuroscience to experimental Human Behaviour/Perception studies. He holds an MSc in Electrical Engineering and a PhD in Computational Neuroscience.