The MBA Speaker Series aims to give our MBA students and graduates a chance to hear from a diverse group of leaders from different industries who share insights and experiences from their careers and provide valuable new perspectives.
The sessions will be in the form of industry specific panel discussions featuring MBA alumni in certain industries and senior alumni presentations. The MBA Speaker Series also aims to connect our current students with alumni, who once stood in their shoes, and create a strong MBA community for students and alumni to come together and share stories, exchange memories and further support each other.
Upcoming Speaker Series
7 November 2024 – Senior Alumni Presentation
Chief Executive Officer – Odgers Berndtson
Kester began his career in industry within the paper and packaging sector. He held various senior positions within the Mondi division of Anglo American plc, including Commercial Director of the £300million UK business and subsequently Innovations Director for Mondi Packaging Europe, in addition to his role as Managing Director of the UK Display Division.
Subsequently, as Commercial Director, he was on the board of an AIM listed company and has consulted to a wide range of businesses in sectors as diverse as engineering, motor-racing, healthcare and shipping.
Kester is a member of the Advisory Council of TheCityUK.
Kester has a BA Hons in History from Newcastle University and MBA from Cranfield School of Management.
5 December 2024 – Management Consulting Panel
Saurav Chaudhuri (MBA 1999)
Interim Head of Innovation for E.ON UK plc.
For the past 25 years, Saurav helped large companies across multiple sectors design and launch new propositions - new products, services, experiences and businesses - and build in-house innovation capability. That's involved working with senior executives, management and cross-functional teams to make the change happen. He has worked in different environments - large companies, start-ups, and small companies - to run strategy and transformation engagements, with innovation at its core to drive profitable growth. A Specialist-Generalist, Saurav has worked in Energy and Utilities, Banking, Financial Services, Telecoms, FMCG, Retail, Healthcare, and Consultancy.
Saurav is also a certified executive coach, working towards accreditation with the ICF and EMCC.
6 February 2025 – Senior Alumni Presentation
13 March 2025 – Financial Services Panel
10 April 2025 – Senior Alumni Presentation
Previous Speaker Series
17 October 2024 – Digital, Tech and AI Panel discussion
EMEA Branches Technology, JP Morgan
Dennis spent the first 10 years of his career as a hand-on technologist, gaining significant experience across all aspects of financial markets. Post MBA, he initially moved into Management Consultancy before returning to work directly for Financial Institutions, where he progressed through the ranks to senior roles managing global teams of over 500 staff.
He has lived and worked in the UK, US, Australia, and Europe, and spent substantial time in Asia including setup of a development centre in Beijing. He currently works for JPMorgan, based in Bournemouth, working with JPMorgan’s smaller Branches across Europe and into the Middle East and Africa.
He first joined JP Morgan in 2004 as Global Head of Program Trading Sales and Middle Office Technology, then worked for seven years at Thompson Reuters in the US in technology focused roles, before returning to JP Morgan in 2014.
As a Financial Markets technology leader, Dennis is strongly focused on transformation at scale; specifically, how to combine and transform client requirements, business vision and technology strategy into executable deliverables.
He has expertise in unifying and coaching globally distributed teams, including the design and global rollout of talent development initiatives such as Gender Diversity, Autism at Work, and Hidden Leaders.
Former Global Marketing and Product Marketing Director, Meta and Skype
Linda found her career home leading Marketing for global tech brands, working across B2B, SaaS and B2B2C markets. To get there, she has charted a winding course from mechanical engineering through smart manufacturing, sales and business development, corporate strategy, customer experience, product marketing, eventually settling into the broad and ever-changing world of brand and marketing across manufacturing, mobile, digital, and tech sectors.
Whether working in listed, VC, PE, or privately owned businesses, all have had the common theme of driving growth through new products, new markets or through building new businesses, whether at O2, Skype, interactive investor, Workplace and Meta. Linda is a self-confessed new tech nerd and has been fortunate enough to be part of teams that have launched brand and product ‘firsts’, pioneering innovations in mobile, digital, media, and more recently VR and AR. Where marketing has been able to create the greatest business value and where she’s found she’s been able to make a difference has been in roles where product and technology, brand and customer experience intersect, always in close collaboration with product and sales.
Linda loves travel and has been fortunate in that all her roles have allowed her to indulge this passion, building and leading teams across EMEA, NA, LATAM and Asia. It’s also a feature of her home life too, along with a love of the sun, the sea, cinema, history and books. Having grown up in the north of England and the Caribbean, she now lives in London and has two sons who are by far her greatest personal achievement!
Director – Digital Banking, PwC
Gaurav has over 15 years of experience in technology consulting, infrastructure and cloud, business development and client support. Since completing his MBA at Cranfield he has worked at PwC in London, initially as a CIO Advisory Manager, then as a Senior Manager in Digital Technology Transformation, leading teams within the firm’s CIO Advisory function on technology projects to be directly responsible for client deliverable and senior stakeholder management. Since 2022 he has been Director of Digital Banking.
Prior to attending Cranfield, Gaurav was a Principal Consultant at Ardos, where he developed a strong relationship with their partner company, Hitachi Data Systems. Ardos was later absorbed by HDS and Gaurav acted as a single point of contact for solution delivery for all customers in the Belgium-Luxembourg region, and completed a cloud data migration project for one of the largest energy companies in Netherlands.
In his early career Gaurav was a Technical Consultant for Apara Enterprise Services, an IT consultancy and services company. Here, he started Apara's first major international project for Hitachi at Maastricht to set up data storage, backup and disaster recovery infrastructure for a major hospital, and successfully completed a project to help establish a long-term association between Hitachi and Apara.
From 2004 to 2007, Gaurav was a Senior systems engineer with Hewlett Packard, and was a key member of HP’s server support pilot team to transition enterprise customer support from the UK to India.
Gaurav holds an MS in Computer Security, Forensics and Risk Management from the University of Greenwich. For his Cranfield MBA, he focused on strategy, leadership, change management and finance.
