Kimra Conference - Speakers 2026

Athena Peppes

Head of AI Research
BossUp.AI & Director
Beacon Thought Leadership

Athena Peppes is Head of AI Research at BossUp.AI and a Director at Beacon Thought Leadership. Her research focuses on the gap between organisations’ AI investments and their people’s readiness – and what that gap is costing in productivity. She started her career as an economist, followed by over a decade at Accenture researching emerging trends and their impact on business. Her insights have been featured in Harvard Business Review, The European Business Review, and Rotman Magazine. Her book “AI-Q: The new leadership imperative for the Human+AI era” is forthcoming in 2027.

Andrew Cosgrove

Insights Leader
EY

Andrew Cosgrove leads Insights globally at EY. Andrew has >25 years’ Consumer Goods and Professional Services experience as an analyst in the US, Asia and Europe including roles at Mars and McKinsey. He has a track record of delivering distinctive insights which challenge executives to reframe their strategic choices on where and how to compete. Andrew has an MBA from London business School and is co-author of ”Managing Profitable Growth in Emerging Markets: Scaling the Tail.

Ceri Hughes

Independent Executive Coach and NED

Ceri is an independent Executive Coach, Non-Executive Director and Conference Facilitator. She also sits on the Tribunals and Fitness to Practice committee of a major regulatory body. Until 2024 she was Director of Operations for KPMG’s Chief People Officer. Her career at KPMG spanned more than 24 years, latterly in Operations, but for 16 years she led the Knowledge Management and Research groups at the firm in the UK and internationally, including the establishment of offshore knowledge operations in India, and then became the Head of Learning and Knowledge Management for KPMG UK in 2017. In 2020 she was part of the team leading the firm’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic. Prior to working at KPMG, Ceri was the Global Head of Information and Records Management at an international telecommunications company. She began her career as a Library Association/SCONUL Graduate Trainee at the Lord Chancellor’s Department

Dan Donovan

GTM Leader

Dan Donovan began his career in consulting at KPMG. He then moved into private equity, working with both large-cap PE and growth equity, with a focus on investing and value creation. Dan is now leading and building out the Emerging Markets business at AlphaSense.

Daniel Entrup

Co-Founder
AggKnowledge

Dan is Co-Founder of AggKnowledge, a data management and enrichment business purpose-built for knowledge networks. He has spent the majority of his career in information services and primary research businesses, working with and advising private equity firms, hedge funds, law firms, management consultancies, and large corporations on sources of intelligence. Prior to founding AggKnowledge, Dan was Executive Director of Data Strategy at Henry Schein, a Fortune 500 healthcare solutions company, and SVP of Partnerships at FactSet, a leading financial information services company. Additionally, he is an Advisor to multiple companies across the insights value-chain and writes the It’s Pronounced Data newsletter, a weekly digest of M&A, funding, people moves, events, articles, and more on the info services and market research sectors.

Emma King

Insight Center – Senior Director
Alvarez & Marsal

Emma has worked in the information industry for more than 30 years, working within professional services research functions for more than 20 years. Emma is currently a Senior Director in the Insight Center at Alvarez & Marsal a consulting firms providing global leadership, problem solving and value creation for companies across industries and around the world. Emma has worked at A&M for 8 years – firstly developing and now leading the global “On-Demand” research service for the firm. She also supports other service offerings of Thought Leadership, Subscriptions, Internal Communications and Knowledge Management across EMEA.

Francis Hintermann

Global Executive Director
Accenture Research

Francis Hintermann is the Global Executive Director of Accenture Research. He is based in New York City. Accenture Research identifies and anticipates game changing business, market and technology trends through provocative thought leadership. Francis’ team of 300 researchers based in 20 countries partners with world class organizations and Academia to discover innovative solutions for clients. Accenture Research produces more than 100 thought leadership reports per year on the priority topics selected by Accenture and its clients. Francis’ own work is currently focused on the business and societal impacts of AI and Generative AI and the way companies develop successful AI strategies to create value. Francis has more than 25 years of experience in assessing the business impacts of new technologies for international companies and public organizations in North America and Europe. He is also an Adjunct Professor of Corporate Strategy at Sciences-Po in Paris, France.

Gabriel Karawani

Co-founder and Director
ClearPeople 

Gabriel Karawani is Co-founder of ClearPeople, the company behind Atlas, the intelligent knowledge platform for Microsoft 365. He works with law firms and professional services organizations to address a critical gap in enterprise AI: the knowledge layer. With over two decades of experience, he argues that most AI initiatives underperform not because of the models, but because of fragmented, ungoverned knowledge. His work focuses on designing structured knowledge architectures that enable Microsoft 365 Copilot, Azure AI, and scalable, multi-source AI adoption.

James Mann

Managing Director
FT Professional

James Mann has been Managing Director, FT Professional since September 2025, after joining the Financial Times in 1994. He has held senior commercial roles across circulation and digital content sales in the UK, US and internationally, including Global Sales for FT Professional and Director of Circulation and Content Sales, EMEA. He has led the FT’s B2B content licensing strategy. Previously, he worked at Euromoney. He holds degrees in Economics and Geography and is an NLA board representative.

Karen Battersby

Director of Knowledge for Sectors and Clients
Baker McKenzie

Karen Battersby is the Global Director of Knowledge for Sectors and Clients at Baker McKenzie. She leads on AI client advisory services for the firm and is a member of the leadership team responsible for implementing AI tools across the firm. She is a commercial lawyer of many years experience, both in private practice and as a global in-house counsel, and has worked at legal industry vendors, including LexisNexis, developing legal product solutions. She holds an MBA and led the development of the UK’s first MBA qualification in legal Knowledge Management at Nottingham Law School, and is a qualified coach.

Kieron Champion

Managing Director and Advisory Practice Head
Fireman

Kieron Champion is Managing Director and head of the Advisory practice at Fireman, an Epiq Company, and supports law firms in the UK, North America, and Australia with their strategies, operating models, and solutions that span Knowledge, Data, and AI. In this role, he focuses on translating complex business strategies into practical, high-value solutions that deliver measurable impact for firms and their clients.

With over 25 years of experience in professional services – including roles as Global Chief Knowledge Strategy Officer at Cleary Gottlieb, Global Chief Knowledge Officer at KPMG, and earlier at Accenture – Kieron is a recognised thought leader in the field, regularly speaking at conferences, lecturing at universities, and contributing to industry publications.

Lianne Sherlock

Director and Global Head of Knowledge Services
Oliver Wyman

Lianne Sherlock is Director and Global Head of Knowledge Services at Oliver Wyman, a Marsh company, bringing nearly two decades of experience leading and evolving Knowledge Services within complex, global organisations. She is widely recognised for her leadership in organisational transformation, shaping future‑ready knowledge functions through operating model design, capability building and cultural change that embed insight at the heart of decision‑making. Lianne is at the forefront of AI‑enabled Knowledge Services, leveraging AI, automation and advanced analytics to deliver integrity-led insights at scale, strengthen trust and governance, and accelerate impact—ultimately driving organisational growth in an increasingly data‑ and insight‑driven world.

Rachel Clarke

Knowledge Management Manager – Senior Vice President
AlixPartners

Rachel Clarke leads the Knowledge Management team at AlixPartners, supporting this global firm of consultants to deliver value to clients when it really matters. She has spent 22 years working in Knowledge Management roles: helping to build some of the first knowledge repositories and sites at EY, co-creating collaboration spaces with clients, building and enabling communities of practice and developing and managing global content collections. Since joining AlixPartners she has re-built taxonomies, implemented a full redesign of their primary knowledge hub, led a migration of their priority content collection to a new platform and explored AI tooling to support content translation and sanitization.

Stuart Tate

Tax Technology & Innovation Partner
KPMG in the UK

Stuart is a Tax Technology and Innovation Partner at KPMG in the UK. Stuart leads on tax technology for the UK firm. In addition to his UK role, Stuart chairs the EMEA Tax & Legal Technology Network, driving a unified technology strategy amongst the EMEA KPMG firms.

Tara Pichardo Angadi

Director of Knowledge (EMEA)
Norton Rose Fulbright

Tara Pichardo Angadi is Director of Knowledge (EMEA) at Norton Rose Fulbright, with responsibility across Learning, Knowledge Management and Data. In this role, she focuses on practical, value led innovation — ensuring that knowledge and data are translated into tools and approaches that support legal delivery and are adopted in practice.

Her current focus is on strengthening data governance within law firms, recognising this as a critical foundation for generating reliable insights and enabling the development of scalable, data driven client solutions.

Tom Mowat

Director, Global Customer Experience Analytics
Microsoft

Tom Mowat is a data science and analytics executive with over 15 years of international research and strategy experience. Tom currently leads the insights and analytics function at Microsoft’s global customer experience team, managing the strategy behind the company’s internal listening instruments and responsible for the dissemination of insights to stakeholders around the wolrd. Prior to this Tom worked as the founder and CEO of Vesta Smart Packaging, as well as multiple consulting and research roles at companies including PWC and Analysis Mason.