Daring To with Rita Trehan

Alan Vey is Founder & CEO at Aventus. Following receiving his Master’s in Artificial Intelligence at Imperial College London, he completed a stint as a quantitative developer at macro hedge fund Brevan Howard, giving him exposure to the world of traditional finance.

Marrying these skillsets and his hunger to innovate, Alan founded Aventus in 2016 – an enterprise-grade blockchain with the aim of making the benefits of blockchain available to businesses. After raising over $20m in an ICO in 2017 and surviving the pandemic, we have since continued to grow and expand into new sectors (including NFTs, loyalty, ticketing, gaming and supply chain to name a few).

Alan was named a Forbes 30 Under 30 winner in 2021 for his work at Aventus, and he continues to look for ways to remain at the bleeding edge of the space.

In addition to his work at Aventus, building further blockchain businesses and supporting others with their tokenomics models, Alan focuses on extending discipline to all areas of his personal life.

Joe O’Connor is a driven and dynamic campaigner and communicator, with extensive leadership experience, and a passion for social justice and progressive change.

Joe is currently based in New York City, where in addition to all his work for 4 Day Week Global, he is conducting a one-year research fellowship with Cornell University, leading a research project on working time reduction.

He was appointed as CEO in March 2022, taking over from Charlotte Lockhart. Previously he was 4 Day Week Global’s pilot program manager, where he is coordinating pilots of the four-day working week in Ireland, the United States and Canada, with almost 50 companies signed up to participate in six-month coordinated trials early in 2022. Pilots are being planned later in 2022 for the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand and Israel.

Joe is also the chairperson of the Four Day Week Ireland campaign, having founded the coalition in 2019, and coordinated the successful launch of a pilot program and government-funded research project in 2021. He has been active on the issue of working time reduction since 2018, when he organised a major international conference on ‘The Future of Working Time’.

Previously, Joe worked as Director of Campaigning with Fórsa Trade Union, Ireland’s largest public service union, where he led the design, development and rollout of several ground-breaking, successful and award-winning campaigns, as well as playing a leading role in driving a significant organisational change management project.

He is a former political party chairperson and political campaign director and adviser, having managed several successful national political and electoral campaigns. He is also a former President of the Union of Students in Ireland, and held a number of high-level governance and policy directorships in the field of third-level education.

In 2020, Joe co-founded The Doorstep Market, a voluntary initiative set up to support small, independent Irish businesses during the COVID-19 pandemic. This virtual multi-vendor marketplace acted an online ‘one-stop shop’, enabling Irish consumers to ‘stay home and shop local’, from a selection of over 300 small Irish businesses and more than 1,000 products.

He holds an MBS in Strategy and Innovation Management and a BBS (Honours) in Accounting from the Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology, as well as an Advanced Diploma in Employment Law from The Honorable Society of King’s Inns.

Connect with Joe on LinkedIn.

Damian McKinney brings an eclectic mix of skills and experiences to his role as the CEO of the Stoli Group. An officer in the Royal Marine Commandos, he operated in a variety of the world’s hot spots, including the Persian Gulf during the Gulf War, and received numerous awards for courage and distinguished service.

In 1999, he founded and built a global consultancy, McKinney Rogers, which was acquired by GP Strategies. McKinney has a formidable reputation as a business leader, transforming companies and brands to become the best in the world. He has worked across many industries and continents, achieving significant recognition, with a particular focus on the beverage alcohol industry.
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Stolichnaya is a historic vodka brand. It has deep roots in the vodka industry, dating back to 1948, and was a standard bearer of Soviet/Russian vodka.

The rights to the Stolichnaya brand were acquired in 1999 by SPI Group, a private company chartered in Luxembourg, founded and owned by Russian businessman Yuri Shefler. The Russian government has disputed the legality of the sale of the Stolichnaya brand and vested those rights in a Russian state-owned company – FKP Sojuzplodoimport.

The upshot is that two different companies claim ownership of the Stolichnaya brand. Each operates in those countries where the local courts have upheld their ownership of the brand.

In the United States, the Stolichnaya brand is managed by the Stoli Group, a division of SPI Group.

Amy Williams is on a mission to convert people’s attention into funds for good causes. She co-founded Good-Loop in 2016 after stints at advertising giant Ogilvy London, and a soup-kitchen in Argentina, to make ethical behaviour easier for consumers and more profitable for companies.

Today working with the likes of Nestlé, Unilever, the Co-Op, Coca-Cola and H&M, Amy’s ‘ethical ad platform’ rewards consumers who choose to watch an ad by donating to their chosen charity, whilst delivering better ROI for advertisers. It’s Yin Yang, win-win. Amy is one of Forbes Europe’s 30 under 30, eConsultancy’s Rising Star of 2019 and a face of the United Nations #SheInnovates global campaign.

Connect with Amy on LinkedIn.

Gaby has built Huckletree's vision and culture since they first opened doors in 2014, leading its corporate strategy, product, and innovation. An advocate for diversity in entrepreneurship, Gaby is an advisor and coach for early-stage founders and a speaker and panellist on the Future of Work and diverse leadership.

Outside of work, Gaby is usually dancing around her kitchen with her two little ones, Jack and Andrea, and her hubby Antoine.

Connect with Gaby on LinkedIn.

Steve Taylor is the CEO of Robin Hood Multi Academy Trust in Birmingham and has been in post since January 2016. Steve has a strong leadership background in education and, as well as being a National Leader of Education, has worked at a national level on a number of initiatives as well as at an international level.

During the recent Coronavirus shutdown of schools, Robin Hood MAT created #TheLearningProjects – a national editable set of resources for any school in the country to build upon and improve. The team currently runs #PodcastCPD, an innovative and free approach to CPD for anyone interested in education with aim of generating national and global networks.

Steve and the Robin Hood MAT team are interested in open, transparent leadership and collaboration within the education sector and have committed to sharing EVERYTHING the MAT does for others to use as a base to build from. 

For the second episode of Daring To with Rita Trehan, Rita chats to Eliane Lugassy.

After studying business law and obtaining a degree from ESSEC, Eliane began her career at Rothschild & Co in Paris on Mergers and Acquisitions.  She accompanied several real estate projects, including the sale of the “Cœur Défense” building.

In 2016, she left finance to create Witco an application that improves tenant experience in all buildings while facilitating their management. Offices, residences, coworking, and co-living. Witco adapts to all types of properties thanks to flexible technology and personalised support and will be critical to businesses as WiFI is.

Connect with Eliane on LinkedIn.

Hello, and welcome to a brand new season of Daring To with Rita Trehan! We are kicking off  Season 5 with a fabulous new guest, Lynne Franks OBE.

Lynne Franks OBE is an entrepreneur, mentor, and founder of SEED.

Lynne has spent five decades recognized as one of the world’s major lifestyle experts, predicting and creating societal, business and consumer trends; initiating and promoting major events such as London Fashion Week and Green Consumer Week as well as advising major corporations on women’s engagement including MacDonald’s; Tesco; HSBC and Next.

She also created B.Hive, the world’s first women’s business club in partnership with Regus; was Chair of Viva women’s radio; put on the UK’s first women’s festival, What Women Want, and founded SEED, the women’s leadership platform based on her global best-seller, The SEED Handbook, the feminine way to do business.

Lynne was presented with her OBE for her contribution to Business, Fashion, and the Empowerment of Women.

Connect with Lynne on LinkedIn.

Hello, and welcome to a brand new season of Daring To with Rita Trehan! We are kicking off  Season 5 with a fabulous new guest, Lynne Franks OBE.

Lynne Franks OBE is an entrepreneur, mentor, and founder of SEED.

Lynne has spent five decades recognized as one of the world’s major lifestyle experts, predicting and creating societal, business and consumer trends; initiating and promoting major events such as London Fashion Week and Green Consumer Week as well as advising major corporations on women’s engagement including MacDonald’s; Tesco; HSBC and Next.

She also created B.Hive, the world’s first women’s business club in partnership with Regus; was Chair of Viva women’s radio; put on the UK’s first women’s festival, What Women Want, and founded SEED, the women’s leadership platform based on her global best-seller, The SEED Handbook, the feminine way to do business.

Lynne was presented with her OBE for her contribution to Business, Fashion, and the Empowerment of Women.

Connect with Lynne on LinkedIn.

Carrie Freeman is Co-CEO of SecondMuse, an impact and innovation company that builds resilient economies. Since 2012, she has been steering the global company’s approach to finding and nurturing innovators dedicated to social and environmental good, and building supportive ecosystems around them. Its mission aligns with Carrie’s fundamental belief in the infinite capacity for humans to learn and grow, and the potential for inclusive markets and businesses to massively scale positive change.

Under Carrie’s leadership, SecondMuse has run programs that define inspiring visions, build lasting businesses and unite people across the globe. Over the last decade, they’ve designed and implemented programs on 7 continents with 600+ organizations such as NASA, The World Bank, and Nike. Carrie’s experiences at SecondMuse have strengthened her conviction that deep, sustained collaboration between governments, businesses, and the communities in which they operate, fosters innovation.

Before joining SecondMuse, Carrie worked for 15 years at Intel, where she honed her business and leadership experience in a range of management positions. In her most recent role there as Director of Sustainable Business Innovation, she pioneered strategies around a corporate impact investing fund and became deeply involved in, and impassioned by, technology market solutions to global sustainability problems.

In life and work, Carrie is drawn to challenges. She credits her guiding belief in the capacity of the human spirit to experiences that tested her physical and mental limits: rafting one of the most challenging rivers in the world; climbing out of a canyon during a thunderstorm; standing steadfast, time and again, before skeptical gazes as the only woman in a boardroom. Her outdoor adventures have also expanded her view of capital, beyond financial assets, to include the environment and human potential — both of which provide the world immense, often untapped or under-appreciated value.

Throughout her life and career, she has mentored and advocated for women, encouraging them to take risks and to see the value in their unique perspectives and experiences. She has also promoted the true inclusion of diverse views and experiences in the businesses and departments she has been fortunate enough to lead.

She has held numerous advisory and board positions that span the for-profit, non-profit, public and philanthropic sectors, including the U.S. EPA, Water Innovations Alliance, the Technology Venture Corporation, Packard Foundation, World Economic Forum, the Nature Conservancy, the Permaculture Credit Union, Bonneville Environmental Foundation, World Policy Institute, LAUNCH, the government of Costa Rica and several cross-industry consortia.

Carrie has undergraduate degrees from New Mexico State University and an MBA from the University of New Mexico.

Connect with Carrie on LinkedIn.