Speakers

Julian Worricker

Julian Worricker is a presenter for the BBC News Channel’s rolling news and the BBC World Service’s Weekend World Today programme. He has been a familiar voice on BBC radio since 1985 presenting on various programmes across BBC Radio 4, including Any Answers?, You & Yours and Last Word.   

Julian was entertainingly ‘photobombed’ by the Queen, live on BBC News, when she visited the BBC newsroom. Over the years he has won several broadcasting and journalism awards.

Mary Portas

Retail expert Mary Portas has advised government, transformed both luxury and high street stores, written books and produced a host of retail and business-themed TV programmes. The Chief Creative Officer of her own retail consultancy, and author of Work Like a Woman: A Manifesto For Change, she delivers an inspiring message of how businesses and individuals can adapt, transform and lead.

Dido Harding

Baroness ‘Dido’ Harding was Chief Executive of TalkTalk for seven years, growing the business in one of the most competitive, fast-moving markets, dominated by big players. As well as turning the company around from being Britain’s most complained about telecoms operator into an award-winning service provider, she also took a very visible public lead when TalkTalk were subject to a high-profile cyber-attack. She remains one of the UK’s best-known digital business leaders and is a regular commentator on what the digital revolution means for businesses and society, and how Britain can build a successful, inclusive, digital economy.

Ben Beadle

Ben is the Chief Executive Officer of the National Residential Landlords Association (NRLA), the association created by the merger of the NLA and RLA. A landlord for 15 years, Ben has a lengthy career in housing, holding senior roles at Touchstone, part of the Places for People Housing group, the Tenancy Deposit Scheme and TDS Northern Ireland.

He is responsible for bringing the two organisations together, delivering great services to customers and growing the business to ensure there is an even greater voice to influence housing policy - all for the benefit of the members.

Anthony Hesse

Anthony established Property Personnel as a specialist Recruitment Consultancy to the Estate Agency industry in August 1988. The company has been trading for longer than any of its competitors making Anthony the most experienced specialist recruiter in this field by a number of years. Not only is he running the business he founded over 30 years ago, he is also still very much involved in placing people in estate agency, especially at a more senior level.

As well as helping a wide range of estate agencies recruit some of the most talented staff in the industry, Anthony and his team also provide their clients with benchmarking on estate agency salaries, along with advice and training on the interview and recruitment process.

Sarah Davidson

Sarah Davidson is knowledge and product editor at the MailOnline’s money section, This is Money, managing a team of reporters covering saving and banking, investing, pensions, small business, insurance, expat finance, mortgages and buy-to-let.

She has written extensively for private investors, financial advisers and consumers at a range of national publications including This is Money at the MailOnline, the Financial Times group, the Independent on Sunday and The Sunday Times. She has written for trade titles Financial Adviser and was formerly editor of Mortgage Introducer, Bridging Introducer and Every Investor.

She has won several national awards for her journalism including being commended as national personal finance trade journalist of the year and winning national consumer mortgage journalist of the year in 2013, 2017 and 2018.

Glynis Frew

Glynis Frew joined Hunters Estate Agents in 1999 and has been leading as Chief Executive Officer since December 2016. With over 20 years of experience in property, Glynis is highly driven and a well-known public figure in the sector, where she has been instrumental in Hunters’ growth into one of the industry’s largest franchises. She continues to raise the business’s professional standards to the highest level through education and initiatives such as the Hunters Training Academy and is well known for her contribution to the regulatory environment.

Prior to joining Hunters, Glynis held a number of roles with blue-chip companies including United Biscuits and PepsiCo, where she specialised in running key accounts, sales and training.

Hunters, which opened its first office in York in 1992 and its first franchising branch in 2006, now has a network of over 200 branches nationwide. The company listed on the AIM stock exchange in 2015 and has consistently delivered strong results since then as it continues to grow.

Nick Samuel

Nick is part of the Samuel Estates team, who opened its first office in 2006 in Wimbledon. Taking over several agencies, it has grown its property portfolio and expanded the lettings part of our business into Central, East, and South East London. It is now an award-winning boutique agency with an increasing number of international customers.

Prior to Samuel Estates, Nick worked in a senior role within the IT Directorate for Post Office, overseeing change control and commercial input on the automation platform run by Fujitsu Services – originally Europe’s largest ever non-military IT contract.

Nick is heavily involved in the local business community as Director of the Merton Chamber of Commerce and also held the position as Chair of a Town Centre Partnership Board.

Lucy King

Lucy King is an established recruiter in the property industry, having worked in estate agency for 15 years, and in property recruitment specifically for eight years. She is Head of Talent at Winkworth, charged with bringing in the highest quality franchisees to grow the network, as well as finding and recruiting the best staff for Winkworth's 100 existing offices. She is also currently studying CIPD to expand her knowledge of HR.

Lucy believes that the key to ensuring success is not only finding the best talent, but retaining it through offering a mix of training and industry qualifications, a positive team environment, good management, opportunity to progress and earn well, autonomy within the role and a good work-life balance. In this current climate, while unemployment is at a record low and good talent is even harder to find, training and investment in people is more important than ever.

Rachel Hanniquet-Brooking

Rachel is an independent business owner and current Director of Operations and Resident Services for one of the UK’s largest build to rent providers. Rachel has over 17 years’ experience, from working in asset management, traditional small-scale lettings environments to large global businesses in both residential and commercial settings both in the UK and internationally. Having self-funded her journey to ARLA Propertymark membership, Rachel champions for industry standards and encouraging the next generation of letting agents.