• Sam Clarke: Breaking Records, Debunking Myths, and the Future of Electric Vehicle Charging
    Nov 13 2024

    About the episode: EV industry pioneer Sam Clarke, a record-holding entrepreneur with over two decades in electric mobility shares his journey from importing electric motorbikes in the early 2000s to founding a zero-emissions logistics company and advising on national EV infrastructure. We discuss debunking myths around electric vehicles and explore how the concept of 'grazing' can reset our expectations of electric vehicle charging. Guest Name: Sam Clarke Sam Clarke is a life-long entrepreneur, industry advisor, EV owner/driver for over 20 years and a multiple Guinness World Record Holder for EV driving. His EV journey started back in 2002 with electric motorbikes before founding a zero-emission logistics firm (Gnewt) which he sold to John Menzies Plc in 2017. He now works on national charging infrastructure needs for GRIDSERVE in particular leading on the £100M+ Government funded (ZEHID) eHGV Electric Freightway Project. He is also a founding member of The EV Café webinar and news channel. In 2015, Sam was a Great British Entrepreneur’s Award winner. By 2022 he was made a GreenFleet EV Champion for services to the industry and in 2024 he was voted #1 in the Motor Transport Power Players 2 list and #14 in the greenfleet.net 1 top 100 most Influential list. He also holds two Guinness World Records for the longest distances ever driven in an electric car and van on a single charge 7 (569 and 311 miles respectively). In 2009 he founded the all-electric last-mile logistics business Gnewt which subsequently won multiple awards nationally and globally and was acquired by John Menzies Plc in 2017. During his tenure, he created the UK’s largest fully electric commercial fleet, the largest privately-owned smart charging infrastructure and UK’s most advanced private V2G (Vehicle to Grid) network. With Sam at the helm, the business was able to deliver over 10 million parcels in its first 10 years of trading 3, mainly in Central London, courtesy of a trail-blazing fully zero-emission fleet, the first of its kind anywhere in the UK. Most recently, Sam has extended his role from Board advisor at GRIDSERVE to become their Chief Vehicle Officer 4. His role is to drive forward mass uptake of electric vehicles through the creation of a net-zero EV leasing division, commercial charging infrastructure build-outs and support the nationwide roll out of high-powered Electric Forecourts and upgrade of the GRIDSERVE Electric Highway network that resides on 85% of the service stations nationally. In 2023 he led the successful bid for a £100M+ Innovate UK Government fund (ZEHID 6) whose purpose is to roll out eHGV charging infrastructure nationwide, the second largest award ever issued by Innovate UK to private enterprise. Sam is a high-profile member of the EV community, a regular public speaker for the industry and has previously been invited to speak at the Transport Select Committee in Westminster and at the European Commission in Brussels. He is also a founding member and Company Director/Shareholder of The EV Café Ltd 5. which is a popular webinar series discussing all aspects of EV adoption on regular weekly and monthly sessions. The EV Café has a number of high-profile sectoral sponsors including companies such as, but not limited to, The AA, Europcar, Bridgestone and Webfleet. Links: LinkedIn: Sam Clarke www.gridserve.com I hope you enjoy the show and if you have any comments or suggestions, please write to me at: toby@wickedproblems.fm. About Adaptavis Adaptavis is a Business Performance Management and Transformation consultancy aimed at forward-thinking leaders, based in London UK. The company specialises in helping organisations to enhance operational efficiency, drive business growth, and navigate complex transformations. From strategy to execution, they focus on providing insights and practical solutions to improve the overall performance of businesses, ensuring they can adapt to changing market conditions and achieve sustainable success. Toby Corballis is a Partner at Adaptavis. You can find out more about their work by visiting: www.adaptavis.com Enjoy, Toby Corballis

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    30 mins
  • Jordan Brompton: Electric vehicles, sustainable energy independence, and preparing for the zombie apocalypse
    Oct 30 2024

    About the episode:

    Jordan Brompton of myenergi explores the evolving challenges and opportunities in the electric vehicle industry, focusing on sustainability, resilience, and how she's preparing for a potential zombie uprising! Myenergi is a provider of Home EV chargers, solar PV systems, and Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS) - or, as Jordan says, Home Energy Management Systems (HEMS). Jordan talks about her journey to setting up one of the most successful HEMS companies in the UK (with cofounder Lee Sutton) and shares insights about the industry, with a couple of EV myths busted into the deal. Join us as we discuss how companies are navigating economic hurdles and accelerating the journey toward a net-zero future.

    Guest Name: Jordan Brompton

    Business leader, tech entrepreneur and sustainable investor, Jordan Brompton is the co-founder and CMO of myenergi – a global leader in eco-smart home energy technology. Alongside forging fundamental business relationships, Jordan is responsible for driving the day-to-day corporate strategy and fuelling long-term international expansion.

    With the ambition of leaving the planet in a better place than she found it, Jordan has been presented with a number of prestigious awards and accolades for her pioneering work. Alongside being crowned Great British Entrepreneur of the Year, she was named in the TE100, the Stonehage Fleming XV, the Top 10 Women in Energy and took home gold as EY Entrepreneur of the Year (North).

    Never one to sit still, she became a published author with her debut book ‘Sparki and the journey to Earth’, which aims to educate children about the importance of working towards a greener future.

    Links:

    LinkedIn: Jordan Brompton

    www.myenergi.com

    I hope you enjoy the show and if you have any comments or suggestions please write to me at: tc@wickedproblems.fm.

    Enjoy,

    Toby Corballis

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    32 mins
  • Ali Nicholl: Decentralised data distribution: sustainability, impact, and resilience for the future of humanity and the environment.
    Apr 17 2024
    About the episode:

    How can businesses share data to enable them to collaborate effectively whilst still retaining control of their data? Ali Nicholl at IOTICS thinks his company has the answer.

    Guest Name: Ali Nicholl

    Ali Nicholl is part of IOTICS’ founding team and IOTICS’ Head of Engagement, working across transport, logistics, utilities, the built environment, and defence, focusing on interoperability of IT & OT and digital cooperation across enterprise boundaries. Deploying decentralised, federated approaches that leverage semantics, selective sharing of data and connected digital twins. Ali is actively working on projects supporting the co-creation of transformative services and solutions at the intersection of market sectors and industries – with an interest in ESG, sustainability, and essential sharing networks.

    Ali also represents IOTICS within industry and academic initiatives such as TechUK’s Digital Twin Working Group, Cranfield University’s Industry Advisory Board and, as Co-Chair, on the DT Hub Community Council. Ali is passionate about enabling and empowering individuals and organisations to use trusted interoperability to unlock the value of their data assets to meet today’s business challenges, with the future flexibility to be ready for as-yet-undefined technology and needs.

    The opportunities presented by enabling programmatic discovery, data sharing and interaction must be married with a holistic understanding to unify technical and business benefits. Ali’s skills lie in taking a view across technical and sector landscapes to give confidence to those taking their first steps and to reflect impacts for the greater good.

    Links:

    LinkedIn: Ali Nicholl

    IOTICS.com

    I hope you enjoy the show and if you have any comments or suggestions please write to me at: tc@wickedproblems.fm.

    Enjoy,

    Toby Corballis
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    35 mins
  • Professor Herman Russchenberg: Innovation, Business Strategies, Addressing the Climate Emergency, and the Scientific Perspective!
    Feb 7 2024
    About the episode:

    The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in the US called last year the hottest on record “by far”. During the year we saw many climate-related catastrophes – from large scale fires to unprecedented flooding. And yet, for some, the science of climate change is controversial. Many claim that even climate scientists don’t believe it can be attributed to anthropogenic actions. To understand what climate scientists really believe, we thought we’d speak with one.

    Professor Russchenberg leads the Climate Institute at the Technical University of Delft and is the scientific director of the national Ruisdael Observatory, both in the Netherlands, an apt choice given that roughly one third of the Netherlands lies below sea level (the lowest being 6.7 metres below) and, so, rising sea levels are an issue.

    In this episode, Professor Russchenberg and Toby Corballis discuss what businesses can do, the role of technology in mitigating some of the worst effects, why we’re seeing recent events, the warming of the oceans, and where we’re headed. Importantly, we ask what role business can play in helping to mitigate some of the worst effects of climate change.

    Guest Name: Professor Herman Russchenberg

    With decades of industry experience, Andrew Gordon-Brooks has built his career across Telco, Finance & Media with both global enterprises and early stage startups. Holding a variety of leadership & executive level positions; including building a global engineering team for a LinkedIn top 25 startup, Andrew is currently Chief Operations Officer for Secure Delivery, a firm spec, a founder member of the OWASP Education and Training Committee, and a key contributor to the OWASP Application Security Curriculum Project.

    Guest Profile:

    Professor Russchenberg is a full professor in Atmospheric Remote Sensing and head of the Department of Geoscience and Remote Sensing at the Technical University, Delft, in the Netherlands. Since 202, he is the TU Delft vice rector magnificus for climate action.

    As well as leading the TU Delft Climate Institute, he is the Scientific Director of the national Ruisdael Observatory.

    His research themes are:

    • Climate change: the role of clouds, rainfall and aerosols in the climate system
    • Measuring the atmosphere
    • Climate engineering
    • Nowcasting rainfall
    Links:

    Find out about the work that Professor Russchenberg is doing:

    • https://www.tudelft.nl/en/ceg/about-faculty/departments/geoscience-remote-sensing
    • https://ruisdael-observatory.nl/

    Calculate your travel footprint using one of the following:

    • https://www.goclimate.com/travel-calculator
    • https://www.carbonfootprint.com/calculator.aspx
    • https://greentripper.org/

    I hope you enjoy the show and if you have any comments or suggestions please write to me at: tc@wickedproblems.fm.

    Enjoy,

    Toby Corballis
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    43 mins
  • Product Quality Matters with Andrew Gordon-Brooks
    Dec 6 2023

    As we increasingly connect our devices and our lives to the online world, product security and quality become ever more important. In this episode Toby is joined by Andrew Gordon-Brooks, COO of Secure Delivery, a firm specialising in providing security improvement programmes for software engineers, product managers and leadership. Andrew is also a founding member of the OWASP Education and Training Committee, and a key contributor to the OWASP Application Security Curriculum Project, whose goal is to produce a standard Application Security curriculum across academia and industry.

    About Andrew:

    With decades of industry experience, Andrew Gordon-Brooks has built his career across Telco, Finance & Media with both global enterprises and early stage startups. Holding a variety of leadership & executive level positions; including building a global engineering team for a LinkedIn top 25 startup, Andrew is currently Chief Operations Officer for Secure Delivery, a firm spec, a founder member of the OWASP Education and Training Committee, and a key contributor to the OWASP Application Security Curriculum Project.

    Links:

    https://securedelivery.io
    https://owasp.org
    https://productqualitymatters.com/

    I hope you enjoy the show and if you have any comments or suggestions please write to me at: tc@wickedproblems.fm.

    Enjoy,

    Toby

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    29 mins
  • Sean Jacob: Tailwinds of transformation: How grounded dreams can teach us valuable lessons
    Nov 22 2023
    In this episode, we dive into the incredible journey of Sean Jacob, whose impressive career spans across multiple sectors, from Defence to Commercial, Aviation to Finance, both in the UK and internationally. With an exceptional ability to bridge the gap between business strategy and technology, Sean has been the driving force behind numerous successful projects, programmes, and transformations.   Sean’s career would be the envy of many, with roles as Vice President, Operations for L3 Commercial Training Services, Programme Director for the AA Group Plc, and senior-level leadership roles for high-profile organisations such as Unilever, Orange, nPower, O2, The World Bank, T-Mobile, and Compaq.   When given the opportunity to invest in and manage a commercial flight school, Sean embraced it with open arms. After all, he had transformed the work processes and infrastructures of major organisations, worked with exciting start-ups, and even taken a company into the Sunday Times Fast Track 100. Enthusiastically, he set about bringing these skills to bear on a company that appeared to be doing well, had competent and enthusiastic people working for it, and would benefit from someone with considerable commercial experience taking the reins, helping the team work more effectively and creating a company set for success.   But that’s not what happened…    In this episode, we examine the intriguing story behind a slew of negative headlines in May 2023 following the collapse of Shoreham’s FTA flight school. As Steven Bartlett says, “FAILURE IS FEEDBACK, FEEDBACK IS KNOWLEDGE AND KNOWLEDGE IS POWER”.   Don’t miss out on the insights and wisdom Sean has to share from his past successes and, yes, this one failure which contains salutary lessons for us all.   LINKS: Sean speaking at Vistage Steven Bartlett on the power of Failure to teach us lessons
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    35 mins
  • We’re pivoting! News About Wicked Problems
    Nov 15 2023

    Toby explains how the podcast will change in the coming months to focus more on business. The past few years have seen more than their fair share of challenges for the business environment. An enormous number of businesses are feeling the squeeze and, as a result, looking for ways to increase capacity, capability, and production. At Wicked Problems, we’ve been helping businesses to do exactly that for years, so we thought it would be good to create a series that helps you solve those problems. We hope you enjoy the new format and look forward to seeing you on the first of the new episodes in a couple of weeks’ time.  

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    5 mins
  • Handling Risk with Alex Sidorenko
    Nov 23 2022

    Alex is an experienced executive across strategic, investment and operational risks and insurance working within multibillion dollar corporations in Australia, GCC and Europe. Successfully implemented changes to quantitative risk analysis, risk-based decision making and neuroscience.

    Saved more than $13 million per year in premiums on cargo and PD/BI insurance through industry leading quantitative risk analysis without changing deductibles or limits. Successfully presenting corporate risk profile at the Ministry of finance and helping secure more than $1B in extra funding.

    Author of the most popular free risk management book in the world, more than 150K downloads in 3 languages. Risk manager of the year, FERMA, 2021, Honourable mention 2021, RIMS. Risk manager of the year, RUSRISK, 2014, Best ERM Implementation, RUSRISK, 2014, Best risk management training, RUSRISK, 2013, 2014, 2015, finalist in risk management awards in 2018 and 2019.

    I hope you enjoy the show and if you have any comments or suggestions please write to me at: tc@wickedproblems.fm.

    Enjoy,

    Toby

    Watch this episode at: https://youtu.be/lN7-vhXuHjg

    Alex’s Links

    ALEX’S YOUTUBE CHANNEL: @RISKACADEMY
    ALEX’S BLOG: https://riskacademy.blog

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    30 mins