Rick de Blaby

CEO
Get Living

Rick is CEO of Get Living PLC, the UK’s leading investor, developer and operating platform of Built to Rent residential homes with 4,000 in operation and a further 6,000 in pipeline. He has been with Get Living for 5 years, whose flagship assets neighbourhoods include East Village at the Olympic Park, Elephant and Castle Town Centre, MIddlewood Locks in Salford and Lewisham Gateway plus others in Leeds, Glasgow and Maidenhead. Rick has 40 years of real estate experience, with a particular passion for big scale urban regeneration and neighbourhood creation. Rick is also a Non-Executive Board Member of Curo Housing Association. Past roles have included CEO of MEPC and United House and Non-Exec Chairman of Miller Developments.

Ailish Christian-West

Chief Operating Officer
Get Living

Ailish is responsible for managing Get Living’s existing £2 billion build-to-rent neighbourhood portfolio and current development pipeline of circa 6,000 homes development, working with investors and development partners to drive investment performance and grow the Get Living UK portfolio to our target of 15,000 homes. She also leads Get Livings ESG agenda and supports industry collaboration on a broad range of issues, advocating for a sustainable real estate sector.

Ailish has more than 20 years’ experience in UK real estate. Prior to Get Living, Ailish enjoyed 12 years at Landsec, laterally as an executive committee member responsible for portfolio management and portfolio operations. At Landsec she led key strategic initiatives including pivoting London suburban retail assets to mixed use, selling out of secondary shopping centres and creating significant value through building a retail outlet portfolio. She also spent 10 years in fund management, running core plus and opportunistic funds including at La Salle Investment Management.

Gavin Poole

CEO
Here East

Gavin is CEO of Here East – the 1.2 million sq ft technology and Innovation campus on the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in London, and one of the fastest growing business clusters in the UK. Recently, Gavin has been at the forefront of developing the concept of creating London’s first digital games and esports cluster. Prior, Gavin served as an engineering officer in the UK Royal Air Force for over 20 years before leaving following tours as a Wing Commander. Upon leaving military service, he ran the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ) and helped form major policy initiatives including the introduction of the Modern-Day Slavery Act within the UK. Gavin is a board member of Plexal, sits on the Advisory Board of Global Tech Advocates and is a London Technology Ambassador for London & Partners. In addition, he sits on the Advisory Board for London Tech Week.

Rosanna Lawes

Executive Director of Development
London Legacy Development Corporation

Rosanna Lawes is responsible for the delivery of development programmes on Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, one of the larges and highest profile urban regeneration projects in the UK and Europe. The focus is to deliver new neighbourhoods where people choose to live and work, providing a mix of residential, commercial and social infrastructure equating to a gross development value of £3.3bn.

She is also the SRO for East Bank, the new creative and education hub with Sadler’s Wells, UAL’s London College of Fashion, University College London, BBC and the Victoria and Albert Museum. This £1.1bn project will deliver 2,500 jobs, attract 1.5m additional visitors and generate £1.2bn of economic benefit to London and the UK. Rosanna has responsibility for the design, development, commercial negotiations and agreements with the market to deliver this programme.

Jonathan Silman

Founder
Community Sport Academies

Having moved to East Village in December 2013 we set up our Football projects in the Olympic park to continue the Olympic legacy for London’s brand new neighbourhood E20. 9 years later and with over 4500 members we have been able to create a Football Club (Football Unites FC) as a stepping stone to our community football projects. Our ‘free to participate’ sessions have expanded from E20 Football Foundation to now running free community sport programmes across London.

Bek Seeley

Managing Director for Development
Lendlease

Bek Seeley is the European Managing Director for Development at Lendlease.

Bek is responsible for leading the Development Business to successfully delivering Lendlease’s c.£24bn European pipeline including major projects in London,
Manchester and Birmingham. This pipeline will deliver in excess of 25,000 homes.

Previously, she held the position of Chief Operating Officer for Development and was instrumental in winning a number of major projects for Lendlease, as well as
overseeing operations and driving overall growth of the business.

Before joining Lendlease in 2015 Bek’s career spanned the public and private sectors, having held a range of operational and commercial roles in economic
development, infrastructure, built environment and public services.

Harry Knibb

Development Director
Oxford Properties Group

Harry is a development director at Oxford Properties - the real estate arm of OMERS, one of Canada’s largest defined benefit pension plans. Located in London Harry works on large complex projects, predominantly in the residential and mixed-use space. An advocate of sustainable, healthy and productive places, Harry is a chartered town planner and academician for the Academy of Urbanism.

Professor Sadie Morgan OBE

Founding Director,
dRMM

Sadie Morgan is a founding director of Stirling Prize winning architecture practice dRMM. She lectures internationally on the work of dRMM and the importance of infrastructure which connects back to people and place. She became the youngest president of the Architectural Association in 2013, and in 2016, was appointed Professor at the University of Westminster and awarded an honorary doctorate from London South Bank University.

Sadie was named New Londoner of the Year at the New London Awards 2017 for her work championing the importance of design at the highest political level.