REBA Congress 2026

Lara Lewington

Technology broadcaster, journalist and author specialising in AI and health

For fifteen years she presented the BBC’s flagship technology programme Click, covering breakthrough innovations around the world. She fronted Panorama’s Beyond Human: Artificial Intelligence and Us, and has hosted tech specials for ITV’s Tonight, BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour and other major outlets, exploring how artificial intelligence, science and innovation are reshaping our everyday lives.

Her critically acclaimed book Hacking Humanity (Penguin, 2025) reveals the coming revolution in health, where we can understand, track and predict our bodies’ needs like never before, close the gap between ‘healthspan’ and lifespan, and personalise prevention and treatment for a radically healthier future. She’s also produced and presented several BBC documentaries on the topic, unearthing the real promises of the longevity revolution, and the science that could drive us to age better.

Passionate about helping people navigate a fast-changing world, Lara is known for bringing complex technology to mainstream audiences. As ITV Lorraine’s resident “AI Agony Aunt,” she regularly demystifies artificial intelligence and shows how embracing technology can help us live better, and healthier lives. Before joining Click in 2011, Lara’s media experience was vast and varied. She started out as the weather presenter and showbiz reporter for Channel Five, interviewing the biggest stars in the world, whilst fitting in a few gadget reviews for the channel when she had time. She was the technology columnist for the UK’s biggest selling weekly magazine, Woman, for four years, and has written for numerous other publications.

: https://www.laralewington.com/

Richard E. Grant

Academy Award, BAFTA and Golden Globe nominated actor

Richard E. Grant is a renowned actor, screenwriter, and director, best known for his breakthrough role in Withnail & I (1987). He has starred in numerous films, including Gosford Park, Dracula, and Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, and earned an Oscar nomination for Can You Ever Forgive Me? (2018). 

Born in Mbabane, Swaziland, Grant developed a passion for acting from a young age. He holds a degree in English and Drama from the University of Cape Town, where he co-founded the Troupe Theatre Company. He moved to London in 1982 to pursue his career.

In 2022, Richard published A Pocketful of Happiness: a moving, candid memoir based on diaries, chronicling his 35-year marriage to vocal coach Joan Washington, her death from cancer in 2021, and her final challenge to find joy daily. It weaves together deeply personal grief with humorous anecdotes from his acting career.

Dr Amanda Bunten

Global Head of Employee Health & Wellbeing/Chartered Psychologist, GSK

Dr Amanda Bunten is a Chartered Health Psychologist and Global Head of Employee Health & Wellbeing at GSK, where she shapes the vision and leads the strategy and delivery of global initiatives that support employees to thrive and sustain high performance.

She has extensive experience applying behavioural insights to improve health and wellbeing across individuals, organisations, and populations. Her career spans the NHS, government and industry, where she has advised policymakers, shaped national policy, and led programmes addressing complex public health challenges.

Amanda brings a practical, evidence-based approach to creating healthier workplaces and is committed to advancing employee health and wellbeing as a key foundation for long-term organisational success.

Jo Rees

Global Experience owner, Performance & Reward, GSK

Jo is the Global Experience Owner for Reward at GSK, she is accountable for designing the global reward experience for all employees and partnering with the business, the CoE and the People Services organisation and HR Tech to deliver.

This role is a combination of her career roles in Reward Leadership and also Change and Transformation consulting and is an exciting place to be as we embrace digital opportunities in experience and HR Tech.  

Sheila Attwood

Senior Content Manager, Reward and Data, Brightmine

Sheila is Brightmine's senior content manager, data and HR insights. She leads the team that is responsible for the data and market insights content on Brightmine, including the employer practice surveys, webinars and podcasts, and reward content. Sheila is an expert on company pay awards and is regularly called upon to appear in the broadcast and print media to comment on the level of increase in pay rates.

: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sheila-attwood/

Francesca Bennett

Corporate Development Manager, AXA Health

Francesca is Corporate Development Manager at AXA Health, with more than 10 years of experience in the wellbeing space. She graduated in 2012 with an MSc in Human and Applied Physiology from Kings College London. Francesca began her career as a Physiologist, delivering health assessments and went on to develop AXA wellbeing services, including AXA Health’s health coaching pathway.  

Her interest for preventative health and its impact on the quality of life and health longevity through the different life stages has been a passion throughout her personal life and professional career. 

Meqele Bleasdille

Strategy & Engagement Consultant, TELUS Health

Meqele Bleasdille is a Strategy & Engagement Consultant at TELUS Health, based in London, UK. Specialising in employee wellbeing, Meqele helps multinational companies optimise their wellbeing solutions and maximise engagement and ROI of their programs. She works directly with a handpicked selection of strategic clients with complex needs to guide and advise them on effective ways to improve employee wellbeing. With 12 years of experience in the employee assistance and wellbeing industry, having worked both in-house and with providers, Meqele brings a comprehensive understanding of global workplace wellness strategies and is considered a thought leader in her field.

Meqele Bleasdille | LinkedIn

Chris Bruce

CEO & Co-Founder, Origin

Chris is the CEO and co-founder of Origin, the world’s first Global Benefits Intelligence platform. With a 25-year career at the intersection of technology and employee benefits, Chris is driven by a mission to transform the global benefits industry through the power of AI. Prior to Origin, Chris co-founded Thomsons Online Benefits (later known as Darwin), where they helped scale the business into a global leader in benefits technology, serving millions of employees across the world. At Origin, Chris is once again redefining what’s possible — this time with smarter, faster, AI-powered solutions that bring unprecedented clarity, control, and scalability to global benefits management.

Chris Bruce | LinkedIn

Samantha Chandler

Head of Actionable Insights, AXA Health

Samantha’s journey at AXA began as a Wellness Intelligence Analyst, providing client insights across AXA Health. In 2019, she became Head of Actionable Insights, leading the creation of dashboards for large clients and training stakeholders to interpret data independently. With a background in Pure Mathematics and Social Biology, her passion for these subjects shaped her career. Her path shifted to data analytics after a key role in an aerospace company, where she learned to collate and forecast data.

Committed to supporting women in data, she has mentored many colleagues by building relationships, sharing knowledge, encouraging participation and promoting growth. She aims to inspire others and foster a community that champions success in the field.

Dana Citron

Director, Global Health & Wellbeing, DHL Group

Dana Citron is the Director of Global Health and Wellbeing at DHL Group. Through evaluating historical health risks and trends in a country and on a business unit basis, she works with the global, regional and local HR partners to offer tailored health and well-being guidance and solutions that specifically target primary cost and claim drivers. For the prior 12 years, Dana worked in the international insurer domain developing health products and promoting strategies that target and control healthcare costs while maximising employee health. This included working with local insurance affiliates to design and implement end to end market-leading health management and wellness solutions. Ms. Citron also worked with multinational clients, providing health analytics, thought leadership and support for the development of global health strategies.  Ms. Citron earned her BA in Psychology from Boston University and MPH (Masters of Public Health) from New York Medical College with a concentration in Global Health.

Grace Conway

Consultant Relations Director, UK, Maven Clinic

Grace Conway is a Director on Maven’s Global Strategic Alliances team, where she works with industry partners to support Maven’s international growth and help multinational employers deliver consistent family and reproductive care across markets. She brings over 10 years of experience in healthcare and employee benefits, including roles in benefits consulting and clinical research.

Ant Donaldson

Reward Manager – Benefits, Wolseley

Ant leads on all aspects of employee benefits, pensions, and company car schemes for the Wolseley Group, across the UK and Ireland, having previously managed E.ON UK’s reward and benefits activity, including developing the E.ON Group’s first global employee benefits strategy.

Ant’s focus is on engaging Wolseley’s diverse workforce with their pensions and benefit offerings, and continuously improving employee experience and wellbeing, together with scheme delivery and cost-effectiveness. He regularly looks to implement new arrangements, to help meet colleagues’ diverse needs and keep the offering fresh.

Earlier in his career, Ant held several operational management roles at E.ON, Powergen and TXU (Eastern) Energy, and headed a number of significant organisational change programmes. He’s also a Chartered Accountant, with an initial grounding in internal and external audit.

Melissa Emmanuel

Global Director of People Operations and Reward, Tom Ford International

Melissa Emmanuel is the Global Director of People Operations and Reward at Tom Ford International.

Sebastian Fallert

Co-founder and CEO, Ben

Sebastian is the Co-Founder and CEO of Ben, a London-based SaaS startup building an intelligent employee benefits platform. With over 15 years of experience as a tech entrepreneur and investor, he co-founded Ben after leading Secret Escapes' UK market following their acquisition of JustBook, a company he founded.

Sebastian Fallert | LinkedIn

Jean-Christophe Fonfreyde

Head of Reward, Ofcom (interim)

Jean-Christophe Fonfreyde is the Head of Reward at Ofcom (interim).

Peter Frampton

Head of Performance & Reward, Freshfields

Peter Frampton is the Head of Talent, Performance and Reward, and Global HRBPs with Teneo, based in London.

Prior to Teneo, Peter spent over 20 years in banking in international roles across Operations and Human Resources. For the last nine years, he has built his expertise in Performance Management and Reward, launching innovative and effective approaches to pay-for-performance at both the individual and business level. Central to this is using data to drive decision making, including insights derived from continuous employee listening and feedback.

Earlier in his career, Peter helped build a market-leading People Analytics function, which included the early adoption in HR of Machine Learning and Natural Language Processing capabilities.

Peter is passionate about making a difference – helping people, businesses and charities to achieve their goals and full potential. He is currently the Chair of Allergy UK and is a trustee at a fast-growing Multi-Academy Trust.

Carolina Garcia

Regional Vice President of Sales, Maven Clinic

Carolina Garcia is a strategic sales leader at Maven Clinic with eight years of experience leading the company’s largest global enterprise deals. She drives partnerships with employers including Amazon, FedEx, Pfizer, Accenture, and other market-defining organizations, helping them modernize benefits and expand access to high-quality women’s and family healthcare. She's a Miami native, where she now lives with her husband and two daughters.

Tim Goodchild

Director, International Benefits, Take-Two Interactive

Tim Goodchild is the Director, Global Benefits & Mobility at Anaplan.

Matthew Gregson

Executive Director, Howden Employee Benefits

Matthew oversees all aspects of Howden’s proposition for Corporate clients. He has over 20 years’ experience in employee benefits, including a large portion of his career helping shape the flexible benefits market in the UK.

Matthew has personally helped many large and complex employers introduce transformational change to their pension and benefits programmes, working with providers and partners in industry to innovate and maximise the value they bring to clients.

Thomas Hiles

Group Benefits Manager, UK, BNP Paribas

Thomas Hiles is the Group Benefits Manager, UK at BNP Paribas.

Selina Jones-May

Senior Director – Global Benefits, Global Mobility & Wellness, Brinks

Selina Jones-May is the Senior Director - Global Benefits and Wellbeing at Brinks.

Rozina Joseph

Senior Director, Global Benefits, Comcast

Rozina Joseph is the Senior Director, Global Benefits at Comcast.

George Kingaby

EMEA Head of Pensions & Benefits, SMBC

George has over 20 years’ experience working in house roles in the Banking sector, primarily at Citigroup and currently with SMBC.  The majority of this has been spent in senior pensions roles, but he has also worked in reward and business partner roles giving him insight into the breadth of the employee workplace experience.  In the pensions space his main focus has been employee nudges and communications to improve savings rates and retirement outcomes.

Darren Laverty

Financial Wellbeing Strategist and Employee Benefits Specialist, Secondsight

Darren Laverty is a seasoned financial services expert, author, and speaker with over 30 years of experience. As a Founding Partner at Foster Denovo and its employee benefits division, Secondsight, he has dedicated his career to improving workplace financial wellbeing. Passionate about making financial concepts simple and engaging, Darren has worked with some of the UK’s top employers to help employees take control of their financial futures.

Beyond advising, Darren is a regular speaker at industry events, runs seminars, and hosts webcasts. His book, Make Their Money Count, highlights the importance of workplace financial education. He also founded the LinkedIn group Workplace Financial Wellbeing, bringing together experts and employers to share best practices.

Jennifer Liston-Smith

Strategic Advisor, Bright Horizons Work + Family Solutions

A Certified Principal Business Psychologist, Jennifer has been an influencer in the field of employer best practice for over 20 years, with particular focus on working families, wellbeing, gender inclusion and evidence-based approaches. She is a leadership coach, coaching supervisor and sought-after speaker, writer, conference moderator and consultant. 

Jennifer was a pioneer of parent transition coaching in the early 2000s, and as a Director of My Family Care, then Head of Thought Leadership with Bright Horizons, as well as through her own consultancy People in Progress , she has worked for over 20 years with the US and UK’s largest banks and financial institutions, supporting their talent strategies through financial crisis, pandemic, return to office and more. Jennifer is known for translating trends, public policy and research insights into solutions and practical actions. 

Jennifer Liston-Smith | LinkedIn

Sarah Long

Head of New Business, WEALTH at work

Sarah joined WEALTH at work in 2021 and heads up the new business team based from her home in Yorkshire. Sarah has extensive experience in financial wellbeing, pensions and share plans both broad based and executive compensation plans on an international level and has over 30 years’ experience in the equity plans/pensions/employee benefits market. She is passionate about all aspects of wellbeing in the workplace and in particular financial wellbeing to help improve people’s lives. A keen runner having participated in many marathons and is proud to have raised over £28,000 for Breast Cancer charities. In her spare time Sarah is also a Rugbytots coach.

Sarah Long | LinkedIn

Gethin Nadin BSc MBPsS RSPH RSA

Multi-Award-Winning Psychologist, two-times bestselling HR Author and Chief Innovation Officer, Benifex and Zellis

Gethin is an award-winning psychologist, bestselling HR author, and one of the world’s most influential HR thinkers. Gethin was awarded seven trophies in 2024 for his work in influencing the global HR industry, most recently awarded two prestigious Stevie’s awards in New York for HR Thought Leader of the Year and HR Professional of the Year. He was also awarded PwC’s ‘Outstanding Contribution to the Industry’ at the 2024 The Rewards in London. Gethin is also a Fellow at the historic King’s College London, King’s Business School – a business school in the top 1% globally. 

Gethin Nadin | LinkedIn

Dr Mridula Pore

CEO and Co-Founder, Peppy

Mridula has spent her career driving innovations in healthcare to make it more accessible and affordable. Most recently she has led commercial teams in the pharmaceuticals and digital health industries. Prior to that she was an engagement manager at McKinsey & Co. She has a PhD in chemical engineering from MIT and an MBA from MIT Sloan.

Josephina Smith

Reward Director, British Airways

Josephina Smith is the Reward and Benefits Director at British Airways.

Steve Watson

Director of Policy and Research, NatWest Cushon

Steve is NatWest Cushon’s Director of Policy & Research. He has spent over 30 years of his career advising organisations on all aspects of pensions and workplace savings both in the UK and internationally.

Stephen Watson | LinkedIn