Simon Nokes

Greater Manchester Combined Authority

Simon has a long experience in economic development in the North West of England. He started his career in Local Government before moving to become Director of Strategy for a Training and Enterprise Council. From there he set up and ran his own social enterprise for 5 years supporting the long term unemployed back into work. He joined the North West Development Agency in 2004 and became the Director of Policy and Planning. Amongst other things he was responsible for the Regional Economic Strategy and Corporate Strategy/Governance. 
 
In 2012 he joined New Economy, the economic research and development company working across Greater Manchester with the Local Enterprise Partnership. After a number of roles, Simon became Managing Director with a wide remit across research, strategy and all aspects of policy. 
 
From April 2017 New Economy became part of the Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA) and Simon is part of the Senior Management Team, reporting to the Chief Executive. He is responsible for heading up GMCA’s overall strategy and research, and most aspects of economic development policy including skills/employment, business innovation, science and the environment.

Mark Hughes

The Growth Company

Mark Hughes MBE was appointed Group Chief Executive of The Growth Company in 2013.

Prior to this Mark was Chief Executive at the North West Regional Development Agency, and was awarded an MBE for services to business in the North West in the 2013 New Year's Honours.  Mark has also worked in corporate and economic development consulting at DTZ Pieda Consulting and Ernst & Young (EY) Management Consultancy where he was responsible for the creation of the European Investment Monitor that established EY as a leading commentator on European inward investment. 
 
Mark graduated from Birmingham University with a First Class Honours degree in Geography & Planning, and Cardiff University with a Masters in Urban and Regional Planning.  Mark also holds an Honorary Professorship in Productivity and Innovation from the University of Manchester. 

Nathan Sanders

SSE

Nathan Sanders is Managing Director of SSE Distributed Energy [Energy Solutions] which looks to help companies and organisations on their decarbonisation journeys by providing whole system thinking solutions. Nathan first joined SSE as an apprentice in the days when it was called Southern Electric, before the privatisation of the energy industry and its subsequent merger with Scottish Hydro Electric. Nathan worked his way through the business as a technical trainee, a contract engineer, a district contracts manager before becoming a regional director. Over the past decade Nathan has led the distributed energy part of SSE that was previously known as the utilities division.  

Carly McLachlan

University of Manchester

Carly is the Director of Tyndall Manchester - an interdisciplinary team working on policy relevant climate change research based within the School of Engineering at the University of Manchester. She is chair of the Greater Manchester 5 Year Environment Plan Implementation Forum and sits on the GM Green City Region Partnership. She is the academic lead for carbon for the University of Manchester. She is Associate Director of the ESRC Centre for Climate Change and Social Transformation. Her current research is primarily focused on how cities can drive climate action (from science based target setting to delivery).  She led the UK Energy Research Centre funded Future of Community Energy project and was recently part of the team that produced a roadmap for super low carbon live music.  

Amer Gaffar

Manchester Metropolitan University

Amer Gaffar is director of the £4.1m Manchester Fuel Cell Innovation Centre at Manchester Metropolitan University and a sustainability professional with more than 23 years’ experience in the environmental sector during which he has led a number of large scale innovation programmes for both the private and public sector. Amer is a passionate advocate for fuel cell and hydrogen technology and has successfully built consensus and momentum in Greater Manchester and the North West towards positive environmental practice and cleaner energy over the last decade. In 2013, Amer founded the Greater Manchester Hydrogen Partnership to develop and build the strong and diverse network of SME, industry, researchers and public sector stakeholders integral to the work of the Centre today.

In addition to his role at the Centre, Amer continues to lead a number of projects to make Greater Manchester a centre of excellence in hydrogen and fuel cells such as leading one of Europe’s first targeted programme of Hydrogen Education (HySchools). He is also leading the Net Zero skills pathway for NetZero North West and has led the development and authored the now formally adopted Greater Manchester Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Strategy alongside working with the UK Government to establish key deliverables for the UK hydrogen opportunity.

TBC

University of Salford

David Green

Hitachi EU

David leads Hitachi Europe’s Sustainability R&D activities.  This area covers a broad scope from energy systems and decarbonisation, to environment and sustainability research and solution development.  David also leads Hitachi’s collaboration centre with Imperial College London, the Hitachi-Imperial Centre for Decarbonisation and Natural Climate Solutions.  Prior to joining Hitachi in 2020 David had worked at Shell for 10 years, followed by time within technology start-ups and at the consultancy Arup.

David brings experience covering technology, research, commercial and venturing principally within the energy and mobility sectors.

Beverly Taylor

Bruntwood

Bev Taylor is the Director of Environment at Bruntwood. Having headed up Bruntwood’s energy business for nine years, Bev has now transitioned her role to focus on environmental efforts as the business aims for long-term sustainable growth and begins its journey to becoming net zero carbon.