Rose Liagridonis
Operations Director
Passionate about offering exceptional customer service and creating unique experiences, Rose oversees the operations of our events. Rose loves working at Fuse because her colleagues are also her friends, who inspire her to deliver high quality work that our stakeholders expect, and most importantly, deserve. A huge sports fan, Rose is honoured to have worked with Canada’s national ice hockey team and the Vancouver Canucks of the National Hockey League. Her diverse background also includes stints with a hotel management company and a hotel group in Mexico. Rose grew up in Canada, has travelled the world and now resides in the UK with her daughter. She has an irrational love of spreadsheets, working out and anything written by Jo Nesbo.
John French
Programme Director
A creative tinkerer, cerebral thinker and Social Marketer in training. John has over a decade of experience working as a marketing professional across both the public and private sectors in a range of industries including major national museums and galleries, local authorities, market research and events management. Having cut his teeth creating and managing national campaigns for major exhibitions for organisations such as Royal Museums Greenwich and the British Library John brings a creative flair to event programming and is passionate about bringing content to delegates which inspires, engages and provokes positive social change. Has beard.
Matt Wilson
CEO
Matt has worked in the events industry for over 25 years. He’s managed, promoted and produced global sales incentives, international sports events, awards ceremonies and everything in between.
Matt set up Fuse in 2013, building on what he’d learned from working on projects with Social Enterprise UK, Co-operatives UK and the National Social Marketing Centre, with a simple goal to create positive change by bringing people together and learning from each other.
He spends most of his free time walking his dogs, riding rollercoasters with his daughter, cycling, and watching Liverpool FC conquer the world (sometimes).
Sarah Whitehead
Events Director
Sarah knows events. 20 years of meticulous event planning, organising and managing have taught her to always expect the unexpected. She has managed events from Arizona to Yorkshire, from Annecy to New York and a few weird and wonderful places in between.
Her attention to detail is second to none (well maybe except Rose!). Her calm nature and can-do attitude when facing the daily challenges of organising events will ease you through the most challenging of tasks. Keynote Speaker left at the Cowboy Ranch? Meeting with the head of the Turkish Military? Delegates stuck at American customs? Nothing she can’t handle and all with a smile on her face.
Sonia Stray
Operations & Project Manager
Sonia brings over 20 years of experience in Operations from the training industry. She has experience of working with clients across all sectors with an energy and enthusiasm that is infectious. Sonia will ensure that every client and delegate receives a first class ‘Fuse’ experience and any challenges, that inevitably, arise are resolved with, professionalism, creativity and a smile.
Alison Carlyle
Social Marketing Project Manager
Alison is the first (and only!) member in the ‘North American Office’. Alison has a broad range of experience working in local and federal government, and in third sector organisations. She has an MSc in Social Marketing from the University of Brighton and has been a volunteer at 2 of the last 3 World Social Marketing Conferences. She is excited to be more involved in creating an event that shares knowledge from around the world to create positive social change.
Simran Budesha
Events Manager
Simran blends enthusiasm (it’s infectious!) and resourcefulness with a wealth of experience working across many areas of the events industry from hotels, venues to managing high end-corporate clients around the UK & abroad. Simran is passionate about delivering for her clients and brings a huge level of commitment to continuous improvement and increasing the quality standards of every project she engages with.