Matthew is a co-founder of Didobi and is a practical expert in the capture, collation, visualisation and interpretation of data within the property and retail markets. He is a nationally recognised expert on ‘High Streets’ where his views are regularly sought by national media outlets. He was co-author of The Grimsey Reviews in 2013 and 2018, and wrote the #CreatingBetterTowns and #CreatingBetterLeadership aide-memoires.
Matthew has been a director of three marketing leading data and insight businesses where he held roles within research, technology and sales & marketing. He is a Visiting Professor at UCL, member of the Nottingham Business School research advisory board, a Volunteer Business Mentor for The Prince’s Trust and regular keynote speaker at industry events.

Jo is a creative retail expert and digital marketing specialist with an extensive background in retail, communications, town centre regeneration and place making.
She has held several senior positions with prominent high street retailers and successfully ran her own independent shop in London.
Jo devised and delivered a nationally recognised project transforming space into a vibrant mix of exciting independent retailers and community-based schemes including Pop up Ashford, Made in Ashford and One You Kent.

Stephen has worked in the real estate and wider financial services industry since 1988. He has detailed expertise in research, corporate governance and liquidity. He also advises institutional investors on real estate and on defined contribution investments.
Stephen previously worked on product development in two of Ireland’s largest fund managers, where he designed the first US real estate fund of funds in Europe.
Stephen has been a member of the defined contribution committee of the Irish Association of Pension Funds.

Sally has extensive experience in creating identities and a ‘town brand’ through identifying what is unique and appealing to people. Sally has worked with a number of communities in support of her projects in towns. Example projects include Love Bridgnorth, winner of the Great British High Street in 2016 and Love Wellington.
Sally was a Young High Street Challenge judge in 2018 and is a Great British High Street judge for 2019. She is based in Shropshire where she was the former Editor of the What’s What! Magazine.

Matt is a co-founder of Didobi and was previously Director of Research, European Real Estate at Fidelity International in London. He has 30 years experience of working in real estate investment markets in the UK, Europe, US and China.
He has also successfully developed and sold two Proptech businesses during his career including PMI, one of the first DotCom businesses in Asia. It was acquired by PRC investors in December 1999.
Matt is a visiting lecturer at Oxford Brookes University in the UK and has also lectured at the London Business School, London School of Economics, UCL, Maastricht University and Cambridge University in recent years. He is a regular speaker and panellist at industry events.

Chris was previously employed as Head of Quants, Data Analytics and Systems, European Real Estate with Fidelity International in London.
He has more than 15 years’ experience of working in CRE investment markets and is widely recognised as a pioneer in CRE quants and financial modelling.
Chris has a degree Mathematics & Economics from the London School of Economics & Political Science.

Mallika has over 20 years of strategic and creative communications experience covering commercial and residential real estate, food, drink and FMCG brands. She has worked at some of the industry’s best-known consultancies, including as MD of Corporate at MSL Group where she set up the Food Sense Forum to explore industry issues affecting consumer behaviour. She has a passion for the food, drink and hospitality industry and the impact it has on placemaking and driving footfall.

Mallika has also been a food and drink industry commentator for the last 14 years with columns for the London Evening Standard and her insights in the national, broadcast and specialist media. She speaks regularly at industry events as an expert. She is the author of two published cookbooks and is a social media influencer.

Chris has over 25 years providing data-driven analytical and consulting services to organisations across a range of retail sectors and international markets. He specialises in retail location strategy and planning, harnessing the power of data analytics and utilising proven data-driven predictive modelling techniques. His retail sector experience is broad, including retailers and brands, grocery and convenience, F&B, forecourt retailing, automotive distribution, financial services and property.
He is a former Director of GMAP Ltd (later GMAP Consulting) and GMAP’s Japanese and Chinese businesses. Chris has a PhD in quantitative methods in geospatial analysis and is a Visiting Fellow at the Leeds Institute of Data Analytics (LIDA) at University of Leeds.

Mark has 40 years’ experience in real estate research, having worked for a major food retailer, a global professional services business, two institutions and two commercial property agents. Mark’s most recent position was as UK Head of Research & Forecasting at Colliers International, working across sectors, managing an annual research schedule of 80+ publications and a third-party information budget in excess of £1m.

Mark has been engaged in major projects across the UK and Europe and in Georgia, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Serbia and Saudi Arabia.

Alan is based in Hong Kong and has over 30 years of experience in real estate markets in the Asia Pacific region. The common thread running through Alan’s real estate career is capital markets research and consulting.

Most recently he was Chief Executive of ANREV, a not-for-profit association for investors in unlisted real estate, which counted as its members some of the largest real estate investors and managers in the world. He had overall responsibility for delivery of industry survey reports, collection of performance measurement data for fund indices, promulgation of best practice standards and running industry events.

In a previous role, he led the investment into digital for one of Hong Kong’s leading property investment, management and development groups.

Alan is a Fellow of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors and holds the FT Non-executive Director diploma.

Simon is a Data & Systems Engineer who has a long and successful track record in database design, systems development and content architecture with Fidelity International in London. He joined the company in 2008 and has spent much of the past decade overseeing development of FIL’s award winning CRE investment management and analytics platforms.

Matt has over a decade’s experience of working with local authorities and other organisations to support high street regeneration. Previously an adviser to a former Communities Secretary, he was also on the team that produced two Grimsey reviews into the high street – and has recently contributed to Bill Grimsey’s Covid-19 supplement for town centres.

He is a Local Government Association economic growth advisor and also designed and led the LGA’s first leadership course for high streets for council leaders last year. He has experience of working with clients ranging from Arcadis to the Cabinet Office and Civic Engineers. He has extensive experience of consultation and has worked on major high street consultations and vision development in areas ranging from Cornwall to York as well as a number of Future High Streets Fund and Towns Fund consultations across the country.

Sarah is an experienced project and administration manager. She spent 12 years in London working as a legal EA (including five years at Hogan Lovells). After moving to Cape Town (where she is now based) she spent three years in business development with the Advisory group at EY.