Team

Rod is a business adviser, executive, and business angel who is Executive Chair of the Industry Forum, a highly active London-based business policy forum that promotes dialogue between senior UK policy-makers and the business community.

He is a board member of AgeneBio a US life sciences, spin-out from Johns Hopkins, which is developing therapeutics to preserve and restore brain function for patients at risk from neurological and psychiatric diseases; the lead, late-stage clinical programme is focussed on Alzheimer’s Disease. 

After graduation in Physics from Oxford, Rod worked as a software engineer and then in management consultancy. As a consultant, he worked extensively in the financial and technology sectors, and on a range of engagements for the European Commission. He was a partner in KPMG for 15 years, during which he led the rapid expansion of the KPMG European High Technology Practice. At KPMG, he worked with legendary high-tech marketeer, Regis McKenna, guru to Steve Jobs at Apple, and Rod managed Regis McKenna Europe for several years. Rod has provided advice and arbitration on a number of large outsourcing deals. He has founded and led start-up technology companies and raised the necessary finance. 

He was CEO/Founder of zoomf.com a property search engine which was sold to a media group in 2008. He was an expert witness in a high-profile software patent dispute. Rod works with a number of universities on subjects including corporate governance, the impact of new technologies and financial policy. In the past five years he has worked on public policy projects including the Kerslake Review of the Treasury, and some research work looking at the decline of public trust in politics and business, and strategies to reduce global emissions of greenhouse gases.

Diana is a well-known patent litigator, working particularly in life sciences with an international practice in that area. As well as acting in patent disputes in all UK courts, she advises on international disputes and coordinates and assists with actions in other jurisdictions and patent offices.

Diana graduated from the University of Sussex with a degree in mathematics, statistics and economics. 

After a period with the civil service, she retrained as a solicitor. On qualification, Diana joined the central London commercial firm of Stringer Saul. She managed that practice for three years until 2001 when she joined Rouse where she worked until 2015 when she joined Fieldfisher LLP.

Jo Wyer joined Industry Forum as Manager in 2007 to manage the administration and events, becoming a Director in 2017. Her previous background was in project and programme management, primarily in the financial and telecoms sectors.

She has worked at programme management level (to manage and support aspects of large projects such as EMU and Y2K), and at project level managing both technical and non-technical projects and staff. 

On a number of major engagements for leading corporations, she was responsible for defining the strategic and implementation plans and then overseeing progress through to completion. 

Earlier in her career Jo managed software and hardware translation projects for clients of a specialised translation company, and before that was responsible for managing a team in the European Patent Office for a major US office products company.