The UK App Awards have been judged by industry leaders and experts.
Current Judges
Previous Judges include:
Head judges
Karen Carter | Managing Director | KAOS Marketing Ltd.
Karen is a seasoned marketing veteran with over 25 years of experience working in all facets of the discipline. Starting on the agency side she spent her early career as a Client Service Director to many large high-tech firms. Moving client side, she spent over 14 years at Microsoft in varying roles in both B2B and B2C, creating strategies to help extend the brand and drive demand, first at the corporate headquarters, then in the Western Europe field headquarters. After leaving Microsoft in 2014, Karen set up her own consultancy to help small and mid-size businesses to understand the value of a strong marketing strategy and help them navigate the ever-changing media and advertising landscape. After spending a year as Global VP of Marketing and Sales at start-up venture Adepto, a SaaS platform for the gig economy, she then moved on to become Managing Director at design agency, Article Ten. Taking this varied set of experiences, she is now the acting CEO/CMO of HR tech start-up GoHire which is reinventing hiring for small businesses. In her spare time, she works with a variety of industry organisations as a mentor and speaker while also giving her time to helping with communications and marketing. These include the IAA, Bloom and the Conscious Ad Network.Judges
Chris Allwood | Head of Digital Product Design | Bloom and Wild
I'm Head of Digital Product Design at Bloom and Wild. Over the last 8 years, I have worked with the likes of Treatwell, Lyst, BBC, Boots, Sunspel, Clarks Shoes, John Smedley, and Speedo. I'm happiest where Product, Brand and eCommerce intersect — thinking about how a brands promise is expressed across digital products and touchpoints.
Nazan Birant | Account Director | ALF
Naz has spent the last 20 years building meaningful relationships in the Advertising and publishing industry. Naz now works with the most prestigious agency networks to small boutique publishers, in helping them with their business development strategies.
Carlotta Bonafini | Vodafone | SEO Lead
Carlotta is leading the SEO team at Vodafone UK, where she is overseeing the development of their new digital strategy. She started her professional career in the marketing field working for Expedia in the search department. She directed many regional projects before moving into a global position where her initiatives created outstanding results whilst pioneering new processes. She supervised both creative campaigns and technical projects, and launched many impactful ideas. Carlotta graduated from London Metropolitan University and Milan Catholic University and has been living in London for over 9 years. Passionate about high-tech, she is working on improving her coding skills and is always eager to expand her technical knowledge.
Rafael Brandao | Experience Design Manager | Telecine
I’m an Experience Designer passionate about Arts and Technology. For more than 15 years I've been working in several Advertising Agencies and Design Offices as an Interactive Art Director and UI/UX Strategist. Today I'm the Experience Design Manager at Telecine. In 2012 I also concluded my Master's degree in Design at ESDI/UERJ (Brazil) and IADE Creative University (Portugal). Alongside my current role at Telecine I'm an UX Design professor at Miami Ad School, the best creative school worldwide (Cannes 2019) and a Mentor at Designed.org.
Martin Bryant | Media and Tech Consultant
Martin Bryant is a consultant, speaker, writer, and educator in the fields of technology and media. He works to help technology companies craft a narrative around their products and business. He was previously Editor-in-Chief of international technology publication The Next Web, and Community Editor at Tech North, where he shone a light on the stories of startups and entrepreneurs in the North of England.
Liam Charnock | Product Designer (Apps) | The Very Group
Liam is a user experience and digital product designer specialising in app development. He has nine years experience working in technology roles for a number of start ups before joining The Very Group, the UK’s largest pure play retailer responsible for brands like Littlewoods & Very. Liam plays a lead role in the design thinking and strategic discovery for the company’s app portfolio as they continue to innovate and grow the app experience with the goal of it becoming the channel of choice for their customers. Liam’s work has been featured at The Retail Week Awards and is noted for his innovation work with global tech charity, Hacking Health.
Roisin Donnelly | Director | Holland and Barrett
Marcus Hadfield | Chief Strategy Officer | Apadmi
Gareth Healey | Non-executive Director | Beyond Noise
Gareth has spent the majority of his 25 year career in marketing agencies on both sides of The Pennines. In 2002 he acquired a Yorkshire based design agency. Under his leadership the company transformed into CreativeRace and became one of the UK’s leading independent integrated agencies. Working with some of the biggest brands in retail, they achieved revenues in excess of £12.5M and, following the acquisition of Shoreditch digital pioneer Underwired, grew to a team of 175 with offices in Leeds and London. Having overseen 15 years of growth, and hungry for fresh challenges, Gareth sold his 50% stake in his agency in 2017. He is now a non-exec director and provides growth advisory to a portfolio of agencies through his boutique management consultancy Beyond Noise. A Tech Manchester mentor and angel investor, Gareth is also a passionate supporter of early stage tech companies. He has been a finalist in the prestigious Mentor of the Year category at The National Mentoring Awards.
Steve Hilton | CEO | Liberty Apps
Founder of an agency started in 2008 to produce life changing smart phone applications. We've grown organically to create apps for big names including Warburtons, Microsoft & IBM. Recently spoke at TedX and International Business Festival Invited by the British Computer Society to deliver talks around the UK Presented technology talks at 20+ events regarding Culture, Chatbots & Mobile Apps Recent personal recognition includes: * Winner of the NHS Hackday * Winner of the Homeless Hack * Winner of Hacking the Future of Energy * Most notable app at the Public Health England HackX Lives to improve lives across the globe using smart phone technologies
Amelia Johnson | UX Manager | MoneySuperMarket.com
Amelia is UX Manager at MoneySupermarket, one of the top 5 comparison websites in the UK. Day to day she leads UX within the car insurance team, helping households save money on their insurance through iterative design and strategy. Amelia has a degree in graphic design and over 10 years in the industry, she has worked in both agency and in-house roles with brands such as Triumph Motorcycles, Subway, Warner Hotels, Formula E and Booking.com.
Louisa Laughton-Scott | Interaction Desin Specialist | Treatwell
Louisa Laughton-Scott is an interaction design specialist, focusing on helping companies effectively and efficiently design for their users. She is currently working as a Product Designer for Treatwell, Europe's largest hair and beauty marketplace. While working, she is also studying for her master's degree in Human-Computer Interaction Design. In her spare time she is Global Events Manager for UX For Change, a global initiative dedicated to bringing the UX design community together in order to tackle problems from any non-industry related fields, such as education, charities and the public sector. Follow her on Medium @LLaughtonScott , Instagram @louisatechdesign and Linkedin https://www.linkedin.com/in/llscott/ .
Dave Murray | Managing Director Europe | rewardStyle
Dave Murray is the Managing Director (Europe) and founding leader of rewardStyle London, who has grown the non-US side of the business from a start-up through to the hyper-growth stage. He has over 12 years’ experience in Digital Marketing, largely focused on fashion and lifestyle, with global experience optimising teams and developing strategies across international markets
Jotham Oakley | Head of Product | Brightec
Jotham is the Head of Product at Brightec, an app development company specialising in mobile apps. He has worked there in a product and design capacity for 5 years. During that time his work has won multiple awards and is used by hundreds of thousands of users every month. He studied Graphic Design at Ravensbourne College of Design & Communication. He's married with two young kids and is based in Brighton. Jotham has been on the judging panel for the UK App Awards for three years.
Anil Patel | Marketing and eCommerce Director | Mode in Pelle
As Marketing and eCommerce Director Anils takes full ownership of the P&L and lead all Omni Channel including marketing activities across an estate of 50 stores. Anil has an excellent balance of commercial experience and academic knowledge; educated to degree and MBA level. In his previous roles Anil has acquired a broad range of skills, from running my own business to managing budgets in excess of £5m and sales of over £30m. Anil specialises in business turnaround and transformation and have a proven track record of delivering results.
Joel Peters | Head of UX and Content | Travelodge Hotels Ltd
Nishant Ranka | Google
Nishant Ranka is a senior product manager at Google. Nishant specializes in building products that bring together AI and ML based techniques with classic information retrieval & personalization techniques to provide user understanding and control. Over the last 5 years, Nishant has spearheaded large improvements at Google in personalization and information retrieval systems across Google Ads and Google Search, including the launch of Google Events, and Google Discover - a new content curation app used by over 800 Million users across the world. Nishant has been regularly featured for his product work. Nishant holds an MBA with honors from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and bachelors in Electrical Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology Delhi.
Muhammed Salim | Senior Product Designer | Revolut
Muhammed Salim is a Senior Product Designer at Revolut. He is currently leading designs in Cards and Recurring Payments in the retail app. He successfully designed the Subscription payment model. Also he was leading design in retail Payments where he successfully designed the Username payments, the Global payment search and did reshape the user experience in Payments to fit the regulations in Japan, Singapore and USA.
Puff Story | Chief Change Maker | 3 Sided Cube
Puff is the Co-founder of 3 Sided Cube USA. 3 Sided Cube is a global mobile app and digital development company with a passion for Tech For Good, championing the genius over the generic to build life-saving, life-changing digital solutions. Collaborating with exciting startups and international organizations including the American Red Cross, LUSH, Global Forest Watch, Accenture, Nordstrom and JustGiving.
Geraldine Vesey | Director | Vesey Communications
Geraldine Vesey, director of Vesey Communications, is a PR and communications professional with experience of working for Government, public and private sector clients. She spent two decades as a director of multi award winning consultancy, SKV Communications, responsible for the strategic direction and growth of the company, She has a specialism in behaviour change communications and has worked for a range of government departments, most recently the Department for International Trade, Food Standards Agency, Get into Teaching campaign for the Department for Education, Department of Business Innovation and Skills, and Health Education England. Expertise in regional activation of national campaigns has seen Geraldine involved in creating and managing campaigns across sectors straddling industries from finance and fashion to football and food.
Matt Webster | Global Marketing Lead | Spotify
Simon Wharton | Managing Director | PushON
Having led PushON for 12 years, In 2017 Simon transitioned from Managing Director to Business Strategy Director where he could apply his considerable experience in digital transformation to PushONs digital consultancy service. Simon has spent more than two decades operating within the digital sector, initially in a corporate environment, before becoming embroiled in the early days of the Manchester digital community. Alongside his business partner, Roy Wilding, he pivoted PushON out of an incarnation of a previous successful digital business. Steady planned growth has seen the business gain recognition as one of the North West’s leading eCommerce agencies. The business’ expertise in eCommerce development and its particular skill with online marketing has led to a raft of peer reviewed award wins throughout the North West, UK and Europe. Simon also has a reputation for “sticking his oar in” to drive the digital sector forward. He is a council member for Manchester Digital, lectures at local universities and was a founder of SASCon, the infamously expert digital marketing conference. He speaks at events, organises events and largely keeps himself busy both in the sector and in the community. He has four