Optimise to Innovate Summit 2025

Alex Hazeldine, Partner Enablement Manager at Crayon UK, has more than a decade of experience in the industry, specialising in empowering our partners through strategic initiatives and comprehensive support. His role involves fostering strong relationships, driving partner success, and ensuring seamless collaboration to achieve mutual growth. Alex is also responsible for running our own internal Copilot training program, as well as hosting Copilot webinars and training with our partners and customers.

Brian Clark is a seasoned cloud expert with over a decade of experience in IT cloud consulting, specialising in Microsoft Azure, data and AI, hybrid cloud strategy, and large-scale migration projects. As the Azure Business Practice Lead at Crayon UK, Brian helps organisations adopt and scale cloud technologies to meet evolving business goals. He has built and led Azure solutions teams at Softcat, founded a successful cloud consultancy start-up, and served as a global cloud consultant at CDW. With deep experience across both public and private sectors, Brian has delivered strategic transformation initiatives that drive measurable value. When he’s not architecting cloud solutions, Brian’s often found skiing, keeping fit, exploring new food spots, or following Formula 1 and MotoGP

Claire Williams OBE led the Williams Formula 1 racing team until 2020, in which role she was one of only two women to head a Formula 1 team in the modern era. Under her leadership Williams finished 3rd in the World Championship for Constructors in 2014 and 2015, the team's best performance since 2003. Today she is a global Brand Ambassador for green technologies business Fortescue Zero, formerly WAE Technologies, and one of the expert Formula 1 analysts on the Netflix ‘Drive To Survive’ documentary series through the 2024 and 2025 editions.

Tech-enthusiast Dan founded Razorblue in 2006 and has been responsible for its rapid growth and recognition as a top 50 Managed Service Provider. He attributes the success to Razorblue’s alternative approach to IT.

With three decades in the IT industry, Greg Smith's diverse experience, from Telecoms to roles at Microsoft and Global Systems Integrators, informs his leadership as Crayon's General Manager. Previously serving as Crayon's Services Director, Greg spearheaded tailored service delivery strategies, ensuring top-tier technology services. Now, as General Manager, he continues to leverage his extensive expertise to drive Crayon's growth and innovation, overseeing all aspects of the company's operations and strategic direction.

Leading Artificial Intelligence and Data Solutions for Crayon in the UK&I, Ian's focus revolves around leveraging generative AI to drive innovation and solve complex challenges for our customers.

As the Associate Director for Digital Services at Waterstons, I’m fortunate enough to look after our Data, AI and Software teams who are delivering high impact projects using cutting edge technologies. Throughout my career I’ve delivered and led data-focussed projects across a range of sectors including retail, manufacturing and professional services with an emphasis on prioritizing people over technology. The best part of my role is getting to know how a business works through talking to people, what they’re looking to achieve and how we can align technology to enable this.

Liz Waugh is serving as the Senior Director of Global Go-To-Market (GTM) & Revenue Enablement at Crayon. In this role, Liz leverages her unwavering passion for empowering individuals to thrive in the rapidly evolving tech industry, as well as orchestrating multiple stakeholders to build and execute Crayon's global GTM strategy. With nearly 18 years of experience in the tech sector, including a significant 12 year tenure at Microsoft, Liz seamlessly aligns her dual passions for people and technology. Her strategic approach ensures that Crayon remains at the forefront of innovation and market leadership.

Mike Starnes is the Sales Director for UK&I at Nerdio with over 20 years of experience in End-User Computing (EUC). Throughout his career, Mike has been dedicated to helping organisations enhance their IT environments to improve end-user experiences and support their infrastructure strategy. At Nerdio, he specialises in assisting businesses to optimize their Windows in the cloud deployments, including both Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD) and Windows 365, ensuring efficient, secure, and scalable solutions that meet modern workforce demands.

Paul Harrison is the UK Sales Director at Crayon, bringing over two decades of technology sales and leadership experience across top-tier value-added resellers and LSP's. A history of driving growth, organisational transformation, and execution across a wide range of sectors—including Corporate, Enterprise, Government (Central and Local), Defence, NHS, and Education. His expertise spans digital transformation, complex managed services, and multi-year outsourcing agreements. Paul balances commercial rigour with a hands-on approach—working closely with customers, vendors, and internal teams to build trusted relationships and deliver measurable outcomes while maintaining a relentless focus on customer service excellence, team development, and long-term strategic value.

Prerita is currently the Analytics Product & GTM Lead across the UK at Microsoft, overseeing core services including Microsoft Fabric and Azure Databricks. Previously, Prerita spent 5 years leading the Data & AI Product & GTM portfolio across Australia & NZ, where she pioneered the Azure OpenAI strategy and scaled best practices across the Asia region. Taking a deeply customer centric approach, Prerita works laterally across the organisation, collaborating closely with various technical, sales, partner, engineering and marketing teams to formulate and execute upon the product and go to market strategy for Analytics workloads on Azure across the UK market. Aside from work, Prerita is deeply passionate about inspiring and educating students on exploring careers and opportunities in the Data & AI space, frequently presenting and mentoring at technology and women in STEM events. In her spare time, Prerita enjoys travelling, staying active and seeing her favourite music artists live in concert.

Sarah Miller is the Copilot Market Strategy lead at Microsoft UK, helping organisations understand, fully leverage, and measure the value of AI at work. With a background in retail technology development and financial analysis, Sarah acts as a translator between engineering, business leaders, and customers. Years of experience in public speaking competition and coaching have culminated to her ability to advocate for and demonstrate the safe use of AI in the workplace with Copilot.

I lead digital transformation for complex organisations, shaping vision, aligning people and delivering measurable impact. I specialise in unlocking the full potential of AI, innovation, and digital strategy. With a background in design thinking, product leadership, and enterprise transformation, I make change real, not just strategic but tangible. From defining group-wide AI programmes to launching new digital ventures, I help organisations deliver value at pace. As Group Innovation Director at Serco, I led the company’s AI strategy, innovation agenda, and piloting of new technologies across frontline and back office operations. At Microsoft, I directed global product delivery and industry advisory, helping clients turn emerging technologies into scalable, human-centred solutions. My approach blends strategy with empathy, product rigour with experimentation, and insight with execution. I’ve operated across financial services, health, public sector, energy, manufacturing, and technology - navigating federated, matrixed environments to align diverse stakeholders around bold outcomes. What drives me is impact. Whether identifying innovative opportunities, mentoring product leaders, or launching 13 ventures from scratch, I focus on creating cultures and capabilities that endure long after the first product ships.

Tamara Lajara is responsible for leading a team of Consultants which are focused on maximising business value from customers’ cloud estates. With over a decade of IT experience, Tamara combines her consulting expertise with a research Master's in Information Systems. She is a prominent figure in the FinOps market, serving as a FinOps Foundation Mentor and certified Practitioner. Tamara holds certifications in Azure and Google Cloud, and has specialised training in FinOps for Containers.