12:15 Arrival and Lunch

The London School of Economics' definition of a Transformational Leader is one who "engages with others - by paying attention to their needs, raising their motivation, and providing an ethical framework for decisions. In so doing, transformational leaders can create change within people and within organisations."

The Auto30Club has transformational leadership at its very core, and in this session four key players in the UK automotive sector present their views on how they look at and do things differently, and how automotive leaders must tap into the intelligence of many different profiles of people within their teams, who have different perspectives and lived experiences, to have a balanced approach to risk and to make the most informed decisions to spot opportunities and manage threats.

13:10 Damien O'Sullivan, Managing Director of Volkswagen Group UK

Damien became Managing Director of Volkswagen Group UK Ltd in December 2024 and is responsible for the National Sales Company that distributes Volkswagen Passenger Cars, Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles, Audi, SEAT, CUPRA and Škoda models through a network of over 600 retailers in the UK. Read his full bio here

13:30 Nicole Melillo Shaw, Managing Director of Volvo Car UK

Nicole is the Managing Director of Volvo Car UK, a role she assumed in November 2023 after previously holding the Consumer Director and Commercial Director roles within the company. Read her full bio here

13:50 Patrick McGillycuddy, Managing Director of JLR UK

Paddy is responsible for delivering JLR’s Reimagine strategy and leading our modern luxury transformation in JLR’s home market. He drives value creation across the entire ownership cycle and holds full accountability for executing JLR's brand-led, client-centric strategy in the UK. Read his full bio here

14:10 Jose Blanco, CEO of Brayleys Cars & Johnsons Cars

Jose is the CEO of Brayleys Cars Ltd and the recently acquired Johnsons Cars Ltd. Formerly Group Chief Sales Officer at Europcar, Jose has led businesses in the UK, France Spain, Read his full bio here

14:30 Panel Q&A

After sharing their personal views on transformational leadership, our four guest speakers will come together into a panel hosted by Julia Muir, to take questions from the audience.

14:45 BREAK

The key purpose of the Auto30Club is to help our members build successful and resilient businesses through attracting, recruiting, promoting and retaining the very best people from all available talent pools, with a People and Culture strategy to ensure all these very different people are able to thrive, fulfil their potential and optimise their contribution to the business. To exclude or ignore certain talent pools, or have norms and policies that are blockers to their performance, is irrational. In this session our guest speakers will explore how to unlock the potential within two key sources of skills - senior female leaders and neurodivergent people - that will add significant value to the organisation.

15:15 Alex Partridge - ADHD Chatter Podcast host, Founder of LADBible & UNILAD , Author of Now It All Makes Sense

Alex is one of the pioneers of social media content the way we know it today. At age 21, he founded UNILAD and LADBible, two of the most popular social news and entertainment Internet companies in the world with an astonishing following of 100 million people around the globe. Alex will explain how we can unlock the potential of neurodivergent people to benefit the business. He will also explore how the tendency for people with ADHD to spot threats, notice patterns of events and be very good in a crisis makes them an essential talent pool to recruit from in times of heightened risk and uncertainty. Read his full bio here

16:10 Alyx Gregory - Head of Commercial Operations and Leasing & Sarah Blewett Head of Research at Carwow

Alyx and Sarah are both co-founders of The Confidence Project, an internal initiative launched in Carwow in 2024 to address and reduce the gender confidence gap within their leadership team, with findings and solutions shared externally to help other organizations. Alyx and Sarah will share how the project found women were significantly less confident than men in leadership roles, despite no difference in competence, and through targeted interventions, helped close this gap by the end of the pilot program, achieving parity between genders. Read their full bios here

16:40 Mini Summit Close

Julia Muir

With thanks to our sponsors Barclays, Keyloop & The IMI.