Meet The Board

Rachel was appointed chair of the venue consortium in August 2018. Rachel leads from the front and is focused on looking at ways to build the profile of the collection and engage with the industry, while delivering a seamless and simple approach to venue finding for time-poor event planners.

As Head of Catering and Events, Rachel manages all operations and sales for Regents Events. Associated with Regent’s University London and located in London’s peaceful Regent’s Park, the venue offers beautiful outdoor spaces and an affordable range of attractive meeting and function rooms.

With over a decade of industry experience, Rachel has been responsible for overseeing the team welcoming a vast array of special events. These have included BBC Question Time, product launches for large brands such as Sony Music and Facebook and fashion shows for Ralph Lauren as well as TopShop during London Fashion Week. In addition, the wonderful outside space is perfect for teambuilding events, summer parties and even the most beautiful of weddings and private functions.

With a clear focus on customer success and well-versed on various Property and Event Management Systems, Thomas boasts fifteen years’ experience in the hospitality and events industry.

His expertise extends from working in a top 10 restaurant in South Africa to world class event venues in London. Thomas possesses a broad knowledge of computers and networking with a results driven work ethic, and has therefore joined the board to focus on the collection’s website development.

Thomas has an impressive portfolio of previous work experience, including working as a sales executive at Marriott International before becoming business development manager at CCT Venues. He then went onto working as an account manager at The QEII Centre for a total of three years, contributing over £5.5m worth of room rental, and has since gone on to be promoted into the role of European Development Manager.

His key focuses are on the Tech and Beauty industry in addition to proactively promoting the name of The QEII Centre throughout Europe.

Barbara started her career as PR and Sales Promotion Manager for the newly-founded Lipizzaner Museum in Vienna.

After graduating from her Masters, she moved to London to work for English Heritage as a Regional Hospitality Manager for the East of England. Staying in the area, she worked for Elior as a Sales and Marketing Manager at the Imperial War Museum Duxford near Cambridge to set up the newly opened Airspace Conference Centre, for which they won the regional business award.

Keen to return to London, she accepted a position at Peyton & Byrne as Head of Conferencing for The British Library and later the newly-opened Imperial War Museum London. She was delighted in 2015 to be appointed Head of Conference services at the Royal Society with the objective of developing the business to become the most desirable venue in the scientific world.

Kay West has over 14 years of event industry experience, strengthened by her degree in Events Management.

Kay moved to London in 2010 where she worked within the event catering business, Richmond Creative Events. She has run events in various unique venues across London including; Freemason’s Hall, Kew Gardens and Syon Park before managing the sole catering contract for Forty Hall Banqueting Suite.

Since 2014, Kay has been the Events Sales Manager at the House of Commons where she was brought in to launch the House of Commons as a commercial events venue to the external corporate market.

One of the first marketing initiatives Kay introduced was membership to the WVC. Through the membership, Kay was able to reflect a positive return on investment and has remained a member since January 2015. She worked with the collection to arrange two showcases, which both attracted over 300 event planners and booking agents.

Kay joined the board of directors in July 2017 and currently works as Finance Chair and Company Secretary to further the success and efficiency of WVC.

Paul has championed the Westminster Venue Collection for the best part of almost 20 years of his hospitality industry experience.

Paul was Sales Manager at the Emirates Stadium for Arsenal FC for 3 years, securing corporate clients for Raymond Blanc’s Michelin-star Diamond Club fine dining, high-profile Olympic-themed celebrations, the first E-sports gaming shows, entertaining £3m World Heavyweight Title fights and selling out pitch events.

Returning to London, Paul was Director of Sales & Marketing for 6.5 years, responsible for a £5m turnover across 5 Cavendish Venues. There he recruited and developed sales teams (supportive of HBAA next generation initiatives), implemented key reporting structures, and introduced social enterprise partnerships (such as Foodinate), plus the Venue Booker agency wing.

As Chair of the London City Selection he drove 20% membership growth and achieved £100k business returns for all venue members from organising the most successful annual Familiarisation Trip alone, before handing over to a new Chair and Board in a strong, healthy position.

Previously as a Westminster Venue Collection Board member, he oversaw a rebrand and website development which drove a 30% increase in enquiry levels for all venues, offering strong case studies based on returns on investment. He instigated the incentive strategy as a member benefit to drive business through referrals. Now having achieved first-time returns for Broadway House at Make Venues, Paul has been welcomed back to the WVC Board.

Marina, originally from Greece, has an extensive experience of 22 years in the events industry.

Her journey started as a tv and movie producer, followed by a fast transition into corporate events.

Marina has worked with the biggest DMC’S event agents and hotel chains as an Event and Sales Manager, delivering lots of corporate, incentive and charity events.

In 2016, Marina moved to London and for the last  3 ½ years has worked as Head of Business Development at Church House, a Grade II listed, multi-purpose event venue, located in the heart of Westminster.

You will most likely find her representing Church House & Westminster Venue Collection on networking events, showcases and exhibitions.

Marina is a huge supporter of networking, interaction and partnerships and sees the Westminster Venue Collection as a great opportunity for both event professionals and venues to share experiences and work closer together.