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.

Diane joined the WVC board in August 2015 and took over the role as chair in June 2017. During this time, Diane’s key focus saw her successfully increase exposure of the collection while providing great value to members. In August 2018, she stepped aside from her role as chair following her appointment as chapter chair for ICCA UK & Ireland.

Diane has held the position of sales and marketing director at the QEII Centre since January 2015 where she helped drive forward a £12 million rebranding and renovation of the venue, to position it as a go-to destination for conferences, exhibitions, product launches, fashion shows and award dinners.

Since the centre rebranded, Diane has been responsible for changing perceptions of the centre by hosting showcase events to demonstrate the venue’s creativity and flexibility, including transforming the venue into a pop-up circus tent complete with Victorian strongmen and ringmaster, a secret garden and a 1950s drive-thru cinema featuring classic Mustangs.

Diane has a career portfolio including senior roles at the Honourable Artillery Company (HAC), Natural History Museum, Searcy’s at the Barbican and the Tower Thistle Hotel.

With over 13 years of industry experience, Paul Martins has been director of sales at Cavendish Venues for four years as well as board director of WVC for the best part of that time.

Previously, Paul spent three years at the Emirates Stadium with Arsenal FC, four years with Sodexo Prestige, and two years with the Crown Group, where his events career began.
Paul has driven progressive developments with WVC, chairing the committee behind the rebranding of the naming, tones and logo of the collective. This was before leading the functional redesign of the new website. He has assisted in bringing established directors onto the board as well as membership retention and growth.
Paul significantly contributes to lead generation from exhibition representation and follow up campaigns from The Meetings Show and Square Meal as well as with referrals. Both instances have seen Cavendish Venues lead by example as a member.

As a long advocate of the Westminster Venue Collection, Paul and Cavendish Venues have been able to track and consistently deliver significant returns on investment. This has been through maximizing influence and involvement in the marketing opportunities offered. It’s these results that continue to provide an outstanding case study for the advantages of membership.

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.

Lucy Mannering

Lucy has worked within the events industry for 15 years, starting with five years at Ipswich Town Football Club in the Hospitality and Events Department, before taking the plunge and moving to London in 2006.

For the last 10 years, Lucy has headed up the events department at the Lansdowne Club, a private members Club located in the heart of Mayfair, organising and running a diverse range of events for both external clients and Lansdowne members alike.

Lucy has been on the WVC board of directors for two years helping to organise the many events for members such as fam trips, networking events, the AGM, Christmas drinks and the annual showcase.

In her spare time Lucy enjoys running, and has participated in many sponsored runs including three half marathons to raise money for Macmillan Cancer Care, Cancer Research UK and the Brain Tumour Charity.

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.

For the past three years Kay has been the Event 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 looks forward to working to raise the profile and further the success of WVC.

Clare Davies is sales and development manager at IET London: Savoy Place, the UK headquarters of the Institution of Engineering and Technology. During her five years at the IET, Clare has been a central figure in the venues’ resurgence following a two-year closure as it underwent a £30 million redevelopment.

As part of the sales team Clare oversaw the transfer of business during the venues’ refurbishment and now leads a team of seven to handle conference enquiries in the new building. The extensively rebuilt conference and event facilities has greatly enhanced the sites reputation, and the venue is recognised as one of London’s leading venues for STEM (Science, Technology, Events and Mathematics) events, hosting client events including Facebook, Waitrose, IBM and SEGA.

In its first full year since opening in December 2015, Savoy Place welcomed over 75,000 delegates at more than 2,000 events, with more than 50% of events in 2017 made up of returning clients.

Clare joined the WVC board in March 2017.

Jeremy Warrillow has been involved in the hospitality industry for over twenty years. He has been head of business development for the hospitality business at 116 Pall Mall since September 2017, where he is overseeing a redesign of the brand to promote the commercial operation of the building. 

Jeremy started his career with The Admirable Crichton, planning events for clients across the UK and Europe. After 10 years, he was tempted by a job offer in the Caribbean where he worked for a year on the Island of St Barth’s.  Returning to the UK, he joined Searcys and spent four years at the Barbican as GM, then moving to the British Museum before going onto Benugo and running the caterer’s hospitality arm, including the event catering business Clerkenwell Green.

At 116 Pall Mall Jeremy is an advocate of networking and interaction. He sees the Westminster Venue Collection as a valuable tool in bringing clear information to time-pressed event professionals and allowing venues to share expertise and knowledge amongst themselves for everyone’s benefit. As part of his brief he is looking at supplier partnerships and how they could bring added value to the collection’s members and users.

He is a regular at industry trade shows and will be found on the 116 and WVC’s stands. 

Andrew started his career in hospitality over 30 years ago working in both operational and sales roles and subsequently as Commercial Director for venue finding and business travel agency, VRG.

After a four-year stint at Compass Group setting up the central conference and events service for Lime Venue Portfolio, Andrew worked as GM at Charles Darwin House, home of six learned societies in the field of Bioscience.

Following a very exciting contract with venuedirectory.com working on Special Projects, in May 2018 he joined the Healthcare Financial Management Association (HFMA) to manage their London Meetings and Events facilities at 110 Rochester Row. In addition to internal HFMA events, 110 Rochester Row welcomes external clients which include Oracle, John Lewis, NHS, local corporate businesses and various Government departments

Andrew is passionate about using technology in the hotel and venue sector and in particular the opportunity to move small meetings to online bookings in order to free up time to devote a personal approach to more complex events.