Our team

Mike Rooney was previously the Chief Operating Officer of London First (2004-2018) and was responsible for member management, commercial development and company support services. Before joining London First in 2002 as Commercial Director, he was Chairman and Chief Executive of Langdon’s Foods Plc.

He has had a wide experience of the dairy industry having worked during the 1980s and 1990s in senior management positions for Dairy Crest Foods Plc and as Household Director responsible for the doorstep delivery business. His early career was spent in marketing and advertising, working with leading advertising agencies including CDP and Inter Public as an account manager.

Robert Hall was previously the Director of the Security & Resilience Network at London First. Before joining London First in 2013, he was Director of Resilience at G4S Risk Management Consulting. Robert has worked in the risk, security and resilience arenas in both the public and private sectors for many years.

He has held senior positions in two FTSE100 companies that specialise in financial services and manufacturing. He has also been Head of Analysis at a national intelligence agency, and Managing Editor of security titles at an international publishing company. In 2000, he founded and managed an international forum on global security and law enforcement for senior executives in government, business and academia.

Robert spent his early career in the military before moving into the commercial world. He has written and presented extensively on strategic risk and security issues.  He is a member of both the Security Institute and the Business Continuity Institute. He was a member of the Editorial Board on the new British Standard (BS65000) on organisational resilience.

Beena is responsible for managing and developing Resilience First’s member services, events and communications.

With over 20 years’ experience in the membership sector, Beena was previously the Events Director at London First, where she grew their programme of events whilst presenting large-scale summits (including EWI’s second Worldwide Cyber Security Summit) and awards ceremonies, together with leadership events with senior business executives and politicians. Beena also led Skills London, the UK’s largest careers fair for 15 to 24 years old, and the London Planning Awards, organised in partnership with the Mayor of London. 

Prior to that, Beena was the Head of Membership at the French Chamber of Commerce in Great Britain (FCCGB), where she grew their membership base and introduced new member services to increase the network’s engagement. At the FCCGB, Beena also had the opportunity to work with the French government as well as HRH The Prince of Wales.

Outside of work, Beena enjoys life with her family, yoga and travelling.

Ian is a 15-year veteran of Intel Corporation working in various roles supporting multiple business units across IT, sales & marketing and business operations and brings a wealth of internal and process and operational experience. Ian has trained as a business analyst, project manager and programme manager working with global organisations to deliver projects across the world. 

Most recently, Ian was hand-selected to lead a cross-functional team that built a business from zero in 2017 to a business unit that contributed tens of millions pounds in revenue in 2018, and will contribute over a hundred million pounds in 2019. The business models challenged and broke new ground in just about every variation possible to Intel's standard business models.

In 2014 Alastair became Europe’s first city Chief Resilience Officer for Glasgow. As CRO, he reported to offices in New York and London and played an active and leading role in a network of RC100 cities from across the world. He acted as point of contact for Glasgow and shared learning and experience with other cities. He set up and led a sub-set of post-industrial cities with participants from Europe, USA, China and Australia.

In 2016 he delivered the Resilience Strategy for Glasgow, with its focus on actions to enhance resilience around four pillars relating to civic participation, economy, place, and local communities. He and his team developed this over two years working with other sectors and the public to define Glasgow’s shocks and stresses and set out actions to address these. He has a strong media presence on resilience, with both recorded and live media as well as published articles and has presented at international conferences and events on the subject. He undertakes lecturing on resilience and provide training on resilience for other organisations. He have been working with BSI as it develops its City Resilience Standard (BS67000).

Ed is currently completing his MSc in Disaster Risk Management and Climate Change Adaptation at Lund University, Sweden, and working as a researcher for the Knowledge Hub. Now writing his thesis from distance in London, his research interests are in disaster resilience, community resilience, social capital and sustainability. After an undergraduate degree in International Relations at the University of Leeds, Ed worked in security and construction in Bergen, Norway, and operations and building services in London before moving to Sweden to undertake his Master's Degree.  

For the last 28 years, Marcus has worked extensively across Africa, Asia and Europe with governments, non-governmental organisations, UN agencies and international financial institutions, and academia to develop and implement policies and practices to prevent disasters and crisis, and strengthen the resilience of nations, organisations and communities.

Between 2007 and 2018, Marcus was the founding Executive Director of the Global Network of Civil Society Organisations for Disaster Reduction (GNDR). Over a ten-year period, GNDR has grown rapidly to become the world’s largest alliance of civil-society organisations committed to working collaboratively, in partnership with state and non-state actors, to strengthen the resilience and sustainability of communities and nations.

Marcus is an Urban Scholar for the UN Global Compact Cities Programme and a member of the Resilience Advisors (Europe) network. Marcus is director of a specialist consultancy practice ‘Resilience Solutions’ enabling people and organisations to survive and thrive in a world increasingly defined by extreme shocks and disturbances. He holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Civil Engineering and a Master’s Degree in Project Management.