Asian Business Chamber to support Aston University’s TEDx event

The Asian Business Chamber of Commerce is supporting TEDX Aston University 2026, bringing together six speakers from business, academia and the wider community.

The event will take place on Friday 2 October from 5pm onwards at Millennium Point with a speaker lineup featuring Avni Ahuja, Dileep Marway, Helen Higson, Kameese Davis, Sharon Thompson and Tim Grant.

Avni Ahuja is the head of sales and operations at Apparel Group India and has previously worked as business development director at Common Purpose.

Dileep Marway is the vice president of engineering at PebblePad and is accountable for the health, scalability and sustainability of the firms global SaaS platform.

Helem Higson is a professor of Higher Education Learning and Management in Aston Business School, and associate dean at Aston Business School.  

She graduated from Newnham College Cambridge, and subsequently gained an MA from the Open University and a PhD from Birkbeck College, London University. 

She has worked in the university sector since 1983 and a major part of that was spent in Aston Business School where she has held senior management positions including Director of Quality, Associate Dean Undergraduate Programmes and Head of Learning and Teaching.  She is also a trained executive coach.

After turning down an offer on Dragons’ Den in 2021, Kameese Davis grew her start-up, Nylah’s Naturals, into an award-winning, seven-figure FMCG brand. The company has secured more than £530,000 in investment and launched its products with major UK retailers including Boots, Superdrug and Selfridges.

Sharon Thompson served as the first female deputy mayor of the West Midlands from 2024-2026.

She has been the political lead on more than £8bn worth of combined regeneration programmes and oversaw the delivery of more than 4,000 social homes through the Birmingham Municipal Housing Trust.

Under her leadership, Birmingham secured the UK’s largest government-approved selective licensing scheme for landlords, covering more than 40,000 properties. She also served on the Kerslake Commission on Homelessness and Rough Sleeping, chaired by the late Lord Kerslake and has influenced national policy reform on exempt accommodation. 

Tim Grant is a professor of forensic linguistics at Aston University and the co host of the Writing Wrongs podcast.

He has expertise in forensic authorship analysis focusing on short form messages such as SMS text messages, Twitter posts and Internet Relay Chat. Recent publications have focussed on online sexual abuse conversations.

Tim’s work has been published broadly across forensic linguistics including research on the linguistics of the police interview, the analysis of threatening communication and the pragmatics of non-verbal consent in rape cases.

ABCC manager Katrina Raipuri, said: “We’re delighted to support TEDx Aston University and be part of one of Aston’s flagship events.

“It brings together an exciting mix of voices and perspectives, giving attendees the opportunity to hear fresh ideas, challenge their thinking and discover new ways of looking at the world around them.

“Events like this also create valuable opportunities to connect with people from different backgrounds and sectors, which is at the heart of what we want to encourage through the ABCC.

“We look forward to joining the Aston community for an inspiring evening of ideas, conversation and new connections.”

Tickets are priced at £10 and can be purchased online.