Rail: A gateway to the future Jenny Henderson, Andrew McLean, David Taylor, Sarah Thompson and David Boot (Chair)

David Boot is Head of Public Affairs at London North Eastern Railway (LNER), responsible for stakeholder and community engagement. With almost 20 years’ experience across public affairs and communications, David has extensive knowledge across transport, including aviation, road and maritime, as well as rail. He co-chairs Beyond Barriers, the rail industry network on social mobility. Educated at the University of Leicester and the University of Leeds, David holds a degree in politics and a master’s in British politics and parliamentary studies. He is a Chartered member of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR) and Chair of the CIPR Public Affairs Committee.

Jenny Henderson is an Engineer with 14 years’ experience specialising in rail infrastructure delivery. As part of the team at Arup – an independent firm of designers, planners, engineers, consultants and technical specialists, she has spent the last six years delivering the transformative Transpennine Route Upgrade from concept design through to implementation onsite. As a Chartered Civil Engineer her approach is grounded in practical considerations of delivery coupled with the individual needs of rail users and stakeholders. Her passion is enabling collaboration between rail users, engineering professionals and the wider social, economic and environmental considerations at play to maximise the potential of rail into the future.  

Andrew McLean is the Assistant Director and Head Curator at the National Railway Museum in York, heading up the Museum’s Collections and Research department. He is also a member of the Institute of Railway Studies and the Railway Heritage Designation Advisory Board.  An Edinburgh University graduate, Andrew has a background in architectural, landscape and design history and is particularly interested in the areas of design and function. After growing up in a railway household, he commenced his curatorial career in the distilling industry, before moving to the Marquess of Bute's home at Mount Stuart, then the National Trust in the northeast of England before joining the National Railway Museum in 2014. He is the author of The Flying Scotsman: Speed, Style, Service (Scala, 2016).

David Taylor is the Account Director Mainline Rail at Hitachi Rail where he is responsible for developing long-term strategic relationships with key industry bodies, such as Network Rail, London St Pancras High Speed, HS2, Train and Freight Operators. As an Account Director, he has successfully led several campaigns from inception to programme delivery, such as Darwin, Intelligent Infrastructure, and Traffic Management, which have improved the services and information delivered to passengers and freight companies. David is also a Fellow of the Institute of Railway Signal Engineers, and a co-author of a report on embedding innovation in Transport for the North, migration to the Future Railway Mobile Communication System (FRMCS) and what can rail learn from aerospace (2003). His mission is to drive innovation and collaboration in the UK mainline rail sector, and to empower and support the operators to deliver a more consistent, proactive, and improved service to both customers and freight companies.

Professor Sarah Thompson is the Pro-Vice-Chancellor Research at the University of York, UK and leads the University’s Transformational Initiative on Building Industry Engagement and Income. She has previously held the roles of Associate Dean for Research in the Faculty of Sciences and Head of the Department of Physics at the University and served as Vice President of the Institute of Physics (Science and Innovation) from 2015-2019. Her research interests are in nanomagnetism and nanoscale thermal transport and she has also won awards from the Institute of Physics and the British Association for science outreach. In 2012 she was awarded an MBE for services to Higher Education.