Rod Dowler

Executive Chair

Rod is a business adviser, executive, and business angel who is Executive Chair of the Industry Forum, a highly active London-based business policy forum that promotes dialogue between senior UK policy-makers and the business community. He is a board member of AgeneBio a US life sciences, spin-out from Johns Hopkins, which is developing therapeutics to preserve and restore brain function for patients at risk from neurological and psychiatric diseases; the lead, late-stage clinical programme is focussed on Alzheimer’s Disease.

After graduation in Physics from Oxford, Rod worked as a software engineer and then in management consultancy. As a consultant, he worked extensively in the financial and technology sectors, and on a range of engagements for the European Commission.

He was a partner in KPMG for 15 years, during which he led the rapid expansion of the KPMG European High Technology Practice. At KPMG, he worked with legendary high-tech marketeer, Regis McKenna, guru to Steve Jobs at Apple, and Rod managed Regis McKenna Europe for several years. Rod has provided advice and arbitration on a number of large outsourcing deals. He has founded and led start-up technology companies and raised the necessary finance.

He was CEO/Founder of zoomf.com a property search engine which was sold to a media group in 2008. He was an expert witness in a high-profile software patent dispute.  Rod works with a number of universities on subjects including corporate governance, the impact of new technologies and financial policy. In the past five years he has worked on public policy projects including the Kerslake Review of the Treasury, and some research work looking at the decline of public trust in politics and business, and strategies to reduce global emissions of greenhouse gases.