Speaker - Mr Giles Grant

Mr Giles Grant

CEO
UK Cyber Security Council

Biography

Giles is Chief Executive Officer of the UK Cyber Security Council (UKCSC), the UK's professional body for cyber security, established under Royal Charter in 2021 and responsible for awarding professional titles from Associate through to Chartered. He joined in March 2026.

He brings more than three decades of senior leadership across professional bodies, publishing, information services and global education. Most recently he led the Council for Vertical Urbanism (CVU), based in Chicago, where he was responsible for CVU's global professional and corporate membership portfolio driving membership strategy, commercial growth, pricing optimisation and end-to-end member journey transformation. Before that, as Executive Director of the Information Solutions division at the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET), he served on the Executive Board with accountability for £45–50m in global revenue and a 236-person team. There he transformed the information and solutions operation, building award-winning predictive analytics capability exceeding revenue targets by an average of 13% annually, lifting EBITDA by 33% and generating £28m in additional contribution over his tenure.

His earlier career spans global leadership in publishing and information services. He was Vice President Global Marketing at Springer Nature's Nature Research Group and, before that, Senior Vice President for Pearson's global English Language Teaching & Assessment business. He came to Pearson from Thomson Reuters, where as Vice President Strategy & Corporate Development he led global acquisitions and expansion across Asia, Africa and Latin America. In the 1990s he held senior general management and marketing positions at Reed Elsevier in the UK, US and Asia-Pacific, and in 1999 founded BSI's Knowledge Solutions global business.

Giles holds an MBA in Marketing & International Business from Bradford/NIMBAS and a joint honours degree in History & Geography, and is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, the Chartered Institute of Marketing, the Institute of Direct & Digital Marketing and the Institute of Directors.