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New leadership for the London Chapter

16 May 2025
Kate, Alexandra

The BCI is pleased to welcome Kate Foulsham MBCI and Alex Lyons MBCI as newly appointed Leader and Vice Leader of the BCI London Chapter. In this Spotlight article they outline their vision for the Chapter’s future and offer insights into the key challenges currently facing the region.

Leader Kate has been part of the Business Resilience Team at British Airways since June 2022 and leads the Business Continuity Working Group for the Oneworld alliance of airlines, where she wrote and helped ratify the alliance’s first Business Continuity Policy. Vice leader Alex is the Manager, Business Resilience, also at British Airways, with over a decade of experience in operational resilience and airport management.

Kate was motivated to take on the leadership role because she enjoys learning new things and is passionate about how valuable the BCI is as a resource for both experienced professionals and those new to business continuity. She is particularly excited about supporting those who are early in their careers and is eager to give back from her BCI mentoring experience by bringing people together, providing networking opportunities, and fostering a space where practitioners can all learn from one another. Alex was motivated by the opportunity to foster collaboration and knowledge-sharing across the community, unite professionals, facilitate the exchange of best practices, and contribute to building a more resilient practice through collective learning and engagement.

Enhancing the resilience and business continuity community in London

There is much to be gained from cross-industry collaboration, and Kate’s goal is to bring together a broad range of professionals with diverse voices, opinions, and perspectives from all sectors to share insights and discuss common challenges to strengthen resilience across all industries. In addition, because there isn’t a dedicated business continuity group specifically for the aviation industry, she hopes to create a space that offers news, resources, and learning opportunities tailored to this sector. Alex is keen to bring professionals together to share ideas, experiences, and best practices, including knowledge of known risks specific to the London area, so members return to their organisations with valuable insights that raise awareness, strengthen preparedness, and elevate the profile of resilience and business continuity across the region.

Key challenges facing the London region

London is currently facing many challenges, but Kate pointed out two that particularly stand out to her: cybersecurity and climate change. She believes that by fostering collaboration and sharing knowledge, the Chapter can help industries better prepare for and mitigate these risks and play an important role in raising awareness of emerging threats to ensure that businesses are proactive in addressing these evolving challenges. Vice leader Alex agreed and added public transport disruptions, the interdependencies of urban infrastructure, evolving regulatory requirements, and supply chain vulnerabilities to London’s most pressing challenges.

Both Kate and Alex believe that the Chapter can address the challenges by creating a platform for local professionals to share insights, lessons learned, and risk intelligence specific to the area through facilitating targeted discussions, scenario planning, and collaboration tailored to the region’s unique challenges.

Thinking ahead: long-term goals for the chapter

Leadership’s long-term goals are to create a collaboration hub for knowledge-sharing, and professional development in resilience and business continuity. Leader Kate hopes that members will regularly discuss challenges and opportunities for improvement relevant to the region, and Alex aims to build a sustainable network where members regularly engage, support one another, and share evolving best practices.