Expert Events

Designing for Resilience: A Co-Creation Workshop for the AI Era

Name: Designing for Resilience: A Co-Creation Workshop for the AI Era
Start: 2026-03-19T12:00:00+00:00
End: 2026-03-19T15:00:00+00:00
Location: Sexy Fish Mayfair

In regulated industries, scaling AI across hybrid cloud environments requires resilience by design. This interactive Blend London workshop brings senior technology leaders together with IBM and Microsoft experts to co-create secure, automated, and compliant operating models—focused on real-world governance, FCA alignment, and infrastructure challenges.

Sexy Fish Mayfair

March 19, 2026

12:00 pm - 3:00 pm

About this event

Scaling in regulated industries has never been harder.

AI integrations across hybrid cloud environments are accelerating innovation, but they’re also increasing data exposure risk, governance complexity, and regulatory pressure. Meanwhile, leaders are expected to reduce operational error, maintain consistent policy enforcement, and comply with evolving FCA standards, all while moving faster than ever.

In this highly interactive Blend London workshop, senior technology leaders will collaborate with IBM and Microsoft experts to tackle real-world resilience challenges in the AI era. Through facilitated co-creation exercises, live problem-solving, and peer exchange, participants will explore how organizations are designing resilient, secure, and automated infrastructure across hybrid environments, including Microsoft Azure, to ensure governance, compliance, and scalability are embedded by design rather than layered on after the fact. Furthermore, we will examine how to architect infrastructure that leverages the strengths of hybrid could and Azure-native capabilities, all while maintaining enterprise-grade controls across complex, regulated ecosystems.

Our speakers

Julia Belle

Head of Community - London

Julia is a broadcaster, political commentator, corporate event host and business trainer. She has been covering news, current affairs and entertainment for BBC Three for three years and before this she featured weekly on BBC 5 Live – discussing the newspaper headlines and the latest breaking news.

She hosted a BBC election show, diving into key voter topics, as well as a TED Talk titled “The Secret to Being Right” which was instantly selected amongst TED’s “Editor’s Picks.”

She has interviewed some of the most influential figures in politics and business, on a range of topics from general elections to generative AI.

She runs the London community of Blend as well as the members’ exclusive Blend Book Club, interviewing prolific business authors and sharing key learnings from a range of titles covering topics like leadership, negotiation, DEI, productivity and handling difficult issues.

Melissa Nealon

Regional Vice President UK&I at Hashicorp

Melissa Nealon, Area Vice President for UK & Ireland at HashiCorp, where she leads the company’s business helping organisations modernise infrastructure and build secure platforms for the next generation of AI-powered applications.

With 17 years in enterprise technology, including 12 years at Splunk, she has worked extensively with government, aerospace, and defence organisations on data strategy, security, and digital transformation. Earlier in her career she became a recognised subject matter expert in defence compliance frameworks including NIST SP 800-171, DFARS, and CMMC.

She holds MIT certificates in Architecture of the Internet of Things and Big Data Analytics, and frequently speaks on Infrastructure as Code, Security LifeCycle Management, AI preparedness, FinOps, data strategy, and the evolving technology landscape across the UK and Ireland public sector.

Key themes & discussion topics

How to structure infrastructure that supports AI workloads while maintaining governance and control.

Embedding policy, compliance, and security into automated environments to reduce human error.

Managing FCA requirements, auditability, and data exposure risk in hybrid cloud ecosystems.

Building operating models that sustain resilience as AI initiatives expand across the enterprise.

Event agenda

Canapes & networking

12:00 – 1:00 PM

Opening remarks & keynote

1:00 – 1:15 PM

Workshop

1:15 – 2:15 PM

Panel discussion

2:15 – 2:30PM

Coffee & closing remarks

2:30 – 3:00 PM

Why should you attend?

Gain practical frameworks for designing resilient, AI-ready hybrid cloud infrastructure in regulated environments.

Learn how to embed governance and compliance into automation without slowing innovation.

Exchange real-world challenges and solutions with peers navigating similar regulatory pressures.

Leave with actionable insights to scale AI confidently while maintaining control, security, and FCA alignment.

Who should attend

This session is built for senior leaders responsible for technology strategy, enterprise architecture, cloud platforms, infrastructure, and security within regulated organisations. If you are accountable for scaling AI, modernising hybrid environments, embedding governance into automation, or ensuring compliance without slowing innovation, this workshop is for you.

Whether you shape enterprise architecture, oversee engineering and DevOps, lead cloud or data strategy, or carry executive responsibility for resilience and risk, you’ll gain practical insight alongside peers navigating similar regulatory pressures.

Content

Venue

Sexy Fish Mayfair

Berkeley Square House, Berkeley Square
London
W1J 6BR
United Kingdom

Apply to participate