Award-winning Chartered Engineer and Non-Executive Director. I help boards, governments and technology companies make confident decisions on emerging technology, standards and strategy.
Sylvia is an award-winning Chartered Engineer and Non-Executive Director with over 18 years of experience in the telecom industry, spanning four mobile generations with semiconductor vendors.
As Managing Director of YOOVIP, she helps boards, governments and technology companies navigate a fast-moving landscape, drawing on AI, IoT, 5G and 6G to drive strategic innovation, sound governance and profitable growth across the telecom, manufacturing, semiconductor and space sectors. She provides guidance on the impact of emerging technologies on products and corporate strategy, influences global standards, accelerates the adoption of new technologies, and offers independent advice to industry and policy stakeholders.
Sylvia serves on several national and global industry boards. She is Deputy Chair of Cambridge Wireless, having been an elected board director since 2017, and serves on the Advisory Board of UKTIN, which provides independent advice on the telecoms sector, champions UK opportunities in telecoms research, development and innovation, and gives impartial input to government. She is also an independent consultant on telecom standards, with a focus on 6G and advanced connectivity. As an Advisor at Silicon Catalyst UK, she mentors semiconductor start-ups in the government-funded ChipStart UK incubator.
She previously sat on the board of 5G-ACIA, the 5G Alliance for Connected Industries and Automation, helping set strategic direction and working with ICT and operational-technology stakeholders to bring 5G into connected industries, particularly the manufacturing and process sectors. Earlier, she was appointed to the Advisory Board of UK5G in 2018, then became Vice-chair of the UK5G International Working Group and co-chair of the UK5G Manufacturing Working Group, co-leading the UK proposition and engagement plan with overseas government and industry.
Sylvia operates on an international stage as a keynote speaker for a wide range of audiences. Highlights include the House of Lords, Financial Times Live, Westminster eForum, the United Nations International Telecommunication Union, Mobile World Congress, Hannover Messe, Ofcom, the IET, the IEEE, ABI Research, the 5G Techritory Forum and the 6G Symposium. She also contributes to industry magazines and journals, some translated into seven languages with a global reach.
She holds a first-class Electronic Engineering degree from Birmingham City University and a Master of Science in Communications and Signal Processing from the University of Bristol. She graduated with Distinction from the University of Oxford in a PGDip in Strategy and Innovation, and earned an Executive MBA from the University of Cambridge. Away from work, Sylvia is also an amateur artist.
A first-class degree in Electronic Engineering, then a Master's in Communications and Signal Processing, gave her a deep, working understanding of the technology itself. Later, a Distinction in Strategy and Innovation at Oxford and an Executive MBA at Cambridge added the commercial and strategic side.
The hardest part is rarely the technology or the business case alone. It is seeing how the two move together.
More than eighteen years with semiconductor and telecom vendors, across four mobile generations. She built products and shaped product, technology and corporate strategy, helped scale an IoT technology to deploy in 25 million connected devices, and created intellectual property and led on commercial decisions across telecom, manufacturing, semiconductors and satcom.
Getting a technology from the lab into millions of devices is its own discipline, and it is learned by doing.
Board and working-group roles with 5G-ACIA, UK5G, UKTIN and Cambridge Wireless, turning research into adoption by aligning industry, operators and government around common ground.
No single company decides where a market goes. It turns on standards, and on getting an industry to move together.
Today she advises boards, governments and technology companies on where 5G, 6G, AI and advanced connectivity are heading, and what to do about it.
The complexity is never the point. The decision it leads to is.
Keynotes, fireside chats and panel chairing on 5G, 6G, AI, IoT and Industry 4.0, for audiences from policymakers and boards to engineers and students.
Non-executive and advisory roles bringing independent, board-level judgement on technology, standards and strategy.
Independent advice for policy makers, governments, technology companies and founders on where connectivity is heading and the decisions it demands.
A small selection from international stages, panels and standards forums.
