Yorkshire businesswoman Victoria Tomlinson and AI expert Louise Ballard launch their book, Expiry Date Never, at the closing event of Leeds Digital Festival, hosted by longstanding client and pioneer in partner longevity, Addleshaw Goddard.
Through case studies and real-world insights, Expiry Date Never explores how the unretired generation is contributing in new ways, and why experienced professionals have never been more valuable for their judgement in the age of AI.
The book argues we’re living and working 20–30 years longer than previous generations, and asks what that means for careers, AI, and how we plan the decades ahead.
Ten places are up for grabs. Fill out the form available to express your interest. As this is a private event with limited places available, completing this form is an expression of interest rather than a confirmed booking. Next-Up will be in touch to let you know if your place has been secured.
Founder & CEO, Next-Up · TEDx Speaker · BBC Commentator
Victoria Tomlinson has spent her career challenging how work is done and who gets to do it. One of the few women in senior roles early in her career, she built a track record of “firsts”, from being the first female graduate trainee in a 20,000-employee engineering business to becoming one of the youngest leaders in EY’s London practice, where she led a division of 100 people and drove a major culture change programme.
She went on to found and run an award-winning communications agency while raising a family, later expanding internationally with an office in Dubai. In her 50s and 60s, Victoria reinvented herself again, becoming a BBC Expert Woman commentator, launching Next-Up to help the 50+ generation rethink their working lives, and more recently building a tech platform, piloted by a major bank, to support longer, more flexible careers.
Today, as CEO of Next-Up, she works with leading professional services firms and corporates to help them unlock the value of experienced talent. Her work has created a global community of firms rethinking partner careers and later-life transitions.
Victoria is an international keynote speaker, TEDx speaker (A Generation of Wasted Talent), Amazon bestselling author, Teaching Fellow at Lancaster University, Fellow of the RSA, and has held board roles including founding Chair of WILD Digital, the University of Leeds Management Advisory Board, and Northern Ballet. She also supports employment initiatives for ex-offenders through HMP Askham Grange.
Expiry Date Never brings together insights from her work with individuals and organisations to challenge how we think about age, work and experience, and to show what needs to change.
Co-founder, Atheni.ai · FT Working It AI Expert 2025 · Speaker on AI transformation
Louise Ballard started her career teaching business English in Vienna and talked her way into a new role in an investment bank by teaching the recruitment agent first. She spent thirty years in communications, founding a PR agency that worked with venture capital firms and Austrian listed businesses on investor communications, before it was acquired by Huntsworth plc in 2009. She stepped back to raise her children, through cancer, and then made a decision she hadn’t entirely planned: to start again.
At 52, she co-founded Atheni.ai, a start-up that combines human coaching with an AI-powered platform to support organisations through AI adoption, individually and at scale. She brings a career spent understanding how people change and a talent for connecting ideas others often compartmentalise.
She spends her time helping organisations bridge the gap between buying AI and changing how people actually work. Atheni was built to close that gap. She works every day with teams moving from curiosity to confidence with AI, because AI literacy doesn’t just protect a career, it significantly amplifies it.
Louise wrote the AI chapters of Expiry Date Never, arguing that experienced professionals don’t become less relevant as AI scales – they become more valuable. One of the Financial Times‘ Working It AI experts in 2025, she speaks regularly on AI transformation. At 55, she is building her own career with AI, from scratch.
