CITY AND GUILDS COLLEGE ASSOCIATION
112th City & Guilds College Association
Annual Dinner
The 112th City & Guilds College Association Annual Dinner will be held on Friday, 13th February 2026 at Grocers’ Hall.
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The guest speaker is Sir John Lazar CBE, FREng, FBCS current president of the
Royal Academy of Engineering.
Sir John Lazar is co-founder and general partner at Enza Capital, and Chair of the Raspberry Pi Foundation. In 2019, with two partners he co-launched Enza Capital which backs founders and teams using technology to solve large and meaningful problems across Africa. Headquartered in Nairobi, Enza has invested in more than 30 African tech companies to date. Sir John sits on the board of four of Enza’s portfolio companies.
Sir John has also been an active angel investor and technology start-up mentor in the UK and Africa, with more than 40 individual pre-seed/seed investments.
As well as being a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, he is also a Fellow of BCS, the UK’s chartered institute for IT. He has chaired the Academy’s Enterprise Committee which oversees the activities of its Enterprise Hub, supporting start-ups and scale-ups across the UK.
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Sir John Lazar
For the past eight years, he has also been a judge and mentor on the Academy’s Africa Prize for Engineering Innovation, which backs 15-20 early-stage African engineering companies annually. He has also spent many years working on tech-related non-profit initiatives in Africa, specially building “digital blacksmiths” and maker labs.
In 2016, Sir John stepped down as Chairman and CEO of Metaswitch Networks. He joined the company in 1987 as a software engineer and became Chief Executive Officer, and then Chairman, as the company established its leadership in cloud communications software. Metaswitch was acquired by Microsoft in 2020.
Sir John graduated from Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar with an MSc in Computation and a D.Phil in History. He was awarded a CBE in 2016 and received a Knighthood for services to engineering and technology in the 2025 New Year Honours. He was elected as President of the Royal Academy of Engineering at its AGM on 17 September 2024..
VENUE
Grocers’ Hall – A historic venue
Grocers’ Hall
(Copyright of the Worshipful Company of Grocers)
The Worshipful Company of Grocers is one of the ‘Great Twelve’ Livery Companies of the City of London, ranking second in the order of precedence. In 1515, the Court of Aldermen of the City of London settled an order of precedence for the 48 livery companies then in existence.
The Company originated as the ‘Pepperers’, whose existence as a Guild was first officially recorded in the Pipe Roll of 1180, but undoubtedly, the Guild was already active and had been originally formed earlier.
In 1345, Pepperers formed a Fraternity, which was dedicated to St Antonin as their patron saint.
The Fraternity was entrusted with the duty of preventing the adulteration of spices and drugs, as well as with the charge of the King's Beam, which weighed the bulk merchandise in which they dealt.
This Fraternity came to be known in the 1370s as the ‘Grosseurs’ which reflected their expansion into a wide range of mercantile activity, operating primarily ‘in gross’. This was subsequently anglicised to ‘Grocers’.
In 1425, the Grocers acquired the land upon which to build their first Hall, which is where our current Hall resides today.
In 1428, the Grocers were granted their first royal charter, thus formally recognising them as a Mystery or Worshipful Livery Company.
Today, we play a significant role in the City’s constitutional and ceremonial life, including the election of the Lord Mayor and Sheriffs. With the valuable industry and support of our members nationwide, we maintain and develop the fundamental ethos embodied in our early Ordinances, as well as being, in the words of the Company Clerk in 1682, ‘a nursery of charities and a seminary of good citizens'.
For more information on the Grocers’ Company and the Hall, please visit their website at https://grocershall.co.uk/ For directions to get there and other details including disabled facilities see their Visitor Guide at https://grocershall.co.uk/visitor-guide
Please note that we have been informed by Transport for London that works to replace escalators at Bank station will be ongoing on the date of the Dinner. If you need to change from the Northern Line to/from Circle & District line there will be a longer route and this will take more time.
