Susan Williamson is a retail architect and social scientist who started her UK career 25 years ago during the shopping centre boom. She found her interest increasingly turned to the rationale -- both cultural and economic -- behind transactional spaces and the expert users of those spaces: the shoppers, workers, walkers, talkers , the performers and those who simply lurk. This led to the founding (with long-term collaborator Meg Abdy) of a new company, Cornerstone Strategies, which builds big, economically viable ideas that few others will touch: based on the needs, transactional spaces and the spatial choreography of those who will be their expert users.

In early 2008 Cornerstone were appointed by owners of Grade 1 Listed Temple Works, the historic flax mill Holbeck/leeds -- once "the largest room in the world" -- to build the business plan and creative direction for its staged conversion to the next major cultural venue in England's North. The project is now in its third year and is animating Holbeck Urban Village from the ground up, online and realtime.

Susan founded the niche brand communication consultancy shining-red in '98 that was an early leader in digital two-way communications between retailers and shoppers.

She is currently Director of Cornerstone Strategies, founding partner in retail / leisure management network The Chambers, a published writer , and lectures regularly in the UK and abroad.