Team

Mark West

MARK WEST

Mark is an experienced Non-Executive Director and Advisor who has worked for more than 35 years in consumer industries across the world. Formerly CEO at LLX Global Business Services SA and CTO at JAB Luxury GmbH he has deployed many game-changing technologies that have enabled business to rapidly transform and commercialise results.

Talia Findlay

TALIA FINDLAY

Talia is an energising, motivated and commercially astute senior level executive with over 25 years of sales and marketing experience across a wide range of channels, specialising in digital and ecommerce. She spent 15 years agency side providing end-to-end consumer solutions from initial awareness through the conversion funnel to purchase. Whilst agency side Talia worked across a diverse set of consumer brands including Toni&Guy, Orange, Kia, Aptamil & Silverstone where she thrived on delivering measurable success and driving year on year growth.

In 2010 Talia jumped client side and joined Wiltshire Farm Foods to lead their ecommerce operation, delivering double digit growth on a platform where the average consumer age was 83! Most recently Talia was a Sales and Marketing Director at Royal Canin, the premium pet food division of Mars inc where she leveraged her experience across the business divisions to bring a cohesive and agile approach in a traditional retail environment to increase brand awareness and establish a digital first mindset.

Talia is now a strategic consultant working with brands to create meaningful consumer experiences to enhance engagement and deliver sustainable sales growth.

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Peter Northing (UK)

Peter’s experience at Red Bull (where he was head of global partnerships) and other digital media businesses have placed him at the leading edge of brand, media and digital development. His understanding of this space and inspirational leadership is second to none.” Peter is an accomplished leader with more than 20 years of experience growing revenues across media, entertainment, and retail platforms.

Jesper Wiegandt (Europe)

Jesper is one of the world’s leading experts in shopper and in-store marketing. He was with P&G for 22 years. He was educated at Copenhagen Business School and Northwestern University, Chicago. He led Customer & Channel Marketing globally for P&G, as well as the Shopper Marketing and “First Moment of Truth”-teams for P&G across all markets and retail customers in Western Europe.

Jodie Hopperton (USA)

A passionate media executive, Jodie Hopperton simplifies complex business environments and develops revenue streams for media and technology companies. Over the last two years in L.A., she has developed a particular passion for AR & VR.

Leveraging her knowledge and skills from running divisions of large news organisations such as the New York Times & Trinity Mirror, and with start-ups in London & California over the last 3 years.

James Briscoe (UK)

James spent almost 20 years at some of the best and biggest media agencies in Europe, holding senior roles in London, New York, and Hamburg. After two successful agency exits (Unique Digital and Syzygy), he now spends his time working with some of the most dynamic TMT (Technology, Media and Telecom) businesses in the UK. Working with them across all business operations including fundraising, sales, marketing, client success, strategy and team leadership. In addition, he also works with brands and agencies helping them in building and improving their media, digital and marketing operations.

Jo Vertigan

Jo has over 30 years of technology experience across a very wide range of sectors from FMCG, Sport, Financial Services, and Defence. He was digital strategy lead at BAE Systems Futures developing new businesses and Head of Strategy at the £2bn conglomerate, Marshalls of Cambridge. He has chaired the Cambridge Norwich Tech Corridor and recently won the Accelerated Capability Environment Home Office award. His broad range of knowledge drawn from blue chips and start-ups, allows him to rapidly understand new sectors and accelerate a business’s capability through rapid innovation, helping them thrive in VUCA world.

Nicky Klein

Nicky has been helping organisations drive innovation and growth through data insights and data led culture for over 20 years. Most recently Nicky was Chief Data Officer at Direct Line Insurance where she delivered a commercially led data strategy, driving change across people, process, technology and culture. Before that Nicky was COO at Dunnhumby, the global leader in customer science solutions. Nicky joined Dunnhumby in the early days and played a key role in developing the global client base as well as its portfolio of products and solutions to optimise and personalise the customer experience for retailers and brands.

Alastair Lewis

Alastair is a former Managing Director at Haymarket and Future PLC running some of the UK’s best known consumer media brands including Autocar, Stuff, FourFourTwo, How It Works and What Hi-Fi? amongst others. His 20 years in media have seen him focus on International Business Development and Partnerships, Content Syndication, Digital Subscriptions, E-Commerce and Affiliate revenues as well as Content, Audience and Commercial Growth.

Alastair established Quested Consulting Ltd in 2020 to help media companies, platforms and start-ups diversify their revenue streams and develop their value propositions to both consumers and partners.

Karina Tietje (Germany)

Karina has over 25 years’ experience in digital’ having built up the digital business for Axel Springer in the 90s, remaining #1 until a sale to Stroer Group in 2016. Represented Axel Springer as shareholder in aol.de, sport.de, business tv.

Since 2000 she has been an advisor to leading companies on the development and implementation of new, cross-media business fields and brands, performs marketing services and establishes contact with cooperation partners such as Internet portals, television channels, publishing houses and advertising agencies, etc. Clients include King.com, buyvip.com, match.com, Deutsche Telekom, RTLinteractive, Pro7SAT1, Levelupmedia, Spilgames and the German Football league.

Gordon Glenister (UK)

Gordon Glenister joins us from the membership community. He has previously been the director general of the British Promotional Merchandise Association and is now launching a new division for influencers in the Branded Content Marketing Association and is also the business development director for the Institute of Export and International Trade. Gordon is a passionate advocate of membership and subscription models and helps organisations engage better with members and communities. Gordon has previously held senior roles in the drinks industry and has ran his own merchandise and rewards business.

Douglas McDonald (UK)

Douglas is a New Business and Client Management specialist who focuses on building infrastructure and hiring teams. He’s built teams in media sales, supplier partnerships in retail, and client services for agencies. He’s operated both in the UK and run large teams across 4 continents. He has spent 20 years in digital and 16 years in Mobile, including Client Services Director at Sponge, Business Development Director at Velti/mGage, Director of Mobile at major agency group Creston plc & Director of International Advertising at MicroWarehouse Inc. Douglas now kick-starts & grows the sales for companies across all digital disciplines.

Phil Gault (UK)

Having worked in the communications industry for 30 years, Phil brings deep experience in brand, mobile and shopper marketing.

After managing agencies in Indonesia, Australia and the UK, he moved into Strategy and Innovation roles. As Director of Strategy at Sponge, the UK’s leading Mobile agency, he developed their direct-to-brand approach and led successful pitches for adidas, Bacardi and Dyson. He filled the same position at M&C Saatchi Shop, helping leading brands implement new approaches to shopper marketing. Highlights included launching a chatbot for Unilever and augmented reality solutions for Mondelez. Phil specialises in creating best practice playbooks, white papers and other thought leadership pieces writing extensively on Customer Experience, the Shopper Journey, Loyalty and Mobile Commerce.

Barn Cleave (UK)

12 years of mobile experience inc: advertising, digital content & operators. Working with firms to find new ways for emerging technologies to streamline and add value to businesses, with the focus of the business driving the technology rather than the other way round.

Director of a development studio that creates 1st and 3rd party content for clients such as Time Warner though off-shore capabilities in Costa Rica. Previous positions include Global Head of Display Advertising for Vodafone managing 24 countries, Orange, EE and Smartpipe – a real-time big data broker platform.

Pauline Manos (Be)

Walking our talk with her grey hair, Pauline consults with public and privately-held companies, start-ups and individuals. She works on business & brand strategy, marketing capability, and personal development challenges, developing tailored solutions to help clients achieve their maximum growth potential. Pauline’s knack for operating in complex multi-cultural organisations and bringing together divergent interests and teams comes from her European-American background and a long career at P&G, where she worked on local, regional & global brand management, customer & shopper marketing, and training & organisation design.

Rupert Staines (UK)

With 25 years of international business experience, Rupert has successfully developed and driven business strategies for multiple ad-tech companies. As MD Europe for RadiumOne, Rupert was responsible for creating and scaling the European online media operations for Specific Media (now VIANT), and Conversant Media. He has a passion for startup culture and defines his mission as being “to help articulate and demystify digital advertising as information and consumer technologies collide”. Rupert holds a BA in German Language and Management Studies from Royal Holloway, University of London.

Martin Talks (UK)

Martin is an experienced strategic leader, entrepreneur and adviser. He floated a finance company on the London Stock Exchange in 2000 and also founded and sold a digital marketing business in 2011. He has been Global Digital Lead for the FCB Group of marketing agencies and continues to advise companies around the world on how to thrive in a world of fast change including BDO, Santander and Air New Zealand. He is a Digital Trends expert for Google. He regularly appears on TV, speaks at events, delivers workshops and writes articles and reports on matters related to innovation, technology and future thinking.

Sean King (UK)

Sean has over 20 years’ experience in publishing and digital content. He set up Square One Group in 1994, which became one of the fastest growing independent content agencies in the UK before its acquisition in 2007 by Seven Publishing (backed by Guardian Media Group and Caledonia Investment Trust) with Sean running the combined business. Seven was in turn acquired by leading German content agency C3 (part of Hubert Burda Media) in 2016. Sean remained as CEO until 2018.

He is now starting a new career as an advisor to companies in the worlds of advertising/ media/ content/ technology/ blockchain. Sean is also an advisor and NED to Blue Star Capital an AIM-listed investment company focused on new technologies.

Paul Rushforth (UK)

Paul has spent the last 20 years working in the Media and Broadcast industry. Most recently, he designed, built and executed NBC Universal’s innovation capability, Media Labs, enabling the global media giant to capitalise on and react to the ever changing technology landscape of the sector.

The jewel in the crown of this role was the creation and delivery of Digifest, a one day internal festival engaging with over 1500 employees to educate them on key technology themes and trends. Digifest has been adopted by NBCU offices around the world, and has become the highlight of the year for many employees.

Paul now consults for companies looking to harness the power of their employees to deliver significant change.

Patrick Fuller (UK)

Patrick is a specialist in understanding the modern digital customer, with more than 20 years’ experience of digital product creation as director of the automotive and consumer electronics divisions at Haymarket Media Group. He has deep experience of social platforms and led the acquisition of PistonHeads, which became UK’s biggest independent community for men and number two in the automotive classifieds market. When he’s not chasing the online buyer around the block, he can be found driving his electric car.

Kate Fleming (UK/US)

Kate is a business founder (of a New York-based marcomm agency working with tech startups and scale-ups), and she’s spent years working on the front lines with entrepreneurs and founding teams of innovative, disruptive, and visionary B2B and B2C tech companies.

She’s helped launch and scale US-based businesses in advertising, marketing, and retail tech, along with those specializing in eCommerce and mobile. She’s also partnered with UK and EU companies to guide them through US launch and expansion. Kate helps define real-world use cases and applications based on common customer pain points and end user needs, refine product and customer experience, and define and deliver relevant value for a non-technical buyer. Her work has led scale-up clients to long-term relationships with global brands including Wal-Mart, Victoria’s Secret, ESPN, Kellogg’s, Hertz, and Pepsi.

Guy Ben-dov (IL)

Guy is an interactive entertainment serial entrepreneur with over 25 years of experience in interactive media. Guy works with innovative teams in Fortune 500 companies as well as startups in Israel and South California. Guy founded Sidekick Games, working with market leaders such as SquareEnix, Rovio, Disney and Oculus as well as Double Fusion, a leader in the in-game advertising space.

Ellen Bark (Nl)

Ellen is co-founder of Collider Amsterdam where she’s been supercharging start-ups and accelerating brands since 2016. She raised investment for and launched three accelerator programs focused on marketing, commerce and adtech, helping start-ups from all over the world to grow faster.

Ellen has 20 years of international marketing and innovation experience, working from Amsterdam, Düsseldorf, Budapest and Paris. In her previous role as Global Innovation Manager for HEINEKEN, Ellen was responsible for development and implementation of Open Innovation. She understands the needs of marketeers and what it takes to implement new tech in a corporate environment.

Jeremy Copp (UK)

Jeremy has over 30 years’ experience across technology industries in a variety of CxO leadership roles. He was CEO at a VC backed mobile marketing solutions company, licensing software platforms to media owners and service providers, before becoming VP at comScore, a public company delivering big data business analytics. Jeremy has extensive experience of software licensing, marketing of professional services and business strategy definition & execution.

Andy Harding (UK)

An eCommerce heavyweight for 20 years, Andy was head of eCommerce at Carphone Warehouse, then Director of Multichannel at Ryman. Andy then joined House of Fraser as Chief Customer Officer with responsibility for brand and marketing, digital proposition and multichannel sales. He subsequently joined Mothercare where he was responsible for the customer experience across both retail and e-commerce. Andy is now Chief Digital Officer at Arcadia.

Nick Taylor

Nick has extensive experience in marketing and advertising technology, and more recently, insights & market research.

Working in both the start-up and corporate world for 15 years, helping clients deliver innovative, global projects using the latest technology, he is passionate about solving problems and enjoys the challenge of making cutting edge technology accessible for everyone.

Nick is Operations Director and Insights Lead at greyhairworks.

Ben Cheston

Despite his lack of grey hair, Ben has spent 14 years helping brands partner with start-ups, scale-ups, tech businesses, agencies and consultancies to solve business challenges and grow.

Ben has also helped launch a multi-million pound mobile messaging & payments startup, created a content marketing business unit, grown mobile technology businesses & digital agencies, and supported a portfolio of startups within an accelerator focused on the marketing and advertising industry. Ben thrives on helping businesses come together to solve challenges that would be otherwise impossible to solve on their own.

Andy Tait

Andy is a startup to scale-up entrepreneur turned startup investor now back to entrepreneur! His passion is to build high value growth for businesses by driving sales income and equity-based fundraising. He’s started new businesses in retail (HMV/EMI) and co-founded others in, video games, virtual reality, mobile technology and startup acceleration.

As a founding member of the pioneering virtual reality business, Superscape, he played a key commercial role in taking the business from start to a full IPO with a FTSE listing in London in just 5 years. Andy was directly involved in pitching and successfully raising over £60m of funding whilst serving on the main plc board. His operational role as head of business development saw him bounce around the planet spending significant time on the West Coast of the USA, Europe and across Asia. This delivered numerous global licensing deals with the likes of Microsoft, ARM, Intel and IBM.

Most recently he co-founded startup accelerator Collider which was listed as one of Europe’s Top Five Seed Accelerators. Andy led all startup and scale up interaction with corporations and agencies. Through this corporate clients such as Unilever, NBC Universal and Diageo have discovered game changing innovation some of which is deployed on a global basis.

Through his work Andy regularly leads bespoke, targeted events bringing the best, most established innovators together with curious and ambitious corporate leaders to share opportunities and tackle challenges.

Alex Meisl

Alex is a multi-lingual business creator and sales generator who has launched multiple businesses across Europe, Africa and South America.

He sold his first Anglo-French business in his early 20s, and after a 4-year period with 2 large blue chips, Alex helped build and then run a £20m turnover, 12-territory digital business, before its sale. He then co-founded Sponge, the UK’s leading Mobile Marketing agency (twice voted Mobile Agency of the Year). As CEO and then Executive Chairman he developed the mobile strategy and solutions for brands such as McDonalds, Coca-Cola, Asda, Barclays and Auto Trader. The business was sold in 2006, highlighted by the FT as one of the best agency exits of the year.

Alex was also behind skins4things, a device personalisation business with clients including the BBC, Warner Bros, Moshi Monsters and Toshiba which was subsequently sold in 2014.

During this time Alex served 4 years as Chairman of the Mobile Marketing Association in the UK, and was elected to the board of the Institute of Promotional Marketing for 2 years.

Alex is a regular, engaging and accomplished speaker on the international conference circuit and has been regularly called a “leading mobile industry veteran” which he does not appreciate.

Alex Meisl

Co-Founder

Michael Islip

Grace & Co CEO

Andy Tait

Co-Founder

Alina Cameron

Innovation & Partnerships

Ben Cheston

Co-Founder & MD

Marina Kyriacou

Team Organiser

Nick Taylor

Operations Director

Beth Goetcherian

Social

Pete Northing

Board Adviser

Jesper Wiegandt

(Europe)

Associates

Jo Vertigan

Marshalls

NED & Advisor

Douglas McDonald

Agencies

Digital & BizDev

Jeremy Copp

comScore

NED & Advisor

Ellen Bark

Unilever

Heineken

Talia Findlay

Mars

NED & Advisor

Patrick Fuller

Haymarket

NED & Advisor

Paul Rushforth

Universal

NED & Advisor

Andrea Davies

Future plc

TI Media

Martin Talks

Agency

NED & Advisor

Rupert Staines

Adtech

Multiple CEO

Amy Zalman

Department of Defence

Georgetown University

Pauline Manos

P&G

Trainer & Mentor

Barn Cleave

Gaming & XR

NED & Advisor

Phil Gault

Agency

Strategy & Content

Guy Ben-dov

Entrepreneur

Investor

Kate Fleming

Agency

Social Good

Sean King

SevenC3

NED & Advisor

Jodie Hopperton

New York Times

NED & Advisor

Gordon Glenister

Industry Association DG

Influencer Marketing

Karina Tietje