Scaleup Directors A-G

Specialising in Design for Manufacture and Assembly and Integrated Product Development, Adrian has assisted companies from hardware and software start-ups, to managing the IP portfolio of a multi-million-pound organisation.  He was instrumental in establishing the IP Audits grant initiative for London.

Having worked with leading design consultants in Denmark, user-centred design is second nature.  He has a passion for helping businesses develop practical, efficient, solutions, and is adept at identifying innovative commercialisation models and routes to market.  Adrian also helps companies raise investment and finance to facilitate growth.  

Previously he has played a significant role in business support infrastructure development, including the establishment of a regional proof of concept fund, setting up and managing an incubator and a regional design centre, and working with multiple stakeholders to establish a new business park.

Adrian has a number of engineering-related publications to his name and was presented with the IMechE journal paper of the year award for a Design for Manufacture analysis tool, which was subsequently implemented by a major automotive systems supplier.
 

In 2009 he founded Qommunicate LTD, a training and recruitment business, designed to support the long term unemployed in the most financially deprived regions in England. Utilising ESFA and ESF funding, Qommunicate used innovative engagement and teaching techniques to support over 3000 long term unemployed adults into sustainable employment in their first 5 years of trading. This success gave the business the ability to tender for more than £12 million in government funding.      

In 2016 Alex sold his business to a large recruitment agency, and up until February 2024 has been a non-exec director supporting the strategy and vision in its continuous growth. 

In his previous director role, he has created and led multiple complex projects focused on business improvement, organisational development, and personal/professional development.    

Having previously worked as a recruitment manager for an organisation employing around over 2000 staff, setting up a successful training and recruitment business and sitting on the board of a large recruitment company, Alex has vast and varied experience in talent management with a keen focus on engagement, retention and motivation.

Alex has also supported multiple business with the implementation of impactful Apprenticeship programmes. He has delivered large scale Apprenticeship projects from level 2 – level 7 (degree level) including subjects such as BIT, PMO, Supply Chain Logistics, Customer Service and Leadership and Management. Within this role he has helped levy payers make the most of their levy investment and supported non levy payers to bring in funding to support their own Apprenticeship programme.  

Having been in a leadership role for 22 years Alex has a detailed understanding of leadership in business and the impact that robust leadership can have on retention, efficiency, employee engagement and client engagement. Within this time, he has also coached, mentored and trained leaders from entry level up to a director level.     

Whilst Alex has worked in L&D for most of his career, he is not an academic. Although he understands the importance of academic qualifications his passion lies in representing and supporting the none academically minded, to achieve success through techniques in motivation, goal setting and communication.
 

Aldo has a strong ethical vision of business and for this reason, he founded a company to support the development and commercialisation of innovative products and services that have a positive impact on society, the environment and humanity and to support the growth and international expansion of technology-based businesses.

Over the 17 years’ work experience in growing and scaling businesses, Aldo worked directly with over 200 businesses supporting their scaleup journey, their entry and expansion in national and international markets and in raising more than £45m of finance. 

Through the growth of his businesses and client support, Aldo gained practical knowledge of growth business models, commercialisation, internationalisation, sales, finance, and growth strategies. 

Aldo was instrumental in the creation of the Innovate UK Scaleup Programme incorporating the best practices and methodologies gained over the course of this professional career. 

Aldo has a technical background in Mechanical Engineering (MEng) and a Master in Entrepreneurship (MEnt) from Alliance Manchester Business School. He has lived and worked in the US, UK, France, and Italy and is fluent in four languages. 

During his spare time, Aldo enjoys travelling, reading, downhill mountain biking, skiing, horse riding and pretty much any other activity that can be done outdoors. Above all Aldo loves spending time with family. 

• Strategy: definition and deployment of business growth/transformation
• People: improving capability, behaviours and team cohesiveness
• Culture: defining improved ways of working to drive positive employee experiences
• Process: streamlining and standardising core business operations

Her experience is complemented by her first-class honours degree in Business Information Systems and Post Graduate Diploma in Business Improvement.  Angela has worked across both the private and public sectors supporting larger organisations and SMEs.  

Angela has been working with Innovate UK since 2020, prior to this she was part of the Senior Leadership Team at Bentley Motors driving forward transformational change globally. Throughout her career, Angela has won multiple external awards including Global PMO of the year, Best HR Impact, Best Change Management Initiative and Contribution to the Community.

Angela has a personable style and likes to build relationships with clients to really understand them.  She is passionate about people and helping businesses to maximise talent within their own organisation to drive exponential growth.  She acts as a Coach to embed improved capability and consistent usage of tools to drive repeatable business success.

What you can expect when working with Angela:

• Authenticity: gaining honest opinions and reflections
• Energy & Positivity: walking away from our sessions bursting with though provoking insights
• Wellbeing: being a trusted confidant to support your personal wellbeing
• Impact: driving accountability in your business to deliver tangible and sustainable results

Worked on complex projects defending OFT and MMC enquiries, facilitated exit strategies and company sales, as well as acquisitions, mergers and MBO’s the largest being £107m.

An experienced CEO for the 21 years of an award-winning group of companies specialising delivering high growth and scale up advice working as a NED for 20 SME’s. Caroline has a breadth of experience in business recovery, in which she developed large programmes for change management and oversaw large scale redundancy projects. Caroline has supported over seven hundred companies in their life cycle from growth to exit, implementing strategies through each phase.

The services included senior executive coaching and development, ILM leadership training, interim placements and bid writing for grants and introduction to finance to enable business expansion. Caroline is an ILM qualified coach successfully implementing programmes of change in major corporates and SMEs. 

Sector Experience include Marine, specifically in passenger and freight shipping as well as leisure, Manufacturing including injection moulding and Precision Engineering, Food Production, Retail, Professional Services, various SaaS products and MedTech companies.

Caroline has also had over 15 years of experience in chairing complex boards with public sector, third sector and businesses as members, each holding a different stance on economic wellbeing and prosperity within the Solent and East Hampshire area. Caroline chaired one of the largest branches of the Federation of Small Businesses in which she would communicate with MP’s, public officials and lobby to ensure positive change for the business community.

Caroline lives on the South Coast and her downtime is spent walking her two dogs around the coastal nature reserves and renovating a house she quaintly named “the money pit.”
 

Caroline has nearly 20 years’ experience in innovation consultancy, management and business support roles mainly focused on helping companies to access funding and achieve growth. Her specialist areas include funding and finance, Horizon grants, intellectual property, investment readiness and collaborative partnerships. She has personally collaborated with hundreds of clients and businesses during her career, obtaining over £100 million of funding, finance and investment. She also has extensive international business experience and contacts throughout France and across Europe.

Caroline has led client engagements across many sectors, with strong experience in fields such as Medtech, healthcare, biotech, industrial biotechnology, clean tech, renewable energies and bio-based industries. 

With a personable style, Caroline loves speaking with people and building relationships both at Board level and across the teams of businesses she collaborates with. Her approach to supporting Senior Leadership teams is as a critical friend to the business.

Caroline previously spent 16 years living and working in France where she completed her PhD in Biology and Biochemistry, and then successfully worked her way up the management consultancy ladder. Caroline loves spending time with family and friends, and in her spare time is often found on walks in the countryside with her husband and kids, usually ending up in a beer garden somewhere. She is regularly amused by friendly enquiries as to whether she has family connections to a certain famous French footballer…

His career includes marketing and sales roles with multi-nationals 3M Healthcare, Johnson & Johnson and De La Rue leading to senior European positions in Digital and Compaq. In the latter cases driving the pivot from technology to service-based propositions which involved leading on major change programmes. In 2000 Charles became director of techUK, the industry body for the UK’s ICT sector, delivering services to 850 member companies, mostly SME’s.

Charles’ business coaching credentials are derived from his time at techUK through working with a variety of businesses, professional advisors, and investors.  During this period, he led several business growth initiatives that provided him with a unique insight into the performance drivers and KPIs of successful tech SMEs as well as deep understanding of common scaling challenges.  In parallel he has been an advisor to New Zealand Trade & Enterprise since 2005 supporting over 30 globally ambitious Kiwi companies with UK and European market entry.  

With go-to-market strategy and internationalisation as areas of expertise Charles applies business design thinking to the core management priorities in helping clients to create fit-for-purpose business models for rapid growth.  

Charles is well-networked and has had spells working in the US, Switzerland, and South Africa. His style is collaborative and collegiate yet challenging when needed.

Charles is an active NED of an IoT software development company targeting international defence and health sectors; itself starting the scale-up journey.  He also has interests in MedTech as well as a niche food delivery platform founded by his entrepreneurial daughters.  Charles is a keen sports follower and, in his heyday, captained amateur cricket and football teams.

He has held interim Marketing Director roles with several businesses, in FinTech, Construction and Cold Chain sectors and has extensive experience of working with Food Brands, Financial Services providers and technology businesses, investing in one tech venture which AIM-listed.

Before joining the Enterprise Europe Network business support ecosystem in 2018, Chris was Head of Marketing & New Business for a software development business which specialised in Red Hat (now IBM) middleware technologies.

A Scaleup Director since August 2019, Chris brings a wealth of practical experience to the commercialisation challenges facing scaling businesses, with demonstrable expert knowledge of strategic marketing, direct and indirect sales channels, digital transformation orchestration, IP protection, brand building and the identification of appropriate tactical initiatives designed to deliver ROI. His empirical learning has been supported by development work at Cranfield Business School and via membership of the IDM (Institute of Digital & Direct Marketing).

Having spent 4 years achieving HCIMA professional management qualifications in the hospitality industry, Chris blames an early 80’s stint in the offices of Ogilvy & Mather Advertising Agency with Sodexho, for triggering the career change into creative industries and remains continuously fascinated by the power of branding…done well.

When not supporting innovation-led businesses at work, Chris is a keen golfer and has twice served on the Management Committee of Ely City Golf Club where he has been a member for 28 years. As the father of three talented daughters all working in the creative industries in London, he keeps up to date with the latest ManTech platforms and moans hypocritically about the amount of screen time his family clock up.
 

His ethos and approach to scaleup is that it is best characterised as a team activity, the most multidisciplinary initiative any company can undertake.

He started his career as part of the Boots Company management development programme. Chris joined the company in 1975, shaping his interest in innovation, development and scale-up.

Chris has managed scaleup projects from “bench to board” level, for blue-chip companies such as Boots, Cadbury, Beecham, Callard & Bowser Group and Leaf Group. He has managed truly transformational growth projects, including taking Smith Kendon to become Callard and Bowser Group (from 100 to 2000 people).

He is chairman of BIC Innovation, who have been helping companies to “scaleup” for over 15 years, turning ideas into something tangible that is of real commercial value. He is an MRSB, MILM, and gained most of his management training through corporate programmes, additionally trained in achieving world-class manufacturing standards.

As a University Lecturer in Innovation, Chris has a deep understanding of the skills and people challenges that being a scaleup business brings.

Even for relaxation, Chris is interested in how things work - so restores motorcycles and cars in his spare time. He is a keen biker and has been known to indulge in a track day burn or two!

He also follows rugby and cricket and helps to look after the family menagerie of 3 horses and 2 dogs.

Having held positions including Head of Operations, Head of UK Sales, Head of Risk, Operations Director and Director of Business Development, Chris brings his wealth of knowledge in building successful Corporate Divisions, SLTs and SMEs to complement our Scaleup Director Team.

Chris initially spent over 15 years in Corporate Asset Finance, leading the key Joint Ventures Sales Division within the Bank of Scotland, working alongside, and growing partnerships with Scania, Heidelberg, JCB and Barclays. Moving to risk to become an Underwriter, he financed proposals for the likes of Porsche and Ferrari Maranello, progressing to Manager of Risk within three years, holding a personal £1m and joint £10m mandate. Chris then accepted the challenge of building two businesses within ICT; a c£1.2m Turnover SaaS company which he helped grow to over £3.5m and a full Managed Serviced IT business which also grew from c£2m to over £5m.

Moving to BT Business to build an Enterprise Division, he introduced and lead new technical business development teams, processes, procedures, and managed key partnerships to grow the division from zero base to c£40m Revenue and 34% GM, then led BT/EE’s largest outsource partner to drive them to achieve their ambitious growth. Heading up their North West Business Centre, under Chris’ leadership they grew from 85 to c300 staff, as he introduced a new management structure, implementing 10 Sales and Service Managers, 5 Operation Managers and 200 Account Managers. Turnover and profitability increased threefold.

Joining Inventya as Director of Business Development, and subsequently as Scaleup Director for Innovate UK, he believes strongly in growing successful partnerships, delivering the right values in driving the right culture across all teams, and supplementing these with a clear strategy, direction, detail and support. Chris is also currently Deputy Lead on the Scaleup Programme.

Outside of work, Chris spends his time with his two wonderful children, Olivia and Daniel, and family, becoming quite the den builder along the way.
 

Accustomed to strategic senior leadership roles in fast-moving, environments; including Sales Director and Divisional Sales Director roles for corporate organisations including Konica Minolta, UK Mail Digital (DHL) and Apogee (an HP Company) Craig has a consistent track record of strategizing and structuring sales organisations to deliver exponential growth and revenues of up to £35m.

In his consultancy work he has supported progressive start-ups, SMEs and corporate clients to develop and scale profitable B2B sales functions in an array of sectors.

Specialisms & Knowledge Base:

• Strategy - ‘GTM' strategies to achieve scale, restructuring and integrating sales teams, products and processes across multiple businesses and markets.
• Customer Centric – innovating unique selling propositions based on lived experience - from ‘volume & velocity’ Inside Sales to complex 'enterprise' solutions and C-level engagement. From new customer acquisition to fully managed service delivery and retention programming.
• Commercial – P&L focussed, end-to-end cost and revenue management.
• People Oriented – Focussed, collaborative and inclusive personal style, passionate about developing winning cultures, training and developing talent.
• Experienced in an array of sectors including IT, SaaS, Web3, Capital Equipment, Digital Comms, Print/Packaging and Professional Services.

In his spare time Craig loves being with his family and friends, playing the guitar and as an avid gym goer has a keen interest in fitness. He enjoys the outdoors from walking the dog to cycling, climbing, and hiking.

Deborah has over 20 years experience of business build, innovation, and internationalisation. Starting initially in the manufacturing sector developing innovative products for law enforcement she continued to lead on innovation and strategy, transitioning into the development of disruptive innovative digital technologies, business intelligence consultancy, cyber and AI technologies focused on threat intelligence.

Throughout this time, she supported and led diverse (commercial and academic) teams focused on innovation ensuring success in a range of UK and international funding bids, including Innovate UK. Consequently, she has been successful in securing several awards both professionally and personally for innovation, business, and international trade.

She has become known for her international trade experience and is an appointed Export Champion for the Department of Trade and Business, with significant connections in the UK and internationally, many at government level.

In 2022 Deborah was made a Visiting Professor of Aston University and in addition holds an Honorary Doctorate from Birmingham City University. In 2008 she was presented with the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for Entrepreneurship.

From 2021 – 2023 she was President of the Greater Birmingham Chamber, only the third woman President since 1813. Her themes for her Presidency being international trade and innovation. She is also a board member of the Greater Birmingham Global Chamber of Commerce and a Business Commissioner for the Business Commission West Midlands.

In addition, she is a Board Member of the West Midlands Innovation Board, Advisory Board Member of the United Nations Global Compact and Advisory Board Member of the All-Parliamentary Party Working Group on Women and Enterprise.

Deborah’s key strengths are within the identification of innovation, challenges to innovation, building collaborations, routes to market, internationalisation strategies, threat and business intelligence, and CSR.

Apart from her Scale Up role, Deborah’s interests include the theatre, music, football and extreme trekking and has also been known to do the odd Stand-Up Comedy routine.

His work has been with life science companies (therapeutics, medical device, diagnostics, AI and machine learning), and more recently he has worked with green technology business. Work with established business has included new product development and launch, marketing, senior client service roles, managing insights to produce strategic and tactical business plans and driving multi-stakeholder projects. 

He has worked on deal flow and due diligence for funds. Business development has included business planning that reflects the needs and aspirations of the company, rational platform planning (where technology may be used for multiple uses), obtaining investment from VC’s and angels, grant applications, route to market and introducing strategic partners.  This, combined with his experience in established business, gives him an ability to plan for and drive growth.

Dominic has built a portfolio of 17 angel and 45 early-stage post-IPO investments, which was based on due diligence with several hundred companies.  With several of the investee companies he has a close working relationship, facilitating additional investment and partnerships. He has developed a strong network across commercial and other areas in life science and green technology. 

His approach is very collaborative, putting emphasis on understanding all key aspects of a company, including its product or service, customers, team, ethos and growth plans.  He aims to work closely and interactively with the team, to help ensure the output reflects the need of the business. 

Dominic qualifications include a MA in Marketing, Chartered Institute of Marketing, Physiology and Microbiology DipHE and several vocational certificates.    

Dominic works pro-bono as a company mentor for accelerators.  He has also worked pro-bono for several charities, coordinating marketing plan reviews and service re-design. 

Elizabeth is a highly enthusiastic and energetic individual who enjoys the challenge of strategically assisting clients to grow and develop. She has a strong passion for working with people to enable them to become high performers that deliver business results. 

Having a keen interest in psychology and how conversational change can motivate and encourage people to grow, has led Elizabeth to explore and search for effective tools and frameworks to increase awareness, understanding and facilitate change. This passion has led her to become an NLP Trainer qualified in Belbin and MBTI psychometrics. 

She has designed and delivered a wide variety of bespoke consultancy and behavioural based interventions within a range of industries and feels at home working with organisations who want to:

• Move through organizational transition or change
• Achieve benefit realisation of culture change projects 
• Benefit from developing high performing and interdependent teams
• Improve the utilisation of their performance management processes
• Improve working in an alliance environment 
• Understand and improve collaborative working 
• Facilitate individual, group and organisational alignment

To relax, Elizabeth likes to stretch more than her mind through yoga and enjoys singing in a local choir. She enjoys walking and is always up for a paddle in the sea. 

Through her knowledge of sales and marketing, she has not only supported founders to launch, scale and grow new innovations, but also guided them to secure equity funding from Angels, funds, VC’s, and crowdfunding platforms. 

Emma’s core skill is helping a company identify, and then assist them with unlocking what is needed to increase growth.  From this point, so many need to access additional funding to help them reach their goals, so she helps create the strategy, prepare them for funding using a blended funding approach, then assists them in creating lasting partnerships for growth. As an ex-business owner, she is acutely aware of, and understands the ups and downs of the business journey and is an empathetic advocate of the founders she has supported, based on real life experience.   

Her ability to connect individuals has led to many long-term partnerships built up over the years. Emma has spoken at many events on the funding landscape and what investors are looking for, she does this by listening to what investors are telling her and then she can impart this knowledge onto founders that are looking to raise capital to expedite their growth.  She has reviewed 1000’s of pitch decks and knows what a ‘good’ opportunity looks like. This insight has made her not only a great all-round mentor but also the potential key to unlocking your next fund raise.

Having joined the IUK Scaleup Programme in 2020, her knowledge of the government’s landscape of support, both financial and actual, has grown tenfold. This has led to several of her clients unlocking hard to find funding that is not always visible to the general viewer.

With a PhD in Foreign Policy and a background in globalisation and global political economy, Giulia is a specialist in internationalisation and business development across several sectors and operates with SMEs and corporates at the global level, providing local and international development consultancy for their business growth. She supports companies developing their internationalisation strategy, narrowing down the steps needed for their international expansion and helping them to find the right funds, brokerage opportunities and connections to thrive at the global level thanks to her broad international network.

Her activities and expertise span from her work for the Italian Trade Agency in Mexico and the UK to her consultancy for international projects, collaborating with Universities, public and private institutions. Currently, she is the Head of the North West office and Project Manager for the Italian Chamber of Commerce and Industry for the UK, supporting companies in their internationalisation journey, brokering and developing partnerships between Italy and the UK 

Giulia has extensive knowledge and experience in gender, trade and inclusion. She is a driving force in the Women in Innovation community and part of Innovate UK Business Growth Community of Practice (CoP) Internationalisation and Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI). The EDI CoP has the task to develop and initiate the deployment of the Equality, Diversity and Inclusivity Strategy for Innovate UK Business Growth.  She is also an active member of the Enterprise Europe Network (EEN)’s Women in Entrepreneurship and the Agri-tech Sector Group. EEN is the world’s largest support network created by the European commission and implemented by the European Innovation Council, which includes 65+countries and helps SMEs to innovate and grow on an international scale.