us.
David Page
David Page is the CEO & Founder of business mix, a global innovation and collaboration network and consultancy, that is supporting corporates to innovate and helping start-up and scaling organisations to effectively grow operationally.
business mix is based in London and Singapore and has clients in Financial Services, Engineering, Sports Tech and New IT Platforms. David has worked at and with large corporates for 25 years, with the last 14 years in leadership and executive positions at Barclays, Capita and Visa Europe in COO and transformational roles.
His key areas of experience are:
- Delivering Successful Change
Successful delivery of change programmes, ranging from major outsourcing programmes, complex systems integrations and at Visa delivering three new service lines (wallet, mobile and loyalty), managing teams of 200+ and budgets of 100m +. He excels at quickly building multi-disciplinary teams and creating results through exceptional collaboration and clarity of outcome. - Operational
COO in a range of environments including Barclays Home Finance, Capita Financial Group and Visa Europe’s Digital Business Unit. - Co-Founding and Operationally establishing Visa Europe Collab
Creating the strategy for and establishing a stand-alone innovation hub based in three sites across Europe and head quartered in Shoreditch, London.
Vicky Young
Vicky Young is the COO of business mix and an accomplished Change and Project Management consultant. With over 15 years’ experience, she has delivered complex, business-critical technology, business and regulatory based change management solutions to clients on a global scale.
She has built a successful career helping some of the world’s leading financial services and insurance organisations including Visa Europe, M&G Investments, Deutsche Bank and Capita Life & Pensions.
Vicky has delivered significant cost and performance improvements for clients, and is passionate about delivering hands-on leadership, mentoring, coaching and development whilst instilling a culture of ownership and accountability.
Her key areas of experience are:
- Programme Management
Successful planning and coordination of Visa Europe’s online checkout programme (budget €101m over 3 years) for multiple European merchants and banks with a focus on driving Visa Europe’s Beta launch into the UK and Spanish markets. - Operational execution
Leading Corporate Change Portfolios’ (overall budget €25m) including various change initiatives across multiple divisions including Legal, Finance, Risk and HR.
Gemma Ryall
- Coaching
- Talent Development
- Organisation Design and Development
- Performance Management
- Leadership Development
- Change Management
- Talent Acquisition Strategy
- Workshop Design & Delivery
Jo Christie-Smith
An enthusiastic and energetic leader, Jo is adept at entering complex, and uncertain, environments and bringing structure, and focus, to both business-as-usual and transformational change.
Jo has over 20 years’ experience of delivering change and running teams across financial services and engineering to the voluntary sector. Despite her FTSE 100 / Blue Chip organisation pedigree, Jo has worked as a consultant, and interim manager, in a wide variety of firms from the start-up of less than 5 full time staff, to the to the truly global.
She is skilful in leading multi-disciplinary teams, has often been brought in to troubleshoot, or reinvigorate, change activity and Jo is a fun team player; able to roll up her sleeves and pitch in.
More recently, Jo has been helping growing organisations develop and implement operating models that meet their legal and regulatory requirements, whilst being flexible enough not to overwhelm a rapidly maturing organisation.
Jo provides reassurance around good practice, produce workable governance & policies and set up, and coach, effective working practices and feedback loops, ensuring everyone in the team knows what is going on.
Mark Munson
Mark brings over 35 years of consultancy, payments, and international business development experience gained in a variety of senior roles to the team at business mix, with a demonstrable passion for innovation and product design.
Through permanent and interim assignments, Mark has worked for many global multi-nationals including Cap Gemini, Virgin Media, Sky and Visa Europe.
Passionate about innovation, he is experienced in developing and deploying commercial product strategies around the globe. Mark has lived and worked in Asia, the Middle East, North America and Europe.
Most recently, Mark has been consulting for companies specialising in Internet of Things, mobile solutions, wearables, connected car and blockchain technologies, primarily in the payment, mobility & personal identity sector.
Helen Abrams
Helen Abrams is a creative, energetic and versatile events all-rounder with over 10 years’ experience working in-house, venue-side, and as a freelance consultant where she has executed a range of B2B and B2C events.
With a focus on sustainability, provenance, and support for local start-ups, Helen works with a hand-picked collection of reliable and innovative suppliers.
Helen provides clients with open and honest communication, transparency, meticulous organisational skills, extensive events knowledge and a professionalism that will leave you wanting more.
Helen is extremely client centric, with a warm and engaging approach to client servicing, is pro-active, adaptable and very hands-on.
Thriving on providing our clients with a creative, solution-focussed experience that is fun, impactful and unique, her warmth, adaptability, drive and work ethic has seen her gain considerable international events experience across several industries within the UK, Europe, Tel Aviv, Indonesia and Australia.
Jon Downing
Jon is an experienced innovation, service and technology leader, with over 25 years’ experience successfully delivering business & technology services to global financial companies – including Visa, JP Morgan, HP Enterprise Services & American Express, where Jon rose to become the Vice President of Technologies Operations for the Global Travel division and designed and implemented a new technology support organisation for Amex’s European travel business.
Previously, Jon was a key member of Visa Europe’s Innovation Hub and was responsible for identifying, and testing, the most exciting and revolutionary ideas in payments and developing them into a commercial reality.
Jon setup and led the Blockchain practice at Visa Europe Collab and was responsible for leading multiple, high-profile, proof of concept initiatives with key start-up companies including BTL; testing ideas for new products and services across the whole payments eco-system, with specific focus and thought leadership in the blockchain and crypto-currency domain.
Jon now provides Advisory and Consulting Services to ambitious entrepreneurs, is currently on the Advisory Board of leading Enterprise Blockchain company, BTL and is a recognised Associate with business mix.
Howard Elsey
Howard Elsey is an accomplished Associate with business mix bringing data protection expertise to large corporates and start-ups alike.
With professional privacy qualifications certified by IAPP (Industry Association of Privacy Professionals), Howard has worked for small, scaling and corporate organisations including FTP Software, Paysafe and Visa Europe.
His specialist knowledge areas include GDPR, PSD2, the wider innovation ecosystem, payments, Fintech and distributed ledger technology. He has brought many new technologies to market – including ISDN, PCMICIA, wireless networking, IPV6, online, mobile and alternative payments – and brings business wide experience to help organisations understand the practical application of innovation strategies.
From a sales, marketing and product management background in technology, he has developed international distribution channels, created and developed brands, added valuable leadership in business operations management, IT service operations and development to running a PCI compliance programme.
As a founding member of Visa Europe’s innovation laboratory, Howard supported organisations operationalise their own innovation programmes. Howard appreciates the intricacies of start-up ecosystem and has worked closely with multiple incubators and accelerators.
Howard’s broad knowledge of emerging technology is coupled with practical, operational experience in running various areas of a business, from sales and marketing through to the back of IT operations, development and customer service.
Tim Harrison
Tim is a marketing and communications expert with over 20 years of experience in journalism, public relations, integrated marketing and strategic business development.
He is an award-winning communications and innovation consultant, widely recognised for his expertise across both corporate and early-stage environments and has held senior roles within leading FTSE100, NASDAQ and NIKKEI companies.
As an innovation consultant and coach, with companies of all sizes – from start-up’s to leading global brands, Tim offers strategic marketing and communications advice as highly respected Associate with business mix. A creative thinker and committed brand storyteller, he has expertise in developing thought leadership and innovation narratives that drive awareness and reputation.
He is particularly skilled at demystifying industry jargon, and translating capability, into compelling messaging that will help build engagement. He is a member of the Public Relations & Communications Association and the International Association of Business Communicators and is a CIPR Accredited PR practitioner.
His key areas of experience are:
- Proposition development
- Communications strategy
Traditional media to social and influencer relations. - Narrative development and brand storytelling
- Content creation
Sophie Ficek
Sophie Ficek is a leading HR, Talent Management and Change expert with over 15 years professional experience across multiple industries.
With HR certifications and a foundation in change management supported by Prince2, Sophie has built a successful career helping some of the world’s leading financial services, media and healthcare organisations, including Visa Europe and the NHS.
Sophie’s strengths lie in her ability to work collaboratively with both individuals, and teams, to help foster practical strategies and solutions for large corporates and start-ups alike.
Working closely with leadership teams in evolving strategic initiatives, organisational design, HR policy development and, where relevant, implementing new processes and toolsets, are a particular interest.
Sophie has successfully implemented both strategic, and tactical change initiatives, including; Flagship Well-Being (an employee engagement programme linked to Olympic sponsorship), HRIS (Workday), as well as multi-million Euro technical change programs and perfectly balances a personable style with a calm and logical approach.
Steve Mander
Steve Mander is the business mix Business Manager, with over 40 years-experience working with large financial services organisations. For the last 25 years, Steve has worked in senior business management roles, specialising in the design, and implementation, of core business governance and control processes.
As a proven governance and control specialist, with the ability to engage at all levels across a business, Steve has the experience, and knowledge, to drive out efficient, and effective, solutions to meet a wide range of business needs.
Steve has successfully applied these skills across a wide range of business functions including technology, business and IT Change Management, finance and portfolio investment management.
His key areas of experience are:
- Change Governance
Designing and execution of programme governance and controls. - Business Planning
Understanding business strategy, vision and goals, and development of clear business plans. - Investment Portfolio Management
Designing and implementation of processes and controls to ensure effective management of business investment portfolios.
Fulvio Bignone
Fulvio has over 20 years-experience as a consultant and adviser to international consumer-facing groups, pan-European retailers, ticketing service providers and leading payment system operators.
An enthusiastic leader, Fulvio always provides simplification and business level focus within change and governance. His excellent communication skills and stakeholder management at all levels, compliment his ability to provide structure, control and process to project and programme initiation and delivery.
Over the course of his career, he has developed a reputation for identifying needs and delivering change to complex mass-market and security-sensitive consumer-centric solutions.
In recent years Fulvio has led several flagship multi-million programmes for Axa, HP, TFL/London Underground and BAA Retail including establishment of secure payment systems for Heathrow, retailers including John Lewis and Selfridges, as well as financial institutions such as VISA Europe.
He has recently collaborated with fin-tech start-ups, one being 10x Technologies partnering with Virgin Money to build their Digital Bank.
Fulvio also is also an expert in cyber security including the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards (PCI/DSS).
Rachel Spry
An Operations Manager and Associate at business mix with 20 years track record in change and operational management, driving workable business solutions from strategic planning, inception to handover, whilst optimising the value to the organisation.
From Barclays, Rachel has experience in designing, launching and then steadily growing operations to a national scale, integrating multiple changes into complex supply chains whilst maintaining stability and leading a variety of widespread international virtual teams.
From repeat contracting with Visa, Barclaycard and Coventry Building Society, Rachel has proven her skill in rapidly becoming part of new teams at all levels and professionally delivering on business objectives.
As a change manager, partner in a family property business and mother to 5 young adults she is energetic, independent, with good interpersonal skills and a strong focus on achieving results through virtual teams.
Her key skills are:
- Commerciality
Understanding and aligning activity to cost, income, value and risk drivers. Strong track record of aligning operational / change functions to business strategy, from top to bottom and achieving optimum solutions and delivery approaches. - Stakeholder Management
Relationship building and communication to ensure the optimum outcome for all. As a common theme, Rachel’s career has required a highly developed ability in building and maintaining relationships with internal and external suppliers, peers, leadership and customers, along with an ability to communicate complex change to stakeholders in a balanced and meaningful way that is easily understood and that leads directly to informed business decisions and buy-in from stakeholders. - Practice and Team LeadershipDevelopment and/or creation of human resources and processes to increase organisational competency and capability. Rachel has created and then led several change management practices, resource pools and teams to successfully deliver. The largest had 150 members, comprising consultants, contractors and permanent colleagues, across multiple sites; embedding appropriate cultural and communications approaches has been a key success factor.
- Programme, Portfolio and Project Management
Definition of end to end solutions and delivery plans to optimise business benefit. Rachel has held several change leadership positions successfully directing and delivering change, and has experience in many types of change including:
• Mergers and acquisitions – operations and IT integration of two financial services companies and due diligence phase for the acquisition of a credit card operation in Australia
• Operations and IT change portfolios – including offshoring and systems development (largest £30m investment budget and benefits of £350m)
• Centralisation of legal documentation processing (creating one national centre with 400 staff)
• Regulatory – delivering an FSA mortgage regulation compliant end to end mortgage process for Barclays, including the Woolwich (across 10 mortgage sales channels and 28000 referrers, sellers and supervisors)
• Outsourcing of customer services activity (contract of £120m over 5 yrs.)
• Property – redesign of outlets, development of supporting technologies and rollout to 70 outlets - Rachel’s strong track record of delivery and breadth of experience has enabled her to provide Quality Assurance and “crisis management” services for other business critical change programmes.
Suki Dhanjal
Suki Dhanjal is a highly technical, adept and proficient Transformation and Programme Manager, with over 20 years’ experience in blue chip organisations in the Finance, Manufacturing, Logistics and Software industries.
Suki has delivered significant ROI, both financial and in terms of process driven efficiencies, in the challenging, fast paced environments of global clients including Visa, Vodafone & Microsoft.
A strong leader, with exceptional technical skills, Suki brings teams together to maintain focus on delivery, whilst balancing the strategic management and direction of change.
His key areas of experience include:
- Programme and transformation management
- Significant change of company processes and procedures, including implementation of a tier 1 ERP system
- Programme Management, implementation of a >€20M programme (over 5 years) which included advanced, optimized neural-network based credit scoring system.
- Operational excellence
- Introduction of process efficiencies to deliver significant benefits to mature organisations based on Kaizen principles
- Suki also provides strategic and secretarial support to various charities.
Rob Beardmore
Rob is the business lead for Sustainable Technology and the Operations Manager for business mix.
As the lead for Sustainable Technology, Rob’s role involves developing the strategy and internal sustainability policy for business mix.
He supports client work through research and by using collaboration platforms.
Rob also represents business mix at key events including sustainable innovation conferences as well as seminars, looking at the recent advances in innovative thinking and technology.
In his operational management role, Rob owns the organisation of events including logistics and content, researching and implementing software tools, sourcing of equipment as well as providing day to day support to the team.
With a background in environmental science, Rob is equipped to tackle complex business problems through study and dealing with multi-faceted issues, including global climate change. He is experienced in working as part of multi-disciplined teams, collaborating on all issues including scientific, economic and social aspects.
In 2018 Rob joined an independent academic research trip to Senegal collaborating with local stakeholders to test a new economic model and educational tools.
Rob has previously enjoyed volunteering as an IT tutor for Age UK where, putting his IT skills into practice.
Rebecca Floyd
Rebecca Floyd is the Managing Director for business mix (APAC) responsible for the newly formed Singapore office and establishing that as a platform to access the open innovation community across South East Asia.
She has a wide experience within open innovation, previously responsible for the external innovation partnerships at Visa Europe Collab and the corporate partner engagement for the MassChallenge accelerator in London.
She has multiple relationships across all elements of the innovation ecosystem having established partnerships in Shoreditch London, Berlin, Tel Aviv and Singapore.
Rebecca has a unique perspective, having set up partnerships on behalf of both a large corporate with accelerators, academia, government and start-ups, and then working for the world’s largest accelerator to manage their corporate partner programme.
Rebecca has a strong background in change management and is also a fully qualified yoga instructor. She is based out of Singapore.
Wendy Martin
Wendy Martin is an experienced business leader having held executive roles in marketing, sales and product innovation throughout her 28 year career at Visa.
During her career at Visa Wendy:
- Led the Visa Business School, the first profit centre within Visa EMEA. Responsible for designing, developing and delivering education to banks across Europe, Middle East and Africa in all aspects of bank card management. Their flagship event was held in Cambridge University for 19 consecutive years and attended by over 2,800 executives globally.
- Established Visa Europe’s sales management capability, directing the implementation of the it’s first sales methodology across it’s European offices to circa 200 account managers and led the delivery of Visa’s first CRM system. All of which transformed the way Visa Europe sized it’s sales pipeline and tracked it’s forecast and performance against its corporate scorecard.
- Founded Visa Europe’s specialist sales team responsible for bringing Visa’s Future of Payment propositions to market. This specialist sales capability supported the European sales teams to consult on and sell in Visa’s next generation services including mobile, wallet and loyalty services.
- Directed Visa’s digital wallet proposition, V.me by Visa, with accountability for overseeing the commercial strategy, technical development and delivery and go to market strategy.
Wendy left Visa in 2017 and became a founding director of For Good Causes, a startup innovating in the loyalty sector to drive emotional engagement with consumers by empowering them to donate loyalty points, airmiles and cashback to a charity of their choice. Wendy served as a director and Chief Marketing Officer for 2.5 years.
Wendy established her own consultancy in 2020 and is now working with a number of startups across a variety of sectors to help them craft their marketing messaging and create effective content marketing strategies and plans.
Wendy is also a non-executive director of myNexus, a startup working to transform the investment process by “smart-matching” entrepreneurs and investors to accelerate investment in early-stage businesses.
James Ryall
- Establishing the Operations Function
- Team Building, Leadership, & Support
- Excellent Client Service & Satisfaction
- Long-lasting Relationship Management
- Setting-up Open Banking Integration
- Incorporating Clients to New Facility
- Strategic Planning & Implementation
- Process / Performance Improvement
Dr Neil Stewart
Insightful, creative, commercial and pragmatic, Neil brings over 30 years business experience and perspective developed in a career spanning research and global industries, both in the UK and abroad.
He is an accredited and experienced coach and facilitator who is passionate about the power of effective teams, flow thinking, accountable leadership, and coaching and mentoring to deliver true potential and personal development.
Experience with Hewlett Packard’s Mobile Telecoms division in France, and an 18-year career at Visa as a payments risk and fraud specialist, enabled him to be integrally involved in the delivery of numerous complex, global, business-critical technology and client-facing solutions. These include the European rollout of EMV chip & PIN, 3D-Secure for e-commerce, and end-to-end lifecycle development, delivery and management of Visa Europe’s real time risk scoring service.
Neil’s strategic and operational experience across multiple disciplines, coupled with responsibility for large development budgets, provides his clients with a strong commercial awareness and keen sense for innovative problem solving to deliver cost and performance improvements.
Neil’s broad experience, natural affinity with people and insightful approach enables him to work collaboratively with individuals and teams at all levels in a company. This underscores his track record in creating successful outcomes for both businesses and individuals. Truly effective teams thinking freely are a powerful differentiator, capable of potent and creative solutions that drive performance and competitive advantage. Born from first-hand experience, Neil’s belief in the value of this untapped potential and his enthusiasm to work together to release it are at the heart of his client interactions.
Key Strengths:
- Coaching
- Performance & Leadership Development
- Creative Problem Solving
- Commercial Awareness
- Facilitation
- Stakeholder Management
Disrupt your normal.
“The future belongs to those who believe.”
