In addition to the daily support provided by the Alacrity Foundation Management team, our embedded and guest mentors give our programme unique expertise and detailed specialist knowledge.
Technical Mentor
Nathan spends a day each week sharing his software development expertise with the teams. He is a strong advocate and expert instructor for web, mobile, and next-telecommunications app development.
Technical Mentor
Dave spends a day each week sharing his product management and Agile software development experience with the teams, helping them adopt best practice and maximise development effort.
Design Mentor
Paul works for our follow on early-stage accelerator; the Wesley Clover Innovation Centre (WCIC.tech) as Marketing and Design Manager and assists in the marketing literature and language used to ensure the focus is efficient for each team. Paul will design and build websites, branding and logos as well as presentations and business plans.
User Experience Mentor
Darren has a wide technical background gained over a 10 year period in the industry. Upon graduating from UWE in Bristol with a first class in Digital Media BSc he went on to graduate from the Alacrity Programme before joining Wesley Clover.
Technical Mentor
Michael has worked in the technology industry for over 20 years and brings a wealth of experience and talent across a broad range of disciplines. He co-founded Ubiquity Software Corporation and as CTO he influenced the technological direction which created one of the world’s first and most successful SIP Application Servers.
Lecturer / Accountant / Auditor
Amrit practiced as an accountant and auditor for over twenty-five years before entering academia in 2004. His specialist area has been SMEs and has overseen several businesses from initial startup to successful exit.
He has been teaching at Cardiff Business School (and internationally) for the last twelve years, teaching a range of audiences from Foundation level students through to Executive MBA students.
Founder TXO Systems
Alan is the Founder and Chairman of TXO Systems. He founded the company in 2005 and has since led it to phenomenal growth, with operations on five continents.
Alan’s expertise is invaluable in guiding our teams with commercial and product decisions, building partnerships and driving sales.
Co-Founder Tiny Rebel
Co-founder and MD of Newport start-up brewery Tiny Rebel. Brad inspires with his story of starting out in a garage homebrewing on weekends to creating and maintaining an international brand.
Giving teams a unique perspective on team culture, branding, scaling and exporting internationally.
Business Mentor
Ben is a creative thinker with an analytical focus. He’s fascinated by FinTech and a believer in the potential of innovation when it moves beyond well-intentioned statements.
With over a decade of experience within insurance, and having worked within start-ups, scaling companies & large incumbents, he’s experience is built around Operational Management, Business Development, Product Development and Project Management.
Business & Technical Strategy
As founder, investor, and adviser, Dai has worked with hundreds of tech startups across the world. This has been at all phases, from initial conception and seed funding, through to international scale up.
At his core, though Dai still a techy, with over 20 years’ experience of innovation at the leading edge of online media, advanced advertising and various emerging technologies.
Vice President for the Telecommunications Industry
David is the Vice President for the Telecommunications Industry at HPE and also the Founder of Odyssey – helping people better understand the human experience both personally and in a business context. David helps the teams understand the realities of business and how to survive and succeed in the rapidly changing world of digital transformation.
Founder of Wolfberry Cyber
Damon Rands is an experienced cyber security expert, with over 30 years in the Information technology industry. Having worked in development, support and installation he has helped companies across the United Kingdom build secure systems and implement best practices to protect their intellectual property and private information.
Business Mentor
Edward has worked in a variety of technology businesses for 40 years. He is an innovative, entrepreneurial hands-on business leader with track record of establishing new technology and securing large complex contracts. “There is nearly always a way forward for your business and your Customer. The challenge is to find it and convince all the stakeholders”
Marketing and Branding Mentor
Ella is a senior marketer, with a broad level of experience across brand, insight, content and digital. Most recently working in several senior roles within GoCompare. Ella has the ability to think strategically and deliver operationally. Ella offers our teams insight and expertise around branding and digital acquisition strategies.
Clockers | Software Development Outsourcing Agency
Elliot is a serial tech entrepreneur, his inspirational story is a great example of start-up success, securing early investment, resilience and entrepreneurial ideation.
Co-Founder and Managing Director
Felix Winstone is the Co-Founder and Managing Director at Talkative, an Alacrity start-up that connects website visitors with sales teams. Talkative’s novel platform brings voice, video, chat and cobrowsing into customer facing websites to increase revenues and improve customer service. Felix manages sales, marketing and finance at Talkative.
Product, Marketing & Commercial Mentor
Gareth has over 20 years’ experience at well-known brands in Technology . Whether Hardware, Software or Services, common themes have been dealing with constant and disruptive change, the need for collaborative partnerships and the mission to successfully align customer value, technology and business strategy in the connected world. Freelance Director & Ex-Global Head of Product for BlackBerry.
Commercialisation, Sales, Marketing & SaaS Metrics.
Over 18 years experience leading sales, success and marketing teams in the Technology Start-Up, SaaS and Finance industries.
Experience of large scale implementation of sales and success strategies.
VC relationship and Capital Raising: Successfully raised significant capital in 3 seed rounds and Series A rounds.
Founder of Alytix Marketing
User Experience Consultant, Author, Speaker
Jesmond has more than 20 years experience as a design leader and UX specialist. She is a freelance user experience consultant, helping clients (from startups to large organisations) shape their digital strategy and build design teams. She is co-author of the practical UX manual, Smashing UX: foundations for designing online user experiences.
Investor and venture capitalist
Jerry has more than 25 years of international investment, company-building, product development and business strategy experience. Gained via exec, non-exec board and operational roles in a number of established and start-up companies.
Broad technology and sector background with a deep understanding of the mobile eco-system and links into consumer Internet, social networks and mobile entertainment.
Senior Business Services Manager at Kilsby Wiliams
Jonathan is vastly experienced in business services varying from accounts to full company audits in a wide variety of business sectors.
Jonathan provides expertise in producing forecasts for business plans, grant audits, management accounts, company valuations and due diligence reports.
Founder & MD of JBS Associates
Leading executive search/recruitment specialist in emerging markets since 1994. Providing pragmatic solutions to organisations requiring C suite/Directors and other senior management predominantly to Financial Services and Commercial/Industrial clients in Russia & the CIS, Africa, Middle East, China & South East Asia, India and South America.
Digital Marketing Specialist
Jess is a talented Digital marketer with over eight years experience in industry.
Key skills include digital strategy, email marketing, social media, content, analytics and reporting.
Head of Digital at Mongoose Sports & Entertainment
With ten years agency experience spanning PR and online marketing, Katie has worked with local and national brands delivered everything from website redesign projects, SEO, online advertising campaigns to, social media community management.
Change and Delivery Manager
Katy is currently responsible for the change and delivery function at Admiral Financial Services (AFSL). To deliver change in AFSL, they work in cross-functional teams made up of a variety of roles including product owners, engineers, and testers. Katy uses this experience to offer our teams a perspective on new ways of iterative cross-functional working.
Partner at RDP Law
Kerry is a Solicitor-Advocate specialising in commercial law and intellectual property law / IT.
Kerry has provided training / lectured nationally and internationally on intellectual property law and dispute resolution mechanisms to professionals, international corporations and public bodies.
Experienced Company Director and Marketer
Award winning Retail Company Director and Entrepreneur, Kate also has 20+ years experience in senior roles across a range of private sector verticals.
Founder at Visit Digital
Lee runs Swansea based Visit Digital, they specialise in helping companies understand their customers search habits to give stakeholders the data to make informed decisions. Their clients include The Lad Bible Group, Billionaire.com, Car Buyer and several of the UK’s top 50 websites.
Senior Lecturer in Acting
Marilyn has 49 years’ experience as an actress in theatre, TV, radio, film, commercials, voiceover and corporate training and, in a freelance capacity, provides training courses in acting, dialect and presentation skills for actors, business professionals and local government departments.
Founder Presentify
Nathan helps companies create compelling and purposeful presentations, ensuring the message objective is achieved. Through Nathan’s workshops, founder teams are taught how to present a story that will differentiate them from competitors and make a lasting impression on prospects.
Data Consultant at Global Data Strategy Ltd
Nigel is an information management consultant, practitioner and thought leader with over 20 years experience, gained in large organisations, both in the UK and abroad.
Nigel’s work enables organisations to produce information management business cases, data governance processes, and structures, delivering the benefits of improved data quality and data exploitation.
MD of Enjovia Ltd
Sam is the current Managing Director of Enjovia Ltd, an Alacrity graduate company. Before joining Enjovia Sam was part of the management team of the Alacrity Foundation, helping the teams with commercialisation. Before joining the foundation Sam held a number of Sales and Marketing roles in Canada and the UK within the tech and finance sectors.
Strategy Consultant
Richard helps business’s to quickly distil their strategy and then explain it in a simple, inspirational and memorable way.
This approach enables business to win large-scale bids and to effect organisational change.
Richard has worked with clients including Cognizant, Genpact, GMC, KPMG, Land Securities and The Crown Estate.
UX and Project management Consultant
With 20 years of experience working for high profile organizations in the public, private and not-for-profit sectors, Yoti has worked and delivered many wide-ranging and complex cross-organisational initiatives in both North America and Europe.