CVP mentors

Prior to becoming CEO at Transport Systems Catapult, Paul led IBM’s Global Financing in the UK and Ireland. IBM Global Financing is the largest IT financing house in the industry and helps IBM’s clients and partners to optimise the financial cases for their IT transformations.

Paul has previously worked in a wide variety of technical, marketing and sales operational leadership roles for IBM both UK and Internationally. As a leader of IBM’s Travel and Transport industry business, he was invited to join the board of the Transport Systems Catapult and has served as a Non-Executive director since February 2015.

During his time at IBM, Paul has demonstrated success in business growth, creating and leading both large and small teams in several different functions, and in a variety of business areas. He is renowned for his strategic vision, knowledge of the transport sector and grasp of detail.

In addition to being a Non-Executive Director on the TSC Board, Paul was a member of the Industry Advisory Group, which helped build the case for the Catapult network, giving him a strong grasp of the vision and mission of the organisation.

Phil Churchman is a senior executive and consultant with expertise in strategy, technology, operations improvement and change delivery.

Since 2006 he has worked primarily in insurance as CIO (Crawford & Company), Strategy Director (Aviva) and as a consultant. Prior to this he worked for the management consultancies Bain, Accenture and Coopers & Lybrand in a range of sectors including healthcare, chemicals, high tech, consumer products, industrial products and logistics.

Phil has taught strategy and information systems to MBA students at the University of East Anglia. He studied Engineering, Economics and Management at Oxford University and is a Chartered Mechanical Engineer.

David Dahan is a strategic advisor, with a particular focus on investment management of real assets, business growth, transformational change and post-acquisition integration.  

His experience spans over 23 years in financial services. Earlier in his career, he held a variety of corporate and business strategy roles, in which David worked with global Boards and Executive teams. Most recently, David was Managing Director of Aviva Investors' activities in infrastructure and structured finance assets, as well as co-head of Alternative Income Solutions. He was previously part of the Aviva Investors real estate executive committee with a range of responsibilities during his tenure; he led strategic and corporate development, he created and grew a number of new businesses and has led real-asset based income strategies, private equity, listed real estate securities, infrastructure and structured finance investment businesses and teams.   

David has studied and worked in France, the US and the UK. He holds a BA in Political Economy of Industrial Societies from the University of California, Berkeley, as well as an MBA from Cambridge Judge Business School. He is also a fellow of the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants.

Jane has over 15 years' experience in business development gained from roles in both biotech and pharma. Since joining F-star in late 2011 Jane has led a series of significant and innovative transactions with BMS, AbbVie, Denali and Merck (EMD Serono) raising almost $200M in non-dilutive financing and advancing F-star’s drug pipeline. By establishing asset-centric-vehicles as well as more traditional licensing, F-star has been able to realise the value of its individual assets through flexible deal structuring. As well as business development, Jane is responsible for transactional legal matters, IP and Communications at F-star. Earlier this year she was identified by Labiotech as one of the 15 Women Leading in European Biotech. 

Prior to F-star, she held business development positions at Cellzome and Cambridge Antibody Technology (CAT). At Cellzome she led two significant transactions with GSK; Cellzome was subsequently acquired by GSK in 2012. During her time at CAT she led negotiations on multiple significant transactions, subsequently continuing this work within AstraZeneca following the acquisition of CAT. 

She has a first class degree, a PhD and an MBA from the University of Cambridge and spent the first part of her career within the agrochemical industry. She is Vice-Chair of the Sir Richard Stapley Educational Trust, a member of the University of Cambridge Careers Service Syndicate and an Honorary Associate of Newnham College.

Dr Ralph Ecclestone has worked extensively on the commercial and technical development of new technologies. He also has experience of managing early-stage venture capital funds, giving him insights from both sides of the financing divide. He has helped create numerous start-up businesses, and in addition to senior executive roles has also been a non-executive director on various private and public bodies. He was until recently the head of the Business Relations Office at the University of Cambridge.

Jack Lang is a serial entrepreneur and business angel, Interested in "computer science and how the brain works", his undergraduate degree in Mechanical Sciences at Cambridge led to a Computer Science diploma and a spell as Demonstrator in the Computer Laboratory.

He left the University to found (with Prof Shon Ffowcs-Williams) the consulting company Topexpress, one of whose projects was designing some of the software for the BBC Microcomputer.

Jack co-founded Raspberry Pi. He was a founder of Netchannel Ltd, which was acquired in 1998 by ntl, where he became Chief Technologist. Before that he founded Electronic Share Information Ltd, acquired by E*Trade Inc in 1995. He is author of The High Tech Entrepreneurs Handbook and teaches and examines courses in Business Studies, Entrepreneurship and Ecommerce for the University of Cambridge Computer Science Laboratory. He is Entrepreneur in Residence at the Centre for Entrepreneurial Learning.

A keen baker and a passionate cook, he is one of the founders of Midsummer House Restaurant. He has also been architect and champion of the Cambridge fireworks display for more than 25 years.

Mark Matzopoulos is Marketing Director and Deputy MD for PSE Ltd, a technology spin-out from Imperial College London. He has executive responsibility for business strategy and marketing, including development of new business and application areas, and has played a leading role in PSE's development into a worldwide operation. Mark is a chemical engineer who worked in various parts of the world before setting up two successful engineering consultancy companies. He was a member of the winning team for the Royal Academy of Engineering MacRobert Award, the UK's most prestigious prize for engineering innovation, and has a Chartered Institute of Marketing Professional Diploma. He has been a mentor for Cambridge Judge Business School's MBA programme since 2009. 

John is an expert team coach and facilitator, co-founder of Curve, a company devoted to developing Creative Leaders, Cambridge Hack, an Innovation company and the CambridgeSpace co-working startup. He helps the world’s most ambitious organisations transform to take advantage of the opportunities offered by digital technology. John is passionate about developing creative leadership and enjoys building and mentoring brilliant teams to produce breakthrough ideas.

A member of the board of ActionAid UK, an international NGO building a movement of people working together to defeat poverty, John loves to change things for the better.

John has spoken at numerous private events for corporates, government bodies and civil society groups as well as public events such as the WebIT summit, Digital Shoreditch and the UN-sponsored Design for Social Innovation & Leadership program.

Jo Vertigan has worked in the digital and strategy space since 2001 initially designing the commercial framework for Sony's approach to the emerging Ecommerce sector. Subsequently he developed partnerships with companies such Lovefilm and Photobox, then went on to run Sony's direct to consumer business. In recent years he has worked across a wide range of sectors including sport, financial services and technology. Supporting the digital capability development at The Football Association, The Jockey Club and AXA Wealth as well as a number of early stage businesses. He is currently Group Head of Strategy for Marshall of Cambridge.

Chris has over 30 years of industry and consulting experience across a number of industry sectors. His areas of expertise and interest are the strategy and leadership of complex organisations and the design and delivery of global business transformations in pursuit of growth. 

He successfully led and built Boxwood to become an award-winning business transformation consulting firm. Prior to its acquisition by KPMG in June 2015, Boxwood won industry recognition for work at Carphone Warehouse, Guardian News and Media, Trader Media Group, Grosvenor Estates, Tube Lines and Balfour Beatty Utility Services. 

Chris has worked with CEOs of FTSE Top 250 companies across the retail, telecoms, media, software, construction and oil and gas industries to develop and then implement transformation programmes that have led to a significant uplift in the top and bottom line performance of their business. He also has extensive experience of private equity owned businesses.

Prior to Boxwood, Chris was Global Head of Operational Information Systems at the UK MOD PJHQ. He had overall responsibility for the delivery of information systems, telecoms and all aspects of IT support to military operations worldwide.

In the early phase of his career, Chris was an aircraft engineer and military pilot before going on to hold a number of senior operational appointments. He has considerable experience of the political and military aspects of defence decision making and has represented the UK at international planning meetings in Europe, America and in the Middle East. He has extensive HR and people development experience and an MDA from Cranfield University.  

Chris is married with three grown up children. He was made a Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire during his military service. He is keen on skiing and outdoor pursuits.