Best Startup
At Best Startup UK we track over 130,000 UK startups and over 500,000 people who hold key positions in these companies. We use this directory of startups to highlight top employees, founders and board members we think deserve more appreciation than they are currently getting.
This list showcases the top London based Director operating in the Training space. If you think a Director is missing from this list, feel free to contact our editor on editor@beststartup.co.uk.
The individuals on this list have been included because of exceptional performance in one of the following categories:
- Innovation – Operating as a key part in an extremely innovative business or startup.
- Growth – Operating as a key figure in the growth and upscale of a market leading business or startup.
- Management – Showing exceptional management skills.
- Societal impact – Putting their business on the map for their positive societal or environmental impact.
Our Data – We source our data from OSINT (open source intelligence) and public directories such as Companies House UK, Crunchbase, SemRush and many more. The data from these sources should be treated with a degree of caution and verified yourself.
Vanessa Eke
Managing Director EMEA of Lingo Systems
Vanessa joined LanguageLine Solutions as Managing Director and Vice President for UK and Europe in 2006. Following her Honours degree in English Literature, she embarked upon her professional career, first training with Peat Marwick in London (now KPMG) and then moving to VNU Business Publications where she enjoyed a successful career spanning sales, marketing and operational management roles. This broad base of experience led to her role of Commercial Director for Financial Times Business where she gained further international and dot com experience. Building upon this base, she was invited to become Commercial Director and, subsequently, Managing Director for Nielsen Media Research UK and AdEx International. Vanessa is a regular speaker at conferences and seminars spanning both the public and commercial sectors.
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About Lingo Systems: Language Line is a translation services provider to the public and private sectors.
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Simon Lavers
Director of Founder Institute
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About Axigan Limited, Founder Institute: Founder Institute is a pre-seed startup accelerator, with chapters in 180+ cities and a portfolio with $20B+ in value.
Matthew C Martino
Founder & Managing Director of Lets Fly Academy
Matthew Martino (Full Name) – Matthew Mathetes Chihwai Martino born 27 October 1992 is a British Entrepreneur, Film Producer and Author. Educated at Shenfield High School in Brentwood , Martino has always held a passion for writing – He has always focused on educational writing and research. His first book Lets Fly which was published by DM Aviation was well received by pilots and aviation enthusiasts around the world. During his early years Martino showed all the qualities required to maintain proven success.
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About Lets Fly Academy: An online resource academy which was built to provide information and resources to aspiring pilots and aviations enthusiast.
Victoria Rusnac
Marketing Director of Nexford University
Victoria Rusnac is Marketing Director at Nexford University. She is a marketing expert with proven expertise in corporate and start-up growth marketing strategies, including branding, performance and product marketing.
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About Nexford University: A next generation online university providing students with access to quality, affordable, dynamic education.
Greg Young
Operations Director of Team Satchel
Greg is the Operations director at Show My Homework, the UK’s leading SaaS tool for Schools. Greg has previous experience in various roles including venture capital, business analytics, product operations, product marketing, social community management and financial operations at leading Internet brands Yahoo!, Microsoft and UK based Seed VC Passion Capital.
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About Show My Homework, Team Satchel: Team Satchel develops a range of school software focusing on homework, behavior, classroom management, and teaching resources.
Chris Phillips
Director of Marketing of Team Satchel
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About Team Satchel: Team Satchel develops a range of school software focusing on homework, behavior, classroom management, and teaching resources.
James Elias
Managing Director of AVADO
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About AVADO: AVADO delivers transformative learning that helps businesses gain critical digital skills.
Amy Crawford
Managing Director, AVADO Professional of AVADO
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About AVADO: AVADO delivers transformative learning that helps businesses gain critical digital skills.
Amy Crawford
Managing Director, AVADO Professional of AVADO
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About AVADO: AVADO delivers transformative learning that helps businesses gain critical digital skills.
Francesco Cesarini
Founder & Technical Director of Erlang Solutions
Francesco Cesarini is the founder and technical director of Erlang Solutions Ltd. He has used Erlang on a daily basis since 1995, starting as an intern at Ericsson’s computer science laboratory, the birthplace of Erlang.He moved on to Ericsson’s Erlang training and consulting arm working on the first release of the OTP middleware, applying it to turnkey solutions and flagship telecom applications. In 1999, soon after Erlang was released as open source, he founded Erlang Solutions. With offices in five countries, they have become the world leaders in Erlang based support, consulting, training, certification, systems development and conferences. Francesco has worked in major Erlang based projects both within and outside Ericsson, and as Technical Director, has led the development and consulting teams at Erlang Solutions. He is also the co-author of Erlang Programming,a book published by O’Reilly and is currently co-authoring Designing For Scalability With Erlang/OTP. He lectures the graduate students at Oxford University.
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About Erlang Solutions: We develop and build trusted, fault-tolerant systems that can scale to billions of users. Our strength is the Erlang & Elixir expertise.
Rory Curnock Cook
Director of The Profs
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About The Profs: The Profs facilitate school, university and professional level private tuition, educational consultancy and academic mentorship.
Leo Evans
Director of The Profs
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About The Profs: The Profs facilitate school, university and professional level private tuition, educational consultancy and academic mentorship.
Richard Evans
Director of The Profs
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About The Profs: The Profs facilitate school, university and professional level private tuition, educational consultancy and academic mentorship.
Richard Evans
Director of The Profs
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About The Profs: The Profs facilitate school, university and professional level private tuition, educational consultancy and academic mentorship.
Morgan Page
Co-founder & Technical Director of Dual Good Health
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About Dual Good Health: Using virtual reality to train more people how to save lives
Sana Farooq
Director of ELN The e-Learning Network
Sana Farooq is the founder and CEO of ELN The e-Learning Network and we absolutely love her dedication and energy towards the education of children in Pakistan – a very dynamic project! She supports elevate and wants girls to have the same opportunities as men.
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About ELN The e-Learning Network: ELN is a digital learning platform that offers accredited, affordable, and interactive online learning services.
Dave Connolly
Director of Frontline Energy & Environmental
Dave Connolly is Director at Frontline Energy & Environmental. He was the director at HOCHTIEF facility management Ireland before, former director at Richmond Group and was the audit manager of KPMG Ireland .
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About Frontline Energy & Environmental: Frontline Energy & Environmental provides energy and facilities solutions and services for sustainable buildings
Rakesh Bhasin
Investment Director of yourfeed
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About yourfeed: yourfeed is an online platform that connects people to relevant opportunities via their real life skills!
Damien Ducourty
Founder & Managing Director of B9lab
#B9lab is the independent provider of quality education, advice and research about blockchain technology and decentralised applications. Our clients are leading global institutions as well as talented individual developers around the world. I’m an experienced entrepreneur and executive with a track record of bringing disruptive software solutions to market in technology and finance. I like working with groups of talented people to provide tangible and valuable solutions. I always engage ethically and believe that sustainability and accountability can fuel growth. I want to be proud of what I do everyday! Attributes: Hands on, conscientious, strategic, persistent but not stubborn, creative, curious and highly personable, love Win Win, try hard everyday to change the world and resist my biases.
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About B9lab: Upskilling gifted developers for high paying, bleeding-edge jobs whatever their background
Mark Maclaine
Co-Founder & Director of Education of Tutorfair
A tutor for 16 years, and awesome at it. Students are inspired by his energy and enthusiasm. He instils a love of learning which goes far beyond the Maths & Science he teaches. We love Mark … and all his stories. He’s responsible for making sure this works for tutors and is ruthless about vetting tutors to ensure we’ve got the best. Mark is equally passionate about our social mission and ensuring that it really makes a difference.
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About Tutorfair: Tutorfair is a marketplace for tutors that makes great tutors available to all
Pete Kirby
Director of Tutorfair Foundation of Tutorfair
Pete has been tutoring Maths & Science for 7 years and especially enjoys teaching geometry and genetics. He heads up the Tutorfair Foundation which delivers life-changing tutoring to pupils who can’t afford it. And in his earlier years, Pete was a national champion fencer (the swords, not the gardening).
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About Tutorfair: Tutorfair is a marketplace for tutors that makes great tutors available to all
Chris Gibson
Executive Director of FIRST
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About FIRST: FIRST aims to inspire young people to be science and technology leaders.
Sophia Flucker
Director of Operational Intelligence Ltd
Sophia has worked as an engineering consultant on a variety of projects in several countries, delivering data centre design, commissioning and risk and energy assessments. She has worked alongside operations teams to help clients to manage their critical environments. Her experience includes developing low energy data centre cooling solutions, creating analytical and reporting tools, leading teams and business development. Sophia won the prize for Young Mission Critical Engineer of the Year at the Datacentre Awards 2007. She has been an active participant of various industry groups on data centre energy efficiency and has published and presented work in this area.
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About Operational Intelligence Ltd: OI offer consultancy services and training in risk and energy assessments to help clients improve critical facility performance.
Francesca Vinti
Director of Development of British Film Institute
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About British Film Institute: British Film Institute is a charity governed by a Royal Charter combining cultural, creative, and industrial roles.
David Parkhill
Director of Finance and Resources of British Film Institute
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About British Film Institute: British Film Institute is a charity governed by a Royal Charter combining cultural, creative, and industrial roles.
Edward Humphrey
Director of Digital & Ventures of British Film Institute
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About British Film Institute: British Film Institute is a charity governed by a Royal Charter combining cultural, creative, and industrial roles.
Peter Russell-Smith
Communication Director of Talk Big Communication Skills Training
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About Talk Big Communication Skills Training: Talk Big Communication Skills Training institute engaged in teaching courses like delivery of engaging webinars, great sales pitches.
Sean Grant
Sales Director of Premier Global
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About Premier Global: Premier Global provides digital and virtual fitness education, personal trainer options, nutrition courses and training services.
Tanya Filer
Founder and Director of StateUp
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About StateUp, University of Cambridge: StateUp is building the knowledge and ideas infrastructure for public-purpose technology.
Michaela Reaney
founder and Managing Director of Gradvert
Michaela is the founder and MD of Gradvert. She drives the company’s strategic direction and commercial focus as well as staying close to many of our clients and universities. Michaela has a decade of experience in global talent management and recruitment with FTSE100 organisations. An authoritative figure in the news on education, employability and and policies effecting young people, she takes great pride in driving a brand and organisation that supports the development of professional skills and behaviours in our future leaders.
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About Gradvert: UK’s leading graduate recruitment and training companies
Christianne Davies
Founding Director of AGL Communications
Christianne has worked in communications for 13 years, initially as a copy-writer and then for a management consultancy specialising in communication, before co-founding AGL in 2010. She works with corporates and private individuals; in one-to-one sessions and in groups; across sectors and around the world. It might be helping with an important speech; a leadership transition; an employee engagement project around a piece of change; a refreshed corporate narrative or simply communication coaching to make sure a person or team are being as impactful as possible. Whatever the situation, she’s most interested in finding the human moment that transforms data transmission into something that makes a connection, that changes minds and behaviour, and that works. Clients include Vodafone, GSK, British Airways, Garda World, Lily’s Kitchen, Tyrrells Crisps, Lloyds Banking Group, JCB, Shell, DMGT, Santander and Jaeger Le Coultre. Christianne is a graduate of Edinburgh and Rome universities.
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About AGL Communications: AGL Communications gives people the words, skills and confidence they need to make the most of these moments.
Edward Farquhar
Director of Grace Personnel
With over 15 years of City experience specialising in SMEs, Ed has invaluable experience in guiding and working with management teams.
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About Grace Personnel: Grace Personnel provide recruitment for permanent and temporary office support personnel throughout Maidenhead.
Julia Porter
Partner and Board Director of Data Protection Network Associates
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About Data Protection Network Associates, Origin Housing: Data Protection Network Associates is a data protection consultancy that provides no-nonsense advice to customers.
Katy Cook
Director of Katy Cook
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About Katy Cook: Katy Cook offers executive coaching, training, education and team development, and organizational consulting.
Graham Cherrett
Managing Director, Sales Specialist & Master Trainer of The Longley Sales Academy | Sales & Leadership Training
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About The Longley Sales Academy | Sales & Leadership Training: The Longley Sales Academy empowers sales leaders & sales professionals to make the right call, at the right time, to excel in their careers.
Graham Cherrett
Managing Director, Sales Specialist & Master Trainer of The Longley Sales Academy | Sales & Leadership Training
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About The Longley Sales Academy | Sales & Leadership Training: The Longley Sales Academy empowers sales leaders & sales professionals to make the right call, at the right time, to excel in their careers.
Faye Thomas
Executive Director of Prevista
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About Prevista: Prevista’s ethos supports learners, young person & delivery partners in achieving maximum potential & ensure that success is sustainable.
