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 Managing Director operating in the Education space. If you think a Managing 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.
Stefan Wisbauer
CEO, President, CFO, and Managing Director of Lecturio
Stefan Wisbauer is the Managing Director of U.K. Preventive Medicine and the Founder and Managing Director of iHealth, a leading UK executive prevention provider. With a decade of experience in healthcare, Stefan previously worked at the World Bank and McKinsey & Co, where he advised health insurance, medical devices and biotech companies. Stefan also worked as a consultant to the National Health Service and with private healthcare operators on Public Private Partnerships and on establishing innovative approaches to care delivery. Previous to founding iHealth, Stefan helped build CircleHealth, which build next generation private hospitals in the U.K. based on a Kaiser Permanente style model, in which clinicians are co-owners in the business. Prior to that, Stefan was Bid Manager for Nations Healthcare, which won the largest share – valued at more than £400 — of the first wave of private day surgery contracts to treat NHS patients issued by the British government under Tony Blair’s leadership. Stefan also serves on the board of the Center for NonViolent Communication, a global charity promoting innovative solutions to trauma, conflict, restorative justice and communication. Stefan holds a Master in Public Administration from the Harvard Kennedy School, Diploma in Mathematics from University of Bonn and a ‘Part III’ in Mathematics from Cambridge University.
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About iHealth, Lecturio: The Next Generation Learning Platform for Medicine
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Rob Lowe
Managing Director – Digital Play, LEGO Ventures of The LEGO Group
Rob Lowe is responsible for the global strategy, development and day-to-day running of LEGO® Life, the new creative, social and safe digital experience for LEGO kids. He has been at the LEGO Group for three years, prior to that he has worked in marketing and product development leadership roles at Nintendo and BBC Worldwide.
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About LEGO Ventures, The LEGO Group: The LEGO Group is a family-owned company that specializes in the development of children’s creativity through playing and learning.
James Grant
Co-Founder & Managing Director of MyTutor
James is a driven, passionate and ambitious entrepreneur, with experience in sales, leadership, strategy, product, digital marketing and fundraising. He started a fledgling events business at 15, which grew to a team of 30, catering for over 1,200 weekly guests. After completing a Philosophy degree at University of Birmingham, James worked for Barclays Wealth, in the Chief of Staff Team, within the Office of the Chief Executive, helping to set the Division’s strategic agenda and taking responsibility for the implementation of sponsored projects. James is a co-founder of MyTutor, creating a new world of one-to-one tuition. The team are unwaveringly focused on their mission to give every student access to 1-1 support. The platform provides live, online one-to-one lessons, delivered by bright, inspiring undergraduates studying at the UK’s leading universities – their secondary aim is to become the leading provider of work to these students. MyTutor uses AI-driven matching algorithms to ensure perfect student-tutor matches and every lesson is taught in an interactive online learning space, which facilitates live video and audio chat, document editing, file sharing and lesson recording. The company’s proudest achievement has been helping 92% of their pupils in 2016 hit or exceed their grade targets. James enjoys public speaking and has presented at a number of education and business events. His other interests include sport (football, rugby, athletics), music (blues & hip hop), travelling, reading and all things startup. He has won a number of awards over the past few years, including Unltd’s ‘Do it’, Mercia’s ‘The Pitch’, O2 ‘Think Bigger’ and Santander’s ‘Spark’.
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About MyTutor: MyTutor offers affordable 1-to-1 tutorials online by connecting tutors from the UK’s best unis with pupils at home and in schools
Marcella Collins
Managing Director UK of Hotcourses Group
Marcella joined the Hotcourses Group in 2009 and now leads the Higher Education and Adult Learning divisions. She works across teams to deliver a strategy that ensures the very best experience and outcomes for our users and partners.
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About Hotcourses Group, Prompt Marketing: Hotcourses Group operates a program search Website.
Richard Taylor
Managing Director of Media Taylor
Education/edtech entrepreneur and investor
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About Media Taylor: We are a specialist media company focusing on the education and edtech markets.
David Philipps
Managing Director of Construct
David Philipps is the CEO of Construct, a global digital learning company, where he manages the company’s fast-growing business and leads a growing team across the U.S., U.K, Middle East and South Africa. He is responsible for leading the day to day operational delivery, the commercial engagements, investor relations and for driving the culture of high performance across the company in addition to agreeing the strategic direction of the company with the board.
David was previously CFO of Bank of America EMEA Emerging Markets (CEEMEA) which he developed in to a world class finance team. A seasoned executive with a background in both consulting and finance, David excelled at organising and driving large scale strategic programmes across Bank of Americas international finance space, creating commercial insights, efficiencies, control enhancements and improved people engagement. David was well respected by both his team and the Bank of America finance leadership for his high energy levels, natural enthusiasm and his results orientated pragmatic approach to bringing clarity and organisation to complex situations. He was promoted to CFO of the CEEMEA group after demonstrating a strong track record of performance leading the EMEA Finance Control Group through the aftermath of the 2008 financial crash.
Before joining Bank of America, David spent 5 years consulting within the Finance and Performance Management Global Service Line at Accenture, running multiple successful projects in the UK, Europe and Asia. David qualified as an accountant and corporate treasurer at telecoms company Global Marine Systems Ltd in 2003 before joining Accenture.
David is a passionate endurance athlete having completed swims across the English channel and straits of Gibraltar. He is currently working towards the Ultra-Trail du Mont-Blanc and enjoying supporting his daughters with their own swimming and running endeavours.
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About Construct: Construct helps organizations with learners, like schools and employers, create beautiful, cutting edge digital learning experiences.
Deshini Newman
Managing Director – EMEA of (ISC)2
As Managing Director for EMEA, Deshini Newman leads the (ISC)² team across the region. Her responsibilities include developing and implementing strategy for the EMEA region and supporting the (ISC)² global vision and mission. Before Joining (ISC)2, Deshini held several education leadership roles, at Edexcel International, Pearson Group, and most recently Cambridge Assessment English, where she held positions as Global Manager of Strategy, Assistant Director, Global Business Development and Global Head of Higher Education and Adult Sector. Cambridge Assessment English has provided English language assessments and qualifications since 1913, and is part of Cambridge Assessment Group, Cambridge University (UK).
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About (ISC)2: (ISC)2 is the official organization that maintains and administers the CISSP certification exam.
Ali Moinuddin
Managing Director Europe of The Uptime Institute
Entrepreneurial and strategic CMO with SaaS experience. Strong track records of building high-performance revenue oriented marketing groups. Strong record of building new business for start-ups and supporting turnarounds and delivering growth from companies that are pre-revenue to $350M in fun, exciting and results-driven way. – COMMERCIAL ORIENTATION, HIGH-PERFORMANCE TEAMS, REVENUE GROWTH – Exceptionally skilled at finding and nurturing talent people who to deliver on revenue and strategic goals. Proven experience in recruiting and managing international teams that punch well above their weight. Amplifying brands and building corporate and marketing cultures that can deliver sustained growth. -CORPORATE & INTERNAL COMMUNICATIONS, BRANDING, POSITIONING, GLOBAL AR, PR AND PRODUCT MKT- I am a prolific producer of thought leadership content and build media and analyst programmes to amplify reach and impact. -MKT AND SALES TECHNOLOGY ARCHITECTURE, ORGANIZATIONAL & DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION & PERFORMANCE OPTIMISATION- Defining, building and iterating systems & processes in optimize conversion. Working with CIO/IT groups to support analytics-based decision-making and to apply new innovations across customer interaction points. -DEMAND GENERATION, DIGITAL MKT, GROWTH HACKING, SALES ENABLEMENT & GLOBAL MKT PROGRAMMES- Focus on the digital transformation of MKT function. Tooling and restructuring direct and channel marketing and sale organizations to maximize ROI on programme spend. Building technology and channel partner relationships to deliver revenue growth. -CUSTOMER SATISFACTION & REFERENCE PROGRAMMES, USER GROUPS STRATEGIC ADVISORY BOARDS & CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE- Leading cross-functional teams to drive CS and benchmark and improve customer journeys and experience across all interaction points. -FUND RAISING, VENTURE CAPITAL, M&A, IPO, INVESTOR RELATIONS- Building investment cases for between $36M and $250M targeting debt and equity partners. Prior to joining Workshare Ali was CMO at SkyDox: Director of Marketing Interxion (NYSE:INXN), Director of Marketing EMEA for SPL WorldGroup (now a part of Oracle (NYSE:ORCL), Marketing Manager EMEA and Asia-Pacific at Kana (NASDAQ: KANA).
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About The Uptime Institute: Uptime Institute is focused on improving the performance, efficiency, and reliability of business critical infrastructure.
Richard Millington
Founder & Managing Director of FeverBee
Richard Millington has spent the past decade helping 250+ companies develop some of the world’s largest online communities. Richard is the founder of FeverBee, an international community consultancy, and the author of Buzzing Communities. Richard’s clients have included Google, Facebook, Oracle, Wikipedia, EMC, Greenpeace, and many more. Prior to FeverBee, Richard interned with Seth Godin in New York.
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About FeverBee: FeverBee provides consultancy, training, and technology to help you build your community.
Ripul Agarwal
Managing Director – Marketing and Digital Sales of Agrawal Group of Publications
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About Agrawal Group of Publications, Snip And Share: Agrawal Group of Publications is a publishing company that produces books for students.
Larysa Melnychuk
Managing Director of FP&A Trends
Larysa Melnychuk is a founder and managing director of FP&A Trends Group. FP&A Trends helps companies to realise their innovative FP&A potential through training, consulting, professional networking and debating. Larysa is an experienced FP&A practitioner and held senior FP&A positions at Invensys plc, Ace Group, Key Bank and HSBC Bank before setting up the International FP&A Board in 2013 – a global and well-recognized FP&A best practices think-tank. Since then, she has been running the Board that has successfully expanded into 11 countries in Europe, the Middle East, the USA, Asia and Australia.
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About FP&A Trends: FP&A Trends Group is a global UK-based consultancy that helps organisations.
Daniel Britton
Co-Founder & Managing Director of Financial Fairy Tales
Daniel spent his early career in banking and financial services before 12 years as a teacher and school leader. Recently he has specialised as an education consultant, writer and speaker on money matters. In 2013 he was awarded National Enterprise Tutor of the Year by The Peter Jones Foundation. At the Financial Fairy Tales we have a passion for empowering young people to develop their self esteem, raise their aspirations and gain awareness of their unlimited potential. Key lesson which are all too often missing from many schools.
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About Financial Fairy Tales: Financial Fairy Tales empowers children through financial literacy, enterprise awareness, and personal development solutions.
Jasper Kain
Managing Director of Football Beyond Borders (FBB)
Jasper Kain and Jack Reynolds founded Football Beyond Borders in 2013, since which Jasper has been serving as its managing director.
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About Football Beyond Borders (FBB): Football Beyond Borders an education and social inclusion charity that uses young people’s passion for football to educate .
Jack Reynolds
Managing Director of Football Beyond Borders (FBB)
Jack Reynolds and Jasper Kain founded Football Beyond Borders in 2013, since which Jack has been serving as its managing director.
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About Football Beyond Borders (FBB): Football Beyond Borders an education and social inclusion charity that uses young people’s passion for football to educate .
David Watts
Managing Director of CCD Design & Ergonomics
David Watts is Managing Director of CCD Design & Ergonomics. CCD is a leading human behaviour and design practice. It specialises in applying the science of human factors and ergonomics to the design process. It has been working in the ergonomic design of control centres for nearly 40 years. We also work across workspace design, wayfinding design, experience design as well as consulting on human factors problems. In 20 years of professional practice, David has run CCD’s input to a wide range of control room projects for clients including Network Rail, ITER, the emergency services, Thames Water, Abu Dhabi Distribution Company and the Government of Georgia.
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About CCD Design & Ergonomics: CCD Design & Ergonomics have delivered human factors, wayfinding and workspace design projects across the world.
Etan Ilfeld
Owner and Managing Director of Watkins Books
Etan Ilfeld works as Director at Tenderpixel. He is a owner of Watkins Media.
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About Watkins Books: Watkins Books is one of the oldest and independent bookshops.
Darryl Mydat
Managing Director of TLTP Education
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About TLTP Education: Education and Medical Recruitment Specialists
