Meet The Team

Paul is responsible for the finance across the Verastar Group

“By continuing to support growth and product expansion, my aim for Verastar is to continue our journey in becoming the provider of choice for essential business services. Our goal is to make the lives of business owners as easy as possible with our multi-service offering, on a unique one-bill solution.”

Paul, a KPMG Chartered Accountant, joined Verastar in 2011, shortly after the Management Buyout. Since then, he has assisted in driving the growth of our product portfolio alongside the company’s revenue and profitability.

A graduate of the University of Leicester, Paul spent 10 years working in a variety of roles in consumer healthcare at SSL International before it was sold for £2.5 billion. Paul then went on to the role of interim CFO before joining the Verastar team.

Paul’s claim to fame is that his dad played for Manchester United (that he happens to support) and was a Busby Babe. He is happily married with three lovely children.

Jo is responsible for the people agenda for Verastar which includes HR, Recruitment, Facilities and Training.

“My aim for the business is to build and implement a really engaging colleague agenda that gives people a career rather than just a job. We strive to give people from all backgrounds options and choices for their lives, and to add value wherever we can. Essentially, we want everyone, from all works of life, to be their best.”

Wanting to be part of a dynamic growing company, Jo joined Verastar in August 2016 looking to drive real change which would develop our workforce. Since then, she is proud to have been part of the gender pay gap review, the introduction of pay progression which links rewards to development and the graduate scheme investing in young talent.

Jo graduated with a degree in History and Psychology and a Masters in Human Resource Management. Starting out as a Hotel Receptionist, Jo worked her way up and has held various HR roles in companies across many sectors including financial services, legal, travel and facilities services.

Jo’s home-life with her husband and 4-year old daughter is busy and fulfilling, with organisation being key. She is a keen runner and completes half-marathons on a regular basis.

Janette is responsible for all customer facing teams across all brands in communication and utility services.

“My aim is to set customer service excellence at the core of everything we do. It’s imperative we maintain a genuine culture within our customer care teams of really wanting to make everything really easy and efficient for our customers whilst at the same time having lots of fun in an energetic and interesting working environment.”

Janette has been with Verastar since 2002, initially joining to establish the first verbal sales teams before transferring to a customer facing role in 2004 in order to set up teams looking after cash collections, retentions, customer services, change of ownerships, renewals and other customer care teams. She became a Director in 2007 and now manages a team of more than 300 in the Contact Centre with the assistance of 7 direct reports.

Graduating with a maths degree from The University of Birmingham, Janette initially spent some time working abroad and after returning to the UK, she held a few roles in different sales environments before managing a plastic stockholding and distribution company for 10 years. Janette then brought these array of skills to Verastar on recommendation from her brother, one of our former owners.

Out of work, Janette enjoys exercising, skiing and travelling and has also started to learn Italian.

Piotr is responsible for helping the company grow, both in the core business and in new directions.

“My aim for Verastar is to build the ‘go to’ provider for small businesses to get all the support they need so they can focus on their own goals. The way we’ll do this is to create a truly great company in reputation, values, business results and contribution to society.”

Piotr saw joining Verastar in 2013 as an exciting opportunity to help grow a business which was unique in its potential to help SMEs. Since joining, Piotr has helped the business develop both in sheer size and number of customers but also in the level of our internal capabilities and customer propositions. As part of this growth, Piotr and the team have been responsible for completing and integrating 12 acquisitions. Team members across Verastar worked together to welcome and integrate these new customers into the Verastar family.

Piotr has a B.Eng (Electrical Engineering) and started his working career as a Chartered Engineer. He has worked in a number of countries in Africa, Asia, Europe and in the US. Piotr was also a co-founder of Amnesty International South Africa and member of its National Executive Committee.

After moving to the UK, Piotr completed an MBA with distinction at London Business School and worked for McKinsey & Company as a consultant specializing in operations, strategy and people management. Later, Piotr was a Managing Director at Alegro Capital, an M&A boutique, and chairman of BlueBella, an award-winning lingerie and nightwear company.

Piotr loves the outdoors, especially mountains and loves a challenge – as shown by his nascent collection of triathlon medals. He continues to have a strong interest in human rights in developing countries, when not spending time with his lovely wife and 2 just as lovely children.

Gillian is responsible for the Legal, Compliance and Customer Resolution teams at Verastar.

“My aim is to ensure that we meet our legal and regulatory obligations to customers, suppliers, employees and our regulators and that we treat customers fairly. Employees who feel they are treated fairly are more likely to treat customers the same way.”

Gillian joined Verastar in 2015 to set up our Legal and Compliance Teams. She started out her legal career in an international law firm, but realised she wanted to work in industry following a secondment to Granada TV. She has worked in many different sectors from telecoms to software escrow, information security and aerospace and spent time working at companies BAE, O2 and NCC Group.

At home, Gillian lives with her husband and two teenage boys. She enjoys long walks and spending time in sunny Mallorca!

Susie is responsible for bringing brands across the Verastar Group to life, communicating to customers why kinex and Clear Business are different to standard business utility offers.

“My aim is to understand our customers and their business needs more so that we can provide services and offers they want, communicated effectively. We have specific groups of customers in certain sectors such as Health & Beauty businesses or the Farming Community, so ensuring that communication is personalised and reflects their business interests is important.”

Susie joined Verastar in 2017 with a background in Direct Marketing and a focus on generating measureable responses and sales. The mix of creative, numbers and logic suits how her brain is wired (or that’s what she thinks). All this practicality is supplemented with an MBA in Business and Marketing Strategy…

She started her career agency-side with clients such as British Airways and Leeds Visa. Then client-side working within mail order and online retailing for The Otto Group with brands such as Grattan and Freemans as well as international brands within the company portfolio. More recently Susie has worked within B2B focusing on SME customers at CVS Business Rates Specialists.

Holly is responsible for development and delivery of company strategy and programme delivery.

“My aim is to ensure that change management and project management principles are effectively implemented throughout the company as we continue to rapidly grow, ensuring we grow in the correct way for long-term success. I am an advocate of continuous improvement and feel this is key in delivering value for our customers and shareholders in the most efficient way. The business has so many great ideas and opportunities, it’s essential that I pull them all together in a concise, efficient programme.”

Holly studied Operations and Technology Management at The University of Manchester and joined Verastar as part of the Graduate Management Programme in 2009. After a year spent in each operational function, she spent the next year improving processes and systems which led to her starting the Project Management Team, which she now heads up.

She enjoys the variety her role offers and has been involved in a wide range of initiatives, from acquisitions to launching new brands to entering newly deregulated markets. She also enjoys the variety that family life offers, from Taylor Swift concerts to trips to Disneyland Paris.

Richard is responsible for all technology, company billing and management information.

“My aim is to constantly push boundaries and timescales using technology to drive Verastar’s competitive edge in the market. We’re unrelenting in our push to improve our systems for both internal users and provide customers a seamless experience. When combined with our clear vision and strategy it allows us to be extremely agile without compromising on strong future proof and sustainable solutions.”

Richard and his team work methodically and clinically, always to a plan, ensuring both business and technology change is approached with the right amount of governance and minimal red tape. With the rate of change in business and technology, Richard believes the key to current and future success is not to compromise on our incredibly strong technical, business foundations and values while ensuring our systems and processes have a high degree of inbuilt flexibility.

Richard started out at Samsung, and also spent time at Heinz and SSL international (owner of Durex and Scholl). He spent many of the previous 20 years on high value business and technology change around the globe with all the stamps to prove it. His whole career to date has been spent changing platforms to provide growth.

Nicola is responsible for the commercial strategy for the business.

“My aim for Verastar is to maintain our position as a market-leading services provider by offering the widest range of services to the UK’s SME market all on one bill. Our business is making services simple for our customers, so they can focus on running theirs.”

Nicola joined Verastar in 2012 and has been integral in transforming Verastar into a multi-service provider through identifying and creating opportunities for new market entrants. She played a key part in the deregulation of England’s water market as part of the Defra Assurance group and the Water Code Panel.

Starting her career in 1995 in the then newly deregulated Energy market she’s developed business strategies and customer propositions to challenge incumbent providers in new markets. Her business focus has ranged from Energy, Telecoms and most recently Water in Scotland and England.

Away from the office she enjoys family life with her husband and two children and is happiest on the beach in Wales with a book in her hand.

James is responsible for how we onboard, support and retain our customers so they come back and take more services with us.

“My aim for the business is to provide the essential services that small business need so they can thrive, with increasing deregulation we are perfectly positioned to do this.”

Having joined Verastar this summer, James previously spent 12 years at Shop Direct in a number of roles supporting their transformation from high street store and catalogue retailer to etailer of the year three years on the bounce. Prior to that James worked in Capital One and Nationwide in a variety of operational roles.

James loves to fix and transform things so they flourish so he’s landed in the right role at Verastar! James believes that long term success and profit for organisations comes through having really engaged colleagues who go on to deliver the kind of experience that keeps customers coming back again and again.

Dave is responsible for all our regional offices.

‘My aim is to create highly motivated fun places to be in all of my offices, where staff have a great work ethic: There is little success where there is little laughter.’

Dave joined Verastar in 2000 as a sales person and was the driving force behind the openings of all of our regional offices.

Dave has 35 years of B2B and B2C sales experience. He prides himself on being an open-minded, not judging people on their academical achievements and loves people with big personalities that he can teach the art of sales.

Outside work, Dave likes to spend time at home with his beautiful wife who he met during his time at Verastar and his son Joseph. Joseph happens to be a keen fundraiser and has raised thousands of pounds for Manchester Children’s Hospital by climbing the county’s highest mountains.

Alex is responsible for the entire Sales function across kinex, Clear Business & Woav brands.

“We have a very talented and experienced senior sales management team who are constantly evolving their approach to both sales and sales management in order to deliver good customer experiences and great results. We endeavour for all our sales people to ‘live our values’ by; taking pride in what they do, being professional, always respecting the customers & ultimately feeling valued in their roles.”

Alex joined Verastar in 2008 to build a new broker sales arm for the business, in 2011 he also took responsibility for all internal telesales teams, then in 2016 moved into his current role overseeing all group sales.

Prior to joining Verastar Alex spent over 10 years in the Telecom Media & Technology (TMT) sector. He built his early career in both SME and corporate sales & sales management, then in 2001 started a hosted messaging business, Mediaburst, which he successfully grew and then sold in 2006.

Chris is responsible for our overall vision and strategy ensuring the continued growth of Verastar, whilst also creating a culture for colleagues to thrive and succeed.

“My aim for Verastar has been, and continues to be, to create a truly unique business and disrupt the markets of big incumbent suppliers. It’s been fantastic to be a part of the company’s journey as we repositioned to a leading multi-service provider for SMEs and my role is now to ensure that we stay at the top of our game. I’m proud that we are enabled to supply all services on a single bill, single account basis, providing an overall service which no other service provider has achieved so far.”

Chris joined Verastar in 1995 after graduating in Economics and Social Policy from The University of Manchester. Starting out as a Research Analyst, Chris learnt all areas of the business working in various departments from Administration Manager to Operations Director, before being appointed CEO in 2011.

Chris has been at Verastar for over 20 years because, in addition to Manchester United football team, he is passionate about making the running of a business easier for SMEs. Overseeing our entry into new markets has allowed Verastar to achieve this for more than 160,000 customers.

Chris also met his wife Jenny during his time at Verastar. They have had three daughters together giving him an all-girl household – including two twins!

Meet The Team

MEET THE TEAM

CHRIS EARLE

PAUL DOHERTY

NICOLA SMITH

PIOTR NOWOSAD

GILLIAN HILL

ALEX HESLIP

SUSIE DELVES

DAVE HIBBERT

HOLLY MACK

JAMES MITTON

JANETTE PALMER

RICHARD RUDKIN

JO DOGHERTY