About Us

Founder & President

Ashley founded Econsultancy in 1999. He remains with the business as the president of Centaur Media’s marketing portfolio.

Ashley is one of the most influential and connected figures in digital and marketing. As one of the 100+ recommendations for him on LinkedIn reads, “If Ashley doesn’t know it – it ain’t worth knowing.”

Ashley is author of two best-selling books on digital. A columnist, commentator and blogger, he speaks worldwide on digital and marketing trends and best practice.

Ashley is involved in a number of digital businesses and ventures as investor, adviser, mentor and operationally, outside of his involvement with Econsultancy. including:

CEO & Founder, Guild – private professional messaging app
Chairman, Ably – realtime data delivery platform
Investor, Cranberry Panda – ecommerce recruitment
Digital Advisory Board, Age UK – digital transformation for leading charity
Adviser, Government Digital Service – digital transformation of government
Mentor, Cambridge Judge Business School – masters/diploma in entrepreneurship
Speaker, Founders4Schools – inspiring school children into business/entrepreneurship
Fellow, Society of Leadership Fellows – peer community of 250 UK business leaders
Investor, Seat Unique – premium ticketing platform
Investor, Learn Amp – employee learning platform
Investor, Snoozle – social alarm clock

Group Managing Director, Xeim

Steve oversees Xeim brands including Marketing Week, Festival of Marketing, Creative Review, Econsultancy, Influencer Intelligance, Fashion & Beauty Monitor, Oystercatchers, MarketMakers and Really.

Prior to this he was responsible for Centaur’s Media & Events portfolios and Home Interest Division. Before joining Centaur in 2015, Steve held Managing Director roles at WGSN, i2i Events, Emap Communications (now Ascential) and Emap Consumer Media (now Bauer).

He has experience of running multi-media, international businesses in key sectors across both B2B and Consumer markets.

Managing Partner

Richard is Managing Partner at Econsultancy and specialises in accelerating marketing performance & digital transformation.

Richard has worked internationally with The Coca-Cola Company, domestically with McDonald’s restaurants heading Adult and Family Marketing, and before Econsultancy was one of the four equity partners of Oystercatchers. In addition to working in brand marketing, Richard has worked for Publicis Worldwide where he led the agency’s P&G business in EMEA for several years while running Publicis Groupe’s African expansion in parallel.

Richard is an award-winning diversity advocate and has been recognised as a ‘Male Agent of Change’ by the Women’s Business Council & Management Today, as well being ranked in the top 12 men championing women in business by the Financial Times. Vice-Chair of The Ideas Foundation, Board Member of Creative Equals, Token Man, BAME2020 and the first male SuperMomma for SheSaysUK. He is proud to be called a ‘Campaigner for increased diversity in the industry’ by The Huffington Post.

VP, Research, USA

Stefan manages all of Econsultancy’s research and content in North America. He is the primary author of over 100 studies exploring topics in digital marketing, technology and business transformation with partners such as Adobe, Google, IBM, Microsoft and Salesforce.

Stefan’s work has been featured in the Wall St. Journal, New York Times, USA Today, NPR, CNN, CNBC, Fast Company and AdAge.

Before joining Econsultancy, Stefan was the research director for MarketingSherpa. He began his digital career as co-founder of rich media pioneer Bluestreak, now part of Dentsu.

Group Client Services Manager
Sam is our organisational superstar who heads up our Econsultancy subscriptions client services team. The client services team help to support and deliver customer success to our community of Econsultancy subscribers.

Research Director

As Econsultancy’s Research Director, Laurence Bird leads the content & research strategy and team for Econsultancy’s subscribers.

Previously, Laurence worked in Haymarket’s Strategy & Planning team where she led the insight strategy across the whole group.  She joined Haymarket from AutoTrader, where she led the customer value strategy and insight team for the #1 digital marketplace in the automotive industry.

Earlier, Laurence worked as an independent consultant and held positions at several media, marketing and analytics companies.  She was Digital Research Director at Time Warner where she led the digital insight programme for CNN International globally, including the creation and management of award-winning thought-leadership projects.

Previous to that, Laurence was Vice-President at IAB Europe and Head of Planning & Research at IAB UK where she worked closely with the CEO and Board and acted as a consultant to the online and mobile industries. She also chaired the IAB’s Research Council, led the research & planning team, and managed the Measurement Committee.

Before joining the IAB, Laurence held several positions at Walt Disney International where she provided quantitative and qualitative analysis and conducted and commissioned projects across all product categories, including digital, TV, films, consumer products and theme parks. She was involved in global initiatives focusing on the company’s brand management and strategic planning.

Laurence holds a global top-tier Executive MBA from Imperial College Business School, where she specialised in Strategy, Entrepreneurship and Marketing. While studying, she won the prestigious London Business School Business Plan Competition and consulted for the Beijing Olympic Games.

Group Client Director

Paul has spent the last eight years helping marketing and digital leaders and their teams adopt a new mind-set and build new skills by developing and delivering multi-channel learning programmes.

Prior to this, Paul spent 15 years in operational marketing at Nestle & Diageo. His senior roles included Head of Scotch and Luxury Brands for Global Travel & Middle East and Beer Portfolio Manager for Southern Africa. This combination of operational experience and capability building means Paul is able to understand and authentically connect with marketing teams at all levels.

Paul loves the outdoors and in his free time can most often to be found running, cycling or dog walking with his family which includes an 12 year old boy (George) and identical nine year old twin girls (Ruby & Leela).

Group Client Director

Simon is responsible for building marketing excellence programmes and designing marketing/digital marketing training for clients.

Before joining Econsultancy, Simon was Head of Marketing Communications at BT. Whilst there, he oversaw all roster management and agency relationships, and focused on improving the quality of strategic and campaign development. He helped successfully launch the new BT Sport channels in direct competition with Sky, and created a powerful integrated programme of comms to leverage their sponsorship of the London 2012 Olympics and Paralympics.

Before that he worked agency-side, notably at McCann, Publicis and M&C Saatchi, and has led such prestigious accounts as Foster’s, UBS, British Army Recruiting and McVitie’s.

Above all, Simon has the rare advantage of having worked both sides of the marketing and agency ‘fence’, with all the insights and skills that this brings.

Head of Retention

Charlie Gavin leads the Account Management team at Econsultancy.
He is responsible for the success of our subscription clients, defining our approach to account management and providing the processes and tools to empower the team to deliver on, and exceed, our clients’ expectations.
Together with his brilliant team, Charlie helps our clients to maximise on their annual membership to increase the value of our long-term partnerships for both the client and Econsultancy.
Prior to joining Econsultancy in 2014, Charlie worked in the International Education industry leading sales into major markets including Japan and Russia.

Head of Product

Head of Partner Content

Nick’s an award-winning content marketer, with extensive experience in strategy, creation, management and distribution. At Econsultancy, his team create market-leading research, content and events for companies such as SAP, IBM, Sitecore, Salesforce, IBM, Adobe, Cognizant and MediaMath.

He’s helped leading global brands such as Adobe, Google, Sitecore, Vodafone, Sony Music and Levi’s to develop and deliver relevant and compelling content that engages consumers across the whole of the buyer journey, builds awareness and authority for the brand, and ultimately helps them acquire and retain profitable relationships with their customers.

Senior Analyst

As a Senior Analyst, Seán Donnelly advises clients via industry-leading research and briefings covering marketing, innovation and technology.

His background is in innovation management. Before joining Econsultancy, Seán worked at Dublin City University (DCU) where he led the delivery of over 150 digital marketing, ecommerce and elearning consulting projects with SMEs and international businesses. An award winning educator, he has lectured in digital marketing at Dublin City University, University College Cork, National University of Ireland and Cass Business School.

He was also at the forefront of digital marketing training in Ireland. He led a digital outreach project called Techspectations, which delivered more than 15,000 seats of free digital marketing training through a syllabus of marketing workshops and bootcamps attended by professional marketers and business owners.

Seán holds a BA in International Business and Languages (German and Spanish) and a Masters in Electronic Commerce from Dublin City University.

Senior Analyst

Lynette works in the research team at Econsultancy, where she works on delivering industry-leading research, briefings and reports for the digital marketing industry. Her previous experience has involved responsibility for delivering measurements and insights and improving overall online customer experience for Cancer Research UK and the Royal Mail Group.

Group Director of Online Learning
Justin joined our team seven years ago to lead Econsultancy’s training and qualifications offerings. He holds an MBA, an MA in Information Management and is a certified SCRUM Master and Product Owner.
Justin has worked in the education and government sectors with a specific focus in UK/US higher education, technology solutions and information management. He recently completed a three-year post as an Advisory Board Member on the Faculty of Business and Management at Regent’s University London.
As Group Director, Justin works collaboratively with our UK, US and Singapore offices working across the commercial, marketing and technology teams overseeing learning projects at Econsultancy and six other Centaur Media companies.

Editor, Blog

Ben Davis is editor of the Econsultancy blog. He lives in Manchester, England.

Deputy Editor, Blog
Rebecca is an internet aficionado, technology enthusiast, and an ardent fact-checker. Her favourite topics to sound off on include voice search, SEO, emerging technology, digital transformation, UX, and ridiculously overhyped marketing trends.
 Away from the blog, she can mostly be found on Twitter.

Social Media & Community Manager