The Econsultancy Platform
Explore our wealth of resources to help you achieve modern marketing excellence.
About Us
Ashley Friedlein
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
Steve Newbold
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.
Richard Breeden
Managing Director, Information, Digital Learning and Events, Xeim
Richard Robinson
Managing Director, Xeim Advise
Richard is Managing Director of 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.
Stefan Tornquist
SVP, Research and Online Learning
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.
Paul Davies
Managing Partner
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).
Amelia Shore
Sales Director
Kate Hewitt
Group Director of Project Management
As Group Director of Project Management at Econsultancy, Kate is responsible for the management and smooth running of customised training and consultancy projects for Econsultancy’s global clients.
Before joining Econsultancy, Kate held Business Unit Director roles at Chemist+Druggist and venuefinder.com at UBM (now Informa), managing all aspects of business management, strategic planning and P&L ownership. Kate has a proven track record in transformational change management, new system implementation and process improvement.
Abby Thompson
Project Director
Charlie Gavin
Client Director
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.
Sam Wotherspoon
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.
Natalie Soldera
Head of Product
Laurence Bird
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.
Sean Donnelly
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.
Lynette Saunders
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.
Justin Weddle
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.
Rebecca Sentance
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.
Abby Thompson
Project Director
Abby is a PRINCE2 qualified, experienced project manager within the L&D sector.
She is responsible for the concurrent management of some of the largest client projects in Econsultancy’s global Capability & Consultancy (C&C) team. Abby covers everything in the life cycle of a project from initial conversation with the client & proposal, budgeting and design through to launch, deploy, iteration and feedback.
Before joining Econsultancy, Abby was the Short Courses Manager at another marketing training company, responsible for running all in-company learning programmes and F2F training courses.
Econsultancy is part of Xeim
Xeim helps its clients achieve Excellence in marketing. Providing all the insight, advice and connections that marketing professionals need to stand apart from their peers.
Econsultancy is a global business with international offices in Europe, Asia and the US. We launch multiple new tools to help marketers analyse and measure their progress, including performance benchmarks and influencer marketing measurement.
Econsultancy launches its acclaimed Modern Marketing Model, which rethinks the discipline of marketing for the digital age. We also launch our suite of online training products including quickfire ‘microlearning’ videos.
Our pioneering online course – Fast Track To Digital Marketing – launches, while some of our products such as the Email Census reach their 10th year of production, showing our unparalleled depth of content.
We launch the Festival of Marketing, a global event based in London that features 250+ speakers per year across 12 stages, including such luminaries as Apple founder Steve Wozniak and legendary businessman Sir Martin Sorrell. Our blog surpasses more than one million page views per month. Econsultancy publishes the Modern Marketing Manifesto, calling on marketers to adopt vital digital skills.
Econsultancy joins Centaur Media, giving the business access to more than 3.8 million professionals per month, including unparalleled exposure to senior brand marketers through its media brands such as Marketing Week.
Econsultancy launches its suite of digital transformation and bespoke consultancy services, adapting our thought leadership and experience in training into running large scale international projects. We approach our first 100,000 members.
Our US office opens and Econsultancy also expands into the Middle East and Asia, eventually opening an office in Asia.
The Econsultancy business has tripled in size since its launch and the professional community reaches 50,000 members. We launch our now-famous, award-winning blog to provide our users with a quick take on our experience and strategic ideas.
Econsultancy moves heavily into events, with internet founder Tim Berners-Lee speaking at our Internet Decade event, followed by our launch of The Future Of Digital Marketing conference.
The business starts producing its first independent research reports, with the first setting Econsultancy’s tone for the practical focus on best practice: ‘Content That Works’.
Econsultancy begins life as a digital community for professional marketers. This is five years before Facebook is launched in 2004; and three years before LinkedIn goes live in 2002. Meanwhile, founder Ashley Friedlein writes his first book ‘Web Project Management’, an early guide to working online.