London Business School

University of Oxford

The Manchester Metropolitan University

The University of Manchester

Interim Practice Manager at Proforest

Europe's Data & Innovation Director for Proforest, a global sustainability non-profit consultancy, with a focus on responsible sourcing and production of tropical commodities such as Palm, Sugar, Soy, etc. 

Set up a new global Proforest data community to share innovation (e.g. use of AI, ML, drones) and best practices, and agree on global but flexible data standards. Hired a new Europe-based data team to use analysis and visualisation tools and to gain insights from ‘messy’ global supply chain data.

Proforest

Data & Innovation Director, Europe

Owned P&L and business operations for a team of 50+ environmental, social, and data experts working with large companies (e.g., Nestle & Coca-Cola), governments, and local communities to implement responsible sourcing and production practices across a broad range of commodities. Worked with CEO and management team to achieve an 80% increase in net income in the last three years.

Collaborated with commercial, operations, HR, and finance teams to introduce new processes and tools to improve business development, forecasting, fee setting, resourcing, training, and recruitment. Introduced annual strategy process and brought in quarterly management review, significantly improving forecasting accuracy. Actively worked with Proforest teams in Latin America, Southeast Asia, and Africa to share learnings and strengthen their consultancy business operations.

Consultancy Director, Europe

Secondment from McKinsey as Interim Chief Digital Officer for SIG plc, a construction materials distributor. Launched revenue-generating B2B eCommerce business from scratch in six months. Managed 30+ person team to create a fresh new brand, set up a scalable cloud-based tech stack; build a responsive web app; improve back end distribution practices to meet raised consumer expectations; launch a machine learning engine for product data; recruit a skilled, digital team; and move to an entirely agile (and later distributed/remote) way of working.

SIG plc

Chief Digital Officer

Expert Junior Partner in McKinsey Leap Digital Business Building practice, with a focus on building new B2B businesses. Notable projects included setting up a digital product studio for a large BPO firm to enable rapid delivery and scale-up of innovative HR products, including SaaS product for high volume employee onboarding, e.g. retail, hospitality & warehousing. Coached and mentored senior client business leaders in agile ways of working.

McKinsey & Company

Expert Junior Partner, Digital Business Building

Interim Management of award-winning digital product consultancy, working with brilliant client teams around the world to launch digital products and services. One year contract covering Founder and CEO whilst on paternity leave, leading a team specialising in highly collaborative and agile product strategy, service design, CEx/UX/UI and development.

White October

Interim Managing Director

Headed up all entrepreneurship activity at Virgin Unite, the not-for-profit foundation of the Branson Family and the Virgin Group; member of ExCo reporting to Managing Director. Managed Virgin Unite’s global incubator programme, supporting 5,000+ early-stage start-up founders across five continents; designed and created digital strategy, reaching 27m users with inspiring entrepreneurial content; launched global online learning platform; built impact investing footprint in US, UK, Canada and Caribbean; acted as board member for Branson Centres of Entrepreneurship in South Africa and Caribbean, alongside other Virgin CEOs.

Virgin Unite

Entrepreneurship Director

Founder of Maitland Jones Consulting - a company focused on enabling entrepreneurial leaders to take their careers & companies to the next level. Mentored entrepreneur CEOs on leadership, strategy and general management and as part of Oxford University's Entrepreneurship programme and London Business School Incubator and Entrepreneurship Programme. Coached senior executives at London Business School through 'disruptive' career transitions into new sectors, functions and/or geographies. Delivered strategic consulting for clients including BUPA, DCC and Eden McCallum.

Maitland Jones

Director

Regional product leadership role, developing new products to open up markets and gain market share; member of MEA Operating Committee, reporting to Regional President. Worked with cross-functional, international teams delivering FinTech projects including rolling out contactless solutions in the Gulf; opening up e-commerce to 14M debit cardholders in South Africa with MasterCard Mobile; launching contactless transit solutions in South Africa; and first to market Mobile Point of Sale devices in South Africa and Kenya.

Product leadership role covered all areas of payments innovation: e-commerce, NFC, Mobile Money/Wallets, Mobile Point of Sale (MPOS), Peer to Peer (P2P) payments, Remittances, and Contactless Payments. 

After leaving MasterCard I took a 9 travel month break before returning to work in London. I went to Europe, Africa, Australia and New Zealand, revisiting old haunts and finding new ones. Key learning, don't carry a snowboard around with you when seeing the world.

Mastercard

Vice President, Emerging Payments, Middle East and Africa

Member of MEA Operating Committee, reporting to Regional President.Drove performance of P&L across 10 countries in Sub Saharan Africa including South Africa. Developed and successfully implemented a strategy to increase market share and improve client satisfaction. Introduced consultative selling model, and acted as MasterCard’s prime representative to regulators, government, and CEOs of major regional banks. Launched South African biometric social grants card, bringing 10M low-income households into the formal banking sector and eliminating $12m of fraud in year one.

General Manager, Southern Africa

Associate Partner at McKinsey's Business Technology Office. Joined in London and moved to Johannesburg in 2008. Managed multiple digital and strategy engagements across sectors (Public Sector, Financial Services, Consumer Goods, Telecoms and Resources) and geographies (UK, Europe, Africa and the Middle East).

As Sub Saharan Africa Lead for McKinsey EMEA Banking IT, Operations and Outsourcing practice, acted as a senior leader on multi-year digital transformation programme for government finance agency, resulting in additional income of $6bn, and overall agency revenue doubling in 10 years.

Associate Partner

Full P&L responsibility for Akibia's London practice. Recruited and managed a team of 35 Siebel consultants.  Reached profitability in first year, delivering revenues of $4.5m, 40% ahead of target.  Member of Executive Committee, reporting to CEO.  Akibia, later renamed as Innoveer, was acquired by Cloud Sherpas and is now part of Accenture Cloud First Applications.

Akibia Consulting

Vice President, Head of London

Managed multiple IT implementation projects, focusing on  telecoms and CRM including:
•	$3M sales & marketing call centre solution for DHL for  2000+ users in 16 countries
•	Sales force automation solution for corporate business unit of Cable and Wireless.  
•	Order processing and service recovery solution for British Telecom

Atos Consulting Switzerland

Associate Director

Taught Mathematics and IT to 11-18 year olds.

Howard of Effingham School

Teacher

Performed various IT consulting roles, lastly as a team leader. Programmed in C, Java, SQL, COBOL, JCL, and SAP. Clients included Northern Electric, North West Water, and Northern Foods.

Anna Jones