Meet the Team Behind CTO Academy

A dynamic team of seasoned tech leaders and visionary educators
dedicated to shaping the future of technology leadership.

Founders

Andrew Weaver

CEO, Lecturer, Coach

20+ years of executive-level commercial experience in SME and early-stage companies across multiple sectors, inc. law, tech, travel, leisure, and property. Particular expertise around strategy, sales, funding/finance, M&A, and mindset. Course leader/mentor at London-based startup accelerator. Cranfield MBA graduate.
Jason Noble

CTO, Lecturer, Coach

Tech entrepreneur with extensive board-level IT innovation and computer science experience. Has been a technical director of software businesses and managed large, complex enterprise projects with successful exits. Career has been defined by driving innovation, strategic & operational planning, training, technical sales, and software agile project management.

Team

Martyn Knight

CFO

Martyn is an accomplished CFO/FD with a depth of valuable experience across corporate finance, corporate governance, funding, due diligence, restructuring, treasury, compliance, and investor functions. Based in London, UK.
Nati Welner

Customer Services Lead

Nati leads our customer service team. If you’ve been with CTO Academy for a while, you’ve probably heard from her with a warm welcome — part of our mission to ensure every member gains maximum value from the program. Based in Argentina.
Marco Zimmerman

Operations Manager

Marco helps oil the wheels of the company by looking after marketing ops, data, and product release. He is the first point of contact when an improvement is requested on our platforms. Based in Florianópolis, Santa Catarina, Brazil.
Betina Zanchin

Senior Platform Engineer

Betina makes our tech work. She is responsible for the development of our main platform, which is updated weekly. With automation being her superpower, she automates all of our menial tasks. Based in Brazil.
Igor Katusic

Content and Website Manager

If you found us on the web, then it was probably Igor who made that happen. He looks after our content and newsletter, as well as having strong opinions on SEO and messaging. Based in Croatia.
Pedro Bracher Duarte

Platform Developer

Pedro is part of our development team, bringing ideas to life through Bubble and no-code innovation. He builds new features, optimizes workflows, and ensures our platform runs smoothly.With a problem-solving mindset and a passion for automation, he’s always exploring ways to make our systems smarter and more efficient. Based in São Paulo, Brazil.
Emma Kershaw

Events Manager

Emma has over 12 years’ experience in Executive Support, having previously worked in the Education, Pharmaceutical, and Security industries.Before working as an assistant and following the completion of her marketing degree, Emma worked in the hospitality industry in Event Management, where she managed everything from large-scale conferences to weddings. Based in the UK.

Lecturers

Julian Costley

Entrepreneur, Investor, LBS Mentor

Serial investor in 26 companies with a career of executive roles at Thomson Reuters, France Telecom, BSkyB and exited E*TRADE in 2001. Mentor at London Business Model and recently purchased his own publishing company.
Lucy-Rose Walker

Entrepreneur, Business Coach, Author

Co-founded and exited a business support company in the UK in 2012. Has since authored “Misadventures in Entrepreneuring” and is now focused on coaching startup founders, lecturing, and a senior role in the Bitcoin Collective.
Vyom Uphadya

CTO, CIO, CDO, Executive Director

Vast executive experience across multiple sectors, developing top-tier talent, maturing processes, and advancing technologies. Also has a leading role in the South Florida Tech Hub.
Jim Mortensen

Fractional CTO, COO and Leadership Coach

Technical leader with extensive business achievements over a wide range of domains. Jim has a particular expertise in technical due diligence, strategic planning, data security, and the payment card industry. He also coaches senior technology leaders from around the world.
Santiago Garcia da Rosa

CTO, Co-Founder, Y Combinator Alumni

Hands-on CTO at Nowports, a South American Unicorn in the logistics space. Also a regular contributor to publications on technology, leadership, and entrepreneurship.
Gus Power

VP of Architecture and Engineering

Vast experience across multiple sectors, from enterprise to startup. Described as being a “people-friendly techie,” with an extraordinary knowledge of the dynamics behind software development. He is known for saying, “The solution doesn’t have to be as big as the problem.”
Mita Patel

CTO, Co-Founder, Coach and Fmr Head of Product

20 years of deep experience across Business Acquisition, Product Leadership, Software Development, and Account Management. “I use lean methodologies to validate, build, and commercialize real problems worth solving for users and customers.”
Staffan Noteberg

Best Selling Author of “Pomodoro Technique”

Staffan focuses his writing and lecturing on personal productivity and answering the question, “How can we complete things when we have so many tasks to do?” Well, you won’t get more done simply because you accept more requests; the opposite is true.
Luca Rossi

CTO, Head of Engineering, Founder of Refactoring Newsletter

An entrepreneur who loves leading engineers in developing great products. Formerly a CTO, Co-Founder and Head of Engineering, now creator and founder of the growing Refactoring Newsletter for Engineering Managers.
Jof Walters

Entrepreneur, No-Code and Fintech Pioneer

25 years focused on the creation of new financial products and services. Has led new product development, innovation, and banking teams, launching and exiting two fintech companies. Now co-founder of Million Labs in the UK with a focus on the use of no-code technology.
Andrew Bryant

Best Selling Author, Keynote Speaker, Executive Coach

World-leading expert on Self Leadership and author of multiple best-selling books on and around the topic. Andrew also travels the world as a keynote speaker and executive leadership coach to major corporations.
Hariharan Gopalan

CTO and Meditation Instructor

Diversified IT experience in small and large-scale information systems for private and government clients. Now a CTO based in the US, but also brings to CTO Academy his insight and knowledge as a Meditation Instructor.
Caleb Storkey

Entrepreneur, Keynote Speaker, Author

Serial entrepreneur, international speaker, author, and consultant, Caleb has worked with a wide range of businesses, from multinationals to highly disruptive and fast-growing startups. He is also a co-author of “Futureproof: How to Get Your Business Ready for the Next Disruption.”
Joseph Trodden

CEO, Co-Founder, Coach

With a focus on practical mindset and strategy techniques for leaders, Joseph coaches teams on focus, decision-making, team culture, mindsets, and communication, emphasizing combining the different cognitive styles on the team.
Lauren Hill

Security Consultant, Barclays

With a 1st class BSc in Cybersecurity, Lauren is focused on concise sharing of the real threat landscape with tools like threat mapping and trend analysis.
Mike Stephens

CEO, Head of Entrepreneurial Academy

Describes himself as a “restless idea-hunter, with a deeply held belief in the power of creativity and curiosity to change the world; hence, my love of working with entrepreneurs. I love to see the limitless possibilities in people and businesses.” Currently CEO at a major business support organization in the UK.
Tim Dahlstrom

COO

Passionate about the potential of No-Code technologies, whilst from the US, Tim is currently working as the COO of Zeroqode, a no-code web development agency, and is located in Kazakhstan.
Zoe Tuffs

Coach, Mentor, Speaker

After 20 years working in live events and leading teams in corporate organizations such as Google, Toyota, BMW, and Samsung, Zoe has taken that experience into a coaching and career development practice.
Samer Bechara

CTO, Mentor

With many years of experience managing technical teams and delivering projects, Samer’s work experience spans from startups to companies generating tens of millions in revenue. He is a skilled manager of cross-border teams.
April Edwards

Senior Cloud Advocate, Microsoft

April is a senior cloud developer advocate and the DevOps practice lead at Microsoft, specializing in application transformation. Her focus is on working on Microsoft Azure to take customers on a journey from legacy technology to serverless and containers, where code comes first.
Tim Plumridge

Head of IT

Experienced Head of Information Technology with a history of working in the international trade and development industry and a background in business. Tim’s main focus is on IT Transformation, Strategy, Management, and Information Security.
Anna Ashford

Lawyer, Investment Director, Board Advisor

Anna is an unusual lawyer in that she gets business because she’s also a director, investor, and founder of ALT-Legal in the UK. This means her lectures are focused on the practical and necessary role that law plays in the business life cycle, wherever you are in the world.
Samuel Rowe

Senior Customer Success Architect, GitHub

Works with customers to succeed in their business objectives through the use of GitHub and is passionate about technological evolution, improvement, and programming languages.
Sanjay Mistry

Group CTO, NED, Coach

Sanjay brings extensive leadership experience across technology and operations, particularly around organizational transformation, scaling, system and process revolution, leading through change and disruption. He is also an experienced coach working with tech leaders around the world.
Henry Fairpo

M&A Advisor, Strategic Consultant, Investor

During recent years, Henry has been involved in two international exits, an LBO, a major fund raise, and was part of an award-winning team at the British Private Equity Awards. He understands the M&A market and how to structure deals between competing stakeholders.
Charles Pugh

Platform Lead

Senior Tech Leader with 20+ years working in ASOS, Amazon, Microsoft, and Nokia. He brings particular insight around driving the design and delivery of applications across digital platforms and has led the development of some of the UK’s highest volume consumer websites.
Trevor Lea-Cox

Director, Former Group CIO

Direct experience with a large Transportation, Logistics, and Financial Services conglomerate. Trevor is also a Managing Director of the UK-based SME. He now specializes in Information, Systems, and Technology (IS&T) management, providing cross-industry consulting.
Neil Macleod

CEO, CFO, MD of Multinational, Professor of Business

Neil brings a wide range of experience in senior executive positions in global companies from Australia to Luxembourg, USA to Malaysia. He is now an Honorary Professor at the University of Dundee Business School.
Alastair Hall

UK Country Manager at Innovation Consultancy

Alastair has developed a deep understanding of R&D tax and global grant funding opportunities, which, in his words, “can be an essential business intelligence tool, with some creative thinking, to help run your business or improve KPI’s.”
Sonabh Bubna

Accountant and Strategic Advisor

A qualified accountant and founder of a strategic CFO consultancy, Sonabh works with companies around the world to help them improve financial strategy and operations.
James Sinclair

Data Visualisation Principal

Data scientist and distributed-computation and machine-learning engineer with experience across a broad range of industries and applications.
Kate Rowland

Senior Tax Manager, EY

With experience at many of the leading accountancy firms, Kate is now a senior tax manager at EY, dealing with national and international tax issues for client companies.
Tiffany Vaughan

Senior Tax Manager, EY

Qualified accountant with six years’ experience at EY London, recently promoted to Senior Tax Manager after specialising in Indirect Tax for global clients.
André Louçã

CEO, CTO, Head of Data Science

With a deep knowledge of data and analytics, Andre was recently promoted to CEO after six years in the CTO role and as Head of Data Science before that.
Rafa Prada

Head of Design, Lecturer at London College of Communication

Senior product design consultant, industry mentor, and lecturer whose work lies in the intersection of UX, Business, and Technology, specializing in digital products with an emphasis on collaboration practices and privacy.
Kraig Appleton

Director of Data Science

Data scientist, distributed-computation, and machine-learning engineer with experience across a broad range of industries and applications.
Paul Bayliss

Joint Managing Director and CTO at Smartodds

Paul brings deep expertise in analytics, technology leadership, and scaling data-driven organizations.
John Brightwell

Director at WaveAccess

With 35 years at the helm of technology as a CEO and CTO, John has been at the forefront of software innovation and development.
Sally Eaves

Emergent Technology CTO

Prof. Sally Eaves, described as the ‘torchbearer for ethical tech’, is an international advocate for inclusive opportunity. Founder of Aspirational Futures, she champions skilling and empowering interdisciplinary talent while advancing the use of emerging technologies for business transformation and social good.
Paul Gerrard

Eminent Software Consultant, Author, Teacher, Coach

An internationally renowned, award-winning software engineering consultant, author, and coach. Host of the Technology Leadership Forum, Programme Chair of the 2014 EuroSTAR Testing conference, Programme Chair of the 2022 Hustef Testing conference, keynote speaker, and thought-leader.
Michael Hausenblas

Product Manager, AWS

Open source product owner, delivering a distribution of OpenTelemetry and integrations with AWS compute environments. Contributing to upstream OpenTelemetry in End-User and Agent Management working groups.
Arno Hollosi

CTO, Blackshark.ai

Professor and Research Scientist, managing the technology and development organization of Blackshark.ai’s geospatial analysis platform.
Phil Kunovski

CFO, KYMIRA

Leader in R&D into new e-textile platforms for wearable technologies in sports, fitness, and medical markets. Currently CFO at KYMIRA; previously CTO for over eight years.
Matthew O’Keefe

Principal Technologist

Results-driven senior technologist with over 25 years of success in building and distributing great products.
Sergey Ponomarenko

IoT Expert

An IoT/IIoT & Telco expert with nearly 30 years of overall software development background, including 20 years of software development management.
Ian Price

Performance Psychologist, Author

Former CEO, now psychologist and author, Ian helps teams build mental toughness.
Ashwin Ram

Cybersecurity Evangelist

Ashwin Ram is a seasoned cybersecurity expert and thought leader, combining executive consulting expertise with deep technical acumen.
Alexander Wilson

Investment Director at NVM Private Equity

Alexander specialises in sourcing and executing £10–20M transactions across UK growth businesses.
Lindsay Reid

Compliance Director and Consultant

Compliance practitioner and global director with deep insight and knowledge around areas of Training, Education, D&I, and Culture.
Ainsley Bilton

CIO, Technical Director

Technical Director and CIO, with 30+ years of certified experience leading enterprise systems, delivery strategies, and business transformation. Hands-on, results-driven, and skilled across Agile, PRINCE2, Lean, and other frameworks, he specialises in turning strategy into measurable outcomes.