At Best Startup London we track over 100,000 London based startups and over 500,000 people who hold key positions in these companies. We use this directory of startups to highlight top employees, founders and board members we think deserve more appreciation than they are currently getting.
This list showcases the top London based Director operating in the Aerospace space. If you think a Director is missing from this list, feel free to contact our editor on [email protected].
The individuals on this list have been included because of exceptional performance in one of the following categories:
- Innovation – Operating as a key part in an extremely innovative business or startup.
- Growth – Operating as a key figure in the growth and upscale of a market leading business or startup.
- Management – Showing exceptional management skills.
- Societal impact – Putting their business on the map for their positive societal or environmental impact.
Our Data – We source our data from OSINT (open source intelligence) and public directories such as Crunchbase, SemRush and many more. The data from these sources should be treated with a degree of caution and verified yourself.
Helen Alexander
Non-executive Director of Rolls-Royce
Dame Helen Alexander joined the Board as Deputy Chairman in December 2011. Dame Helen chairs the Remuneration Committee and is a member of the Nomination Committee. Dame Helen is chairman of UBM plc, the Port of London Authority and Incisive Media, and a non-executive director and chair of the remuneration committee at Rolls-Royce Group plc. Dame Helen is a senior adviser to Bain Capital and Chancellor of the University of Southampton. Dame Helen served as president of the CBI until June 2011. Dame Helen Alexander joined The Economist as Marketing Manager in 1985 after studying at INSEAD for an MBA and completing various roles with Faber and Faber and with Gerald Duckworth & Co. She became Managing Director of the Economist Intelligence Unit in 1993 and in 1997 became Chief Executive of the Economist Group, a position she held until 2008, having joined the company in 1985. Dame Helen was President of the CBI from 2009 to 2011. Dame Helen is also currently involved with not-for-profit organisations in media, the internet, the arts and education, through the trustees at Thomson-Reuters, the WorldWide Web Foundation, the Grand Palais in Paris, the Said Business School in Oxford and St Paul’s Girls’ School. Dame Helen was awarded a CBE for services to publishing in 2004 and in June 2011 was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List for her services to business. She has an MBA from INSEAD.
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About BT, Centrica, Esure, Northern Foods, Rolls-Royce, UBM Plc: Rolls-Royce is an industrial technology company that provides integrated power and propulsion solutions.
Eric Kump
Managing Director and Partner of The Carlyle Group
Eric J. Kump is a Managing Director and Partner. He is Head of the Carlyle Sub Sahara Africa Fund and an advisor of the Carlyle European Partners investment committee. He is based in London. Eric Kump has more than 20 years of private equity experience spanning four continents and numerous sectors. Prior to joining Carlyle European Partners in 2010 , Mr. Kump was a Managing Director and Head of the European Private Equity team of Dubai International Capital (DIC). Prior to that, he was a Managing Director with Merrill Lynch Global Private Equity (MLGPE) where he was a member of the global investment committee. Mr. Kump is on the Board of Directors of MPS, TiAuto Investments and J&J. Mr. Kump received his M.B.A. from Harvard Business School and he received a B.A. in finance and accounting from Pace.
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About The Carlyle Group: The Carlyle Group is a global private equity firm that caters to early and later stage companies.
Katherine Elmore-Jones
Managing Director of The Carlyle Group
Katherine Elmore-Jones is a Managing Director advising on Investor Relations and Fundraising across Europe. She is based in London. Prior to her current role, Ms. Elmore-Jones was Director of European Communications, in charge of managing Carlyle’s public relations in Europe. Before joining Carlyle, she was with Herald Communications and Seed Capital, a U.K. venture capital firm. Ms. Elmore-Jones received her M.A. in biological sciences from Oxford University. She has been registered with the FSA since 2007 for the CF30 controlled function and holds a full Investment Management Certificate.
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About The Carlyle Group, The Carlyle Group: The Carlyle Group is a global private equity firm that caters to early and later stage companies.
Fernando Chueca
Managing Director of The Carlyle Group
Fernando Chueca is a Managing Director with Carlyle Europe Technology Partners focusing on buyouts, growth capital and strategic minority investments throughout Europe in the technology, telecommunications, software and business services sectors. Mr. Chueca is based in London Since joining Carlyle in 2001, Mr. Chueca has been actively involved and he has advised on 11 major investments and ten completed realizations, across Europe. Mr. Chueca is a member of the Board of Directors of Livingstone Technologies, and was formerly on the Board of Directors of Itconic, Expereo, ITRS Group, Arsys Internet, Bigmouthmedia, Nature Delivered (Graze) and FRS Global.
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About The Carlyle Group: The Carlyle Group is a global private equity firm that caters to early and later stage companies.
Alex Wagenberg
Managing Director and Partner of The Carlyle Group
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About The Carlyle Group: The Carlyle Group is a global private equity firm that caters to early and later stage companies.
David FitzGerald
Managing Director of The Carlyle Group
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About The Carlyle Group: The Carlyle Group is a global private equity firm that caters to early and later stage companies.
Colin Atkins
Managing Director of The Carlyle Group
Colin Atkins is a Managing Director and Head of the European Structured Credit advisory team based in London. Mr. Atkins joined the firm in 2004 as Head of Credit for the European Leveraged Finance business, a role in which he worked on many notable transactions, before taking on his current position. Mr. Atkins came to Carlyle from Prudential M&G where between 1999 and November 2004, he helped establish Prudential M&G’s Leveraged Finance platform, which became a market leader in the European institutional market. Over the five year period, the business invested over €2.5 billion in leveraged finance assets and Mr. Atkins had responsibility for primary market execution and secondary market loan trading. Mr. Atkins previously worked in Corporate Private Placements at PPM America in Chicago and held positions in Prudential M&G’s Corporate Tax and Treasury departments. Mr. Atkins holds a B.A. (Hons) in accounting & finance from Nottingham Trent University. He is a member of The Association of Chartered Management Accountants (ACMA) and is a CFA charter holder. Mr. Atkins has been registered with the FSA since 2010 for the CF30 and CF4 controlled functions.
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About The Carlyle Group: The Carlyle Group is a global private equity firm that caters to early and later stage companies.
Martin Glavin
Managing Director of The Carlyle Group
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About The Carlyle Group: The Carlyle Group is a global private equity firm that caters to early and later stage companies.
Andrew Zimmermann
EMEA Controller(Director) of The Carlyle Group
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About The Carlyle Group, The Carlyle Group: The Carlyle Group is a global private equity firm that caters to early and later stage companies.
Stuart MacKenzie
Director of The Carlyle Group
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About The Carlyle Group: The Carlyle Group is a global private equity firm that caters to early and later stage companies.
Andrew Musgrave
Business Development Director of Thales Group
Andrew Musgrave, Vice President IFEC UK and IRE Region, Thales InFlyt Experience, has more than 25 years in the aviation satellite communications industry. In his regional leadership role at Thales, he is responsible for customer account management as well as establishing and running in-flight entertainment and connectivity maintenance activities based at London Heathrow and London Gatwick airports. Mr. Musgrave has worked in a variety of business and program management roles delivering satellite connectivity solutions for cockpit and cabin to both OEM and military customers. Mr. Musgrave earned his BSc in Information Technology from Staffordshire University
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About Thales Group: Thales is a technology in the aerospace, transportation and defense and security markets.
Matthew C Martino
Founder & Managing Director of Lets Fly Academy
Matthew Martino (Full Name) – Matthew Mathetes Chihwai Martino born 27 October 1992 is a British Entrepreneur, Film Producer and Author. Educated at Shenfield High School in Brentwood , Martino has always held a passion for writing – He has always focused on educational writing and research. His first book Lets Fly which was published by DM Aviation was well received by pilots and aviation enthusiasts around the world. During his early years Martino showed all the qualities required to maintain proven success.
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About Lets Fly Academy: An online resource academy which was built to provide information and resources to aspiring pilots and aviations enthusiast.
Jonathan Nicol
Founder & Managing Director of Stratajet
Jonny Nicol Ranked as one of Aviation Week’s Top 10 Leaders of European Business Aviation (at EBACE 2016), Jonny Nicol has undoubtedly risen to be one of the most prominent and influential figures in the private aviation industry. A military man through and through, Jonny is adamant that preparation is the key to success. This is why his vision to revolutionise the private jet industry took five years to develop. Having trained as a fighter pilot and served as an officer and pilot for a decade with the British Army, Jonny Nicol left the British Armed Forces to pursue a career as a an entrepreneur. A self-taught computer scientist, Jonny developed a passion for using technology to disrupt typically traditional industries, his first two businesses doing precisely that in the recruitment and military sectors. After selling the second business to Hewlett Packard’s EDS Defence, Nicol spent time as a freelance commercial pilot, during which time he was struck by the archaic and inefficient nature of private aviation. Noting that old-fashioned systems, such as the means of booking a private jet over the phone via a broker, were holding back the industry from advancing in line with other travel innovations, Jonny set about building a system that could bring private jets into the modern age. Reinventing the industry was no mean feat, involving five years of highly advanced computer programming and overcoming major hurdles, but Stratajet, dubbed ‘the world’s most sophisticated price comparison site,’ is the result. The first of its kind, Stratajet is the world’s fastest private jet booking service. With a technology sophisticated enough to filter through all the necessary variables that go into calculating the cost of flights, it’s the only platform that gives customers direct access to the private jet market. It returns accurate costs of a large range of aircraft in seconds, all of which can be booked instantly. Streamlining an old-fashioned and time-consuming booking process, Stratajet is solving the major problems hampering private aviation; inefficiency and wastage. By cutting costs for aircraft operators and in turn driving down prices for the passenger, Stratajet is making private jet travel more widely accessible to the mainstream traveller.
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About Stratajet: Stratajet is a real-time private jet booking platform using the power of technology to give its passengers total control and freedom.
Daniel Campbell
Managing Director of Effective Space
Daniel is the Managing Director of Effective Space Solutions Limited and leads corporate marketing and business development, bringing over 15 years of business development, marketing, project and product management leadership in several disruptive start-up companies. Prior to joining Effective Space, Daniel led autonomous driving and smart-mobility at Autotalks and Better-Place, and managed mobile product lines for modu and Zoran (now Qualcomm). Daniel is a certified Project Management Professional (PMP)® and a Master Blackblot Product Management Professional™ (Master BPMP). He holds a B.Sc. in Physics and Mathematics from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and an MBA from the Interdisciplinary Center (IDC) in Herzliya.
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About Effective Space, Side Mirror: Effective Space manufactures spacecrafts intended to extend the life of communication satellites.
Aleix Megias Homar
Director, VP Programmes of Open Cosmos
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About Open Cosmos: Open Cosmos provides simple and affordable space missions.
Tim Coombs
Managing Director of Aviation Economics
Tim is the MD of Aviation Economics our consultancy brand and has worked in aviation ever since leaving university, which was a long time ago……..so he has a vast amount of experience in the industry! He runs a team of talented industry professionals who understand the industry end-to-end. Outside of work, Tim likes spending time with Nelson, his black Labrador (who sometimes visits the team at RDC HQ), and of course the rest of his family.
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About Aviation Economics, RDC Aviation: Aviation Economics is a consulting firm that works with aviation enterprises, including government agencies, airlines, and airports.