Our Team
Experts in building senior leadership teams
Our consultants, ranging from digital industry veterans to young high-flyers, share a passion for helping innovative businesses flourish, and an unwavering commitment to client service.
Meet some of our Search Team.
Clare Johnston - CEO & Founder
Stephanie de Wangen - Director
Anca Condrea - Director
Lydia Shepherd - Director
Danielle Ward - Director
Jorge Mascarenhas - Director
James Burrows - Director
Sarah Noyce - Director
Thomas is a Senior Consultant at The Up Group.
Prior to The Up Group Thomas was a Researcher, leading board and c-suite searches in the Government and Housing Practice at Odgers Berndtson. He holds a BA in Business Economics from the University of Exeter.
Thomas Andrews - Senior Consultant
Imogen is a Senior Consultant at The Up Group.
Prior to joining The Up Group, Imogen was a Principal at H.I. Executive Consulting, where she led searches across the Digital and Media landscape globally. She has worked extensively with investors and Private Equity backed companies, as well as publicly listed businesses, on Board, CEO, Commercial, Marketing and GM mandates.
Imogen began her career at Freshminds, where she built a team to deliver consulting projects for world-leading strategy consultancies through the firm’s freelance network. She subsequently joined Blackwood Group as a Senior Associate in the Technology, Media & Telecoms practice.
Imogen holds a B.A. in Classics from King’s College London and a Graduate Diploma in Law from BPP Law School.
Imogen Carter - Senior Consultant
Alexa is a Senior consultant at The Up Group.
Prior to joining, Alexa was a Principal at True Search, where she was a core member of the Consumer practice in EMEA. She brings a strong customer-experience and digital focus, having partnered with a variety of private equity and publicly listed businesses on GTM, CEO and Board mandates, across a broad range of consumer industries.
Alexa began her career at The Up Group where she partnered with a range of corporate and investor backed businesses at all stages of growth curve, focussed on customer and digital.
Alexa holds a B.A. in Geography from The University of Exeter.
Alexa Farrell - Senior Consultant
Ricky is a Senior Consultant at The Up Group.
Prior to joining Up, Ricky spent over four years at contingent recruitment firm Harvey Nash where he worked in the permanent technology infrastructure team within the Finance and Banking Practice.
Ricky graduated with a B.A. in American Studies from the University of East Anglia.
Ricky Isaacs - Senior Consultant
Eon is a Senior Consultant at The Up Group.
Prior to joining The Up Group, Eon was legal counsel at Balderton Capital, the European technology focused VC fund. At Balderton, Eon was responsible for advising on the fund's early-stage investments into technology and internet companies and managing the fund’s portfolio of c.100 companies. Prior to Balderton, Eon was a corporate lawyer at two US corporate law firms where he advised clients in the VC and PE ecosystems, with a particular focus on the technology and life sciences sectors.
Eon graduated with a MA (Hons) in French and Politics from the University of Edinburgh. Eon also holds the Certificat d’Etudes Politiques from l’Institut d’Etudes Politiques in France as well as a Legal Practice Certificate and Graduate Diploma in Law from BBP in London.
Eon has dual French and South African citizenship, is a native English, French and Afrikaans speaker and is proficient in Spanish.
Eon de Quelen - Senior Consultant
Yana is a Senior Consultant at The Up Group.
Prior to The Up Group, Yana was a Senior Associate at Leathwaite (a boutique executive search firm) where she sat within the Commercial and Digital practice. She worked with a broad range of financial services clients, covering banks, fintech and payments firms, insurance firms and private equity backed businesses.
Prior to joining Leathwaite Yana worked at IBM Deutschland in Global Marketing, while completing her degree in International Business and German at the University of Birmingham where she achieved First-Class Honours.
As well as possessing experience of working overseas, Yana is a keen linguist and fluent in English, Ukrainian, Russian, and German which helps her deliver across a broad spectrum of international search mandates
Yana Skobeleva - Senior Consultant
Lucy is a Senior Associate at The Up Group.
Prior to The Up Group, Lucy was an Associate at True Search, part of the True platform; a global suite of products and services driving the intelligence behind talent management. During her time there she specialised in placing Product & Engineering leaders into VC-backed start-ups and scale-up businesses globally. Preceding her time at True Search, Lucy worked at a boutique firm focused on the European technology and digital ecosystem.
Lucy graduated from the University of Durham with a BA in Theology.
Lucy Baker - Consultant
Charles is a Senior Associate at The Up Group.
Charles has a focus on senior level, go-to-market searches for B2B SaaS companies with PE and VC backing.
Previously, Charles worked with investor-backed companies on their go-to-market leadership searches in Europe and the US with Erevena before joining The Up Group. He led searches within the SaaS b2b scale-up tech arena.Charles also has experience placing mid-level individuals in the Payments, Fintech, and Retail Banking sectors through contingent recruitment.
Charles Daker - Senior Associate
Ayesha is an Associate at The Up Group.
Prior to working at Up, Ayesha was introduced to the world of recruiting and talent acquisition at DiverseJobsMatter as a Talent Acquisition Executive – where she worked with a variety of NGOs, Legal Firms and Banks to recruit for a variety of key roles including Managerial and C-suite roles. She was appointed the role of Team Leader where she honed her business development skills, DE&I strategy and interviewing skills.
Ayesha graduated from City University of London with a Psychology BSc where she researched a plethora of topics including diversity in the workplace.
Ayesha Sheikh - Senior Associate
Isabel is an Associate at The Up Group.
Prior to joining, Isabel worked at the UNESCO headquarters in Paris on the Literacy Team of the Youth Literacy and Skills section, helping the section facilitate literacy programmes through regional and country offices as well as global events in Paris.
Isabel recently completed an MA in International Political Economy at King’s College London and holds a BA in History from King’s College London.
Isabel Heikkila - Senior Associate
Johnnie is an Associate at The Up Group.
Prior to The Up Group, Johnnie was an Operations Executive at a renowned school letting solutions start-up company.
He holds a first-class honours degree in Psychology from the University of Bristol.
Johnnie Edmondson - Senior Associate
Lizzie is an Associate at The Up Group.
Lizzie graduated from The University of Oxford where she read French and German. During her time at University Lizzie spent a year living in Paris. She worked as an Events Associate in an NGO for rare diseases and as a freelance translator for a theatre production company.
Lizzie Borg - Senior Associate
Sharon is an Associate at The Up Group.
Prior to The Up Group, Sharon was a legal intern handling legal research and client assistance. Afterwards, she took on a role as a client relationship manager and marketing assistant, working on maximising profits and revenue, developing marketing campaigns, and improving sales and market strategy across a global platform. She has a growing passion for technology, specifically UI/UX design.
As well as gaining experience working overseas, Sharon has lived in several countries and as a result is fluent in English, Spanish, Igbo and Tiv.
She holds a BSc in Sociology from Aston University, Birmingham.
Sharon Aondo – Associate
Christina is an Associate at the Up Group. Prior to joining the up Group she worked as a Research Associate across the Research, Technology and Innovation industries in the public sector. She has worked on placements across the Higher Education and Research landscape globally.
She obtained a BA in History from Trinity College Dublin and a MSc in Politics from University College London. While working earlier this year she also completed her Diploma in Legal Studies from the Honourable Society of the King’s Inns
Christina Mohan - Associate
HOLD
“Good management of the process, with strong market knowledge”
— Esure
“The team were 100% focused on getting us the right person”
— Wallapop
Meet some of our Operations Team
Victoria is the Head of People overseeing people strategy ensuring the company continues to invest in its unique culture of collaboration, growth, and development. Victoria leads the People Team and is responsible for talent acquisition, L&D, employee engagement, culture, and advising the group on HR policy and best practice. Victoria is passionate about people and growing talent from within while ensuring business goals are supported through strategic business initiatives.
Victoria brings over 13 years’ experience from the executive search industry. Prior to joining The Up Group, Victoria established an executive search company, which focused on emerging and high growth markets within financial services. Before that, she spent several years working in global and boutique executive search firms.
Victoria holds a CIPD Level 7 Diploma in Human Resources Management. She graduated with a BSc (Hons) in Sports Psychology and Coaching Sciences from Bournemouth University.
Victoria Welham - Head of People
As L&D Business Partner, Gemma supports our search practitioners and delivers The Up Group’s client quality assurance process. Gemma is passionate about people, today she is focussed on supporting our team in achieving its full potential through designing and delivering group and one-to-one training and coaching. She works with our People Team to ensure Up provides an environment in which people can learn, thrive and achieve their goals.
Gemma brings over 14 years’ experience as an Executive Search practitioner, trainer and coach, having joined Up at its inception and held a variety of externally and internally facing roles. As a search practitioner she worked extensively with VC, PE and listed businesses, bringing deep digital expertise and industry knowledge along with extensive experience in helping companies scale and transform.
Gemma holds an irrepressible thirst for all things psychology and learning related. She has a certificate in Counselling Skills and is currently undertaking a diploma in Psychodynamic Counselling. She has also completed the Co-active Training Institute’s foundational coaching training course, Co-Active Fundamentals, and holds a Level 5 TEFL qualification in Teaching English as a Foreign Language. Gemma graduated with a First Class Honours BA (Hons) in English Literature from the University of Reading.
Gemma Hale - Learning and Development Business Partner
Mitchell is the Events Manager for The Up Group.
Mitchell is responsible for all roundtable events and provides full 360 support during the planning and delivery of The Up Group’s entire event slate. Mitchell also works across Up’s content creation remit, producing various short and long form content for social media and our website.
Mitchell moved to London from Australia in 2022 where he gained significant event management experience in the retail industry, previously leading a team in running events for up to 900 people. Mitchell holds a BA in Psychology from the University of Melbourne
Mitchell Ainsworth - Events Manager
As part of the Finance team, Max is responsible for managing the day-to-day financial operations within the company, preparing monthly and annual reports for Board members, and supporting the development of long-term strategies.
Prior to The Up Group, Max worked for a number of years as the Finance Manager for a start-up business operating in the retail sector.
Max is a member of CIMA and holds a BA (Hons) in Business Management from Oxford Brookes University.
Max McKendrick - Head of Finance
Eleanor is the Front of House and Office Manager and sits within the People Team. She is responsible for a five star guest experience for all clients and candidates, as well as, the smooth running of the office. Facilities management is part of Eleanor’s remit covering fire, heath and safety and, building management.
Prior to joining The Up Group, Eleanor spent seven years working as a Senior Customer Service Administrator across various industries.
Eleanor graduated with a BA in Tourism and Sports Management from the University of Gloucestershire. Eleanor is also a qualified ski instructor and has completed two ski seasons in Canada.
Eleanor Boyle - Front of House and Office Manager
“Good counsel, great communication, candidate quality exceeded expectations – please do not change anything!”
— Vectra