Candidate 1
Amy Hammond
Amy is far from a typical corporate interim — she gets deeply stuck in. Having started her career as a data entry clerk before working her way up to a qualified engineer and the C-suite, she genuinely understands the challenges her teams face at every level. Colleagues praise her for bringing "clarity to chaos." She is highly professional but deeply empathetic, fostering a learning culture where she prefers to build and inspire teams rather than dictate to them.
Team Transformation
Saved core infrastructure jobs at British Land by bringing the team head to board meetings to prove their value, while introducing new roles to address capability gaps.
Value For Money
Pushed back on over-specced vendor proposals at TBI to save £100k, and in-housed Microsoft 365 management at WUHA.
Modernisation Mindset
CISSP certified, studying for AI Governance (AIGP), and implemented an AI platform to track global diseases at WUHA.
Why RSPCA?
Amy is a massive, lifelong animal lover who personally campaigned against a local housing development to save a nature reserve. She is eager to bring her "stabilise, improve, transform" mindset to a cause she deeply loves.
Logistics
- Location: Iver, Buckinghamshire (out of country until 3 June). Comfortable commuting to Horsham.
- Salary expectations: £120,000 basic
- Notice Period: Available immediately
Candidate 2
Jonathan O'Keefe
Jonathan is a proud "WYSIWYG" (What You See Is What You Get) leader — frugal, competitive, fiercely loyal, and incredibly caring. He hates technical jargon; instead, he relies on being a "storyteller," famously using his "wheelbarrow analogy" to explain complex tech to non-technical executives. He is so deeply people-centric that he actively pauses disciplinary processes if he knows a team member is going through personal trauma.
Team Transformation
Turned around a highly dysfunctional department at St. Mungo's — which had a 3,000-ticket backlog — by shifting service desk staff into cloud ops roles rather than making redundancies.
Driving Value For Money
Delivered £2.6m in efficiencies at the IPO and slashed contractor spend by 40% at St. Mungo's.
Modernisation Mindset
Led St Mungo's from the "lowest level ever assessed" in security to Cyber Essentials certification via an Azure migration and a new Security Operations Centre.
Why RSPCA?
A massive RSPCA supporter who rescued his own cats through the charity. He is buzzing at the prospect of stepping into a larger charity where his tech transformations will genuinely "help animals" and make a positive mark in what he calls a "bitter world."
Logistics
- Location: Lives in Cardiff. Comfortable commuting to Horsham and staying over (has done this in previous roles).
- Salary expectations: £120,000 basic
- Notice Period: 3-month notice period
Candidate 3
Christa Dobson
Christa describes herself as having a "squiggly career." She started in investment banking and communications, and actually went back to earn a First-Class Master's in Computer Science during the pandemic after being made redundant. She hates the idea of redundancies, fiercely championing "psychological safety" by transparently explaining the "why" behind changes and focusing on upskilling her teams so they aren't afraid of the future.
Team Transformation
Redesigned a 160-person operating model at Wellcome using CMMI maturity mapping to empower and upskill staff.
Value For Money
Halved Wellcome's 400+ enterprise applications and consolidated cloud infrastructure for a massive 40% cost reduction.
Modernisation Mindset
Developed Wellcome's AI ethical frameworks and achieved 70% adoption on AI pilots.
Why RSPCA?
Blown away to learn the RSPCA is the world's oldest animal welfare charity and thrilled by the heritage. She is hungry to make the leap to C-suite and incredibly excited to use tech to directly empower frontline animal rescue centres and inspectors.
Logistics
- Location: Camden, London. Comfortable commuting to Horsham.
- Salary expectations: £110,000–£120,000 basic
- Notice Period: 3 months (negotiable)
Candidate 4
Leonardo Tantari
Leonardo is "firm but kind." He is a self-described tech buff who runs a highly successful YouTube channel with 21,000 subscribers reviewing music apps. He is a deeply empathetic, family-oriented leader; his recent interim career was an intentional choice so he could have the flexibility to support his son through health challenges and care for terminally ill parents. At work, he is a highly visible leader who physically sits with his teams to understand their pain points.
1
Team Transformation
Exceptional at fixing broken cultures — transformed deeply demoralised, high-turnover teams at Derbyshire and merged siloed teams in Leeds.
2
Value For Money
Intercepted a £49m NHS PAS outsourcing deal, repairing the vendor relationship and delivering it for just £3m — saving £46m.
3
Modernisation Mindset
Built and deployed in-house AI for outpatient settings and translation at UHB, saving £1m annually using onshore talent.
Why RSPCA?
A proud Maine Coon owner who has personally supported RSPCA shelters in Leicester and Birmingham for years. After a tough few years of interim work for family reasons, he is incredibly upbeat and excited to finally find a permanent, stable, purpose-driven "home" for the next 5–10 years.
Logistics
- Location: Leicester. Comfortable commuting to Horsham (up to 2 days per week).
- Salary expectations: £100,000 basic
- Notice Period: Available from June 2026
Candidate 5
Marcus Campbell
Marcus is highly energetic and pragmatic. He started his career at 18 coding in low-level language, so he understands the gruelling reality of engineering. He leads with a "high support, high challenge" ethos. He is fiercely protective of his staff, actively shielding them from "secret squirrel projects" — unplanned work from other departments — so they don't burn out.
Team Transformation
Took over a historically under-invested team at Alzheimer's Society, establishing an investment board and making tough alignment calls while covering gaps with strategic outsourcing.
Value For Money
Operated in a ruthless commercial aviation environment at Hermes, and secured a £9m budget increase at Alzheimer's by translating tech into business value.
Modernisation Mindset
Built AI-driven Alexa/Google Assistant kiosks, demonstrating a hands-on approach to deploying consumer-grade AI in mission-driven environments.
Why RSPCA?
Marcus is a massive animal lover who desperately wants a dog! He read the RSPCA brief and immediately got fired up about the specific operational problems — he is already buzzing with ideas about how to build digital solutions to fix the charity's animal capacity and private boarding challenges. Having recently taken a short career break to handle family matters in Italy, he is now fully ready to re-enter the market and is incredibly excited to "put something back into society" by using his tech expertise to genuinely help animals.
Logistics
- Location: Hove, West Sussex. Comfortable commuting to the Horsham headquarters.
- Salary expectations: £110,000–£120,000 basic
- Notice period: Available immediately
Candidate 6
Mike Robinson
Mike is a self-confessed "nerd" who proudly collects graphic novels and spends his weekends geocaching with his two young kids — he has found over 5,000 caches! He is incredibly calm and relaxed in a crisis, actively avoiding micromanagement, shouting, or "banging phones down." He hates tech jargon and excels at using humour to diffuse tension — like joking about an AI tool that misread the word "Salesforce" as "cesspits."
Team Transformation
Re-energised a completely demoralised 76-person team at Amnesty who had been told just to "keep the lights on," proving strategic investment was possible. Unified Digital, Data, and Technology teams at Firefighters Charity via daily stand-ups.
Value For Money
Leveraged a state-sponsored zero-day cyber attack at Amnesty to negotiate a comprehensive 3-year CrowdStrike solution at an approximate 30% cost reduction.
Modernisation Mindset
Pioneered AI policy at the Firefighters Charity, automating admin tasks while implementing strict guardrails to prevent AI from making clinical decisions.
Why RSPCA?
He has an "unshakeable" passion for the UK charity sector. He flat-out refuses to get out of bed to "make money for someone else" and is incredibly excited to bring his deep Salesforce expertise to the RSPCA to do work that is genuinely "useful and good."
Logistics
- Location: Milton Keynes. Comfortable commuting to Horsham.
- Salary: £100,000 basic
- Notice Period: Available immediately
Candidate 7
Richard Sheldon
Richard's core philosophy is that "tech's a people game… boxes don't plug themselves into one another." He is incredibly practical and believes life is "busy enough and complicated enough," so he runs teams using a "minimum viable everything" mindset. He doesn't give up on people easily — he once took a "problem employee" and mentored them until they became his leading GDPR expert.
Team Transformation
At Motability, when an MSP transition threatened jobs, he engaged staff early, explained changes, and committed 20% of their time to training so they could safely transition.
Value For Money
Aggressively consolidated the supply chain at Motability, scrapping expensive overlapping web/portal contracts and standardising on Microsoft to save hundreds of thousands of pounds.
Modernisation Mindset
Champions "safe innovation," running highly controlled agentic AI pilots in a "safe, warm garden" at the King's Trust to capture diverse feedback rather than just executive input.
Why RSPCA?
After years of being an interim "fixer," he is excited to establish a permanent, 5-day-a-week home where he can actually stick around to see his strategies flourish without a successor reversing them. He loves the charity sector and is pumped to bring his recent Microsoft Dynamics success to the RSPCA's mission.
Logistics
- Location: Lives in Bedfordshire. Comfortable commuting to Horsham.
- Salary expectations: £110,000–£120,000 basic
- Notice Period: Available immediately (currently winding down fractional roles)
Candidate 8
Stuart Cooney
Stuart has been a tech obsessive his whole life — he was hacking BIOS systems and coding his own video games at age 10! Today, he believes his true "sweet spot" isn't cables and code, but coaching people. He runs a strict open-door policy for everyone down to the most junior engineer and acts more as a mentor than a boss. He actively drops his "engineer persona" in the boardroom because he hates seeing executives' eyes glaze over with tech jargon.
Team Transformation
Currently transitioning Royal Barks away from an MSP to a fully internal team. Previously cut team attrition by 20% at Sciences by building an industry-standard career development framework.
Value For Money
Replaced an expensive managed MPLS with an internally managed SD-WAN at Sciences, cutting OPEX by 60%.
Modernisation Mindset
Led a team that won Microsoft's Azure AI Factory event by building a GPT-4 system that transcribed NHS paper prescriptions, saving £150k annually. AI philosophy built on four pillars: infrastructure, data, governance, and culture.
Why RSPCA?
Eager to escape the "shaky," nervous environment of the NHS. He sees the RSPCA as a brilliantly stable, mission-driven space and is incredibly excited by the "neat" opportunity to drive massive, foundational digital transformation in animal healthcare.
Logistics
- Location: Milton Keynes (currently commutes to Reading). Comfortable commuting to Horsham 2 days/week.
- Salary expectations: £120,000 basic
- Notice Period: 3 months (negotiable)
Candidate 9
Zahid Hussain
Zahid is a resilient, true entrepreneur who actually brought the first "Thai rolled ice cream" pop-up to London before becoming a tech executive! He is highly ROI-focused but leads with deep empathy. He always seeks to understand "what's in it for me" from his team's perspective to align their daily work with personal career ambitions. He fosters a totally open culture where team members can vent frustrations without fear.
1
Team Transformation
Radically restructured Hammerson's failing £9–10M programme, shrinking the internal tech team from 33 to 7 and successfully replacing a failed £1M HR platform with an £11k off-the-shelf system.
2
Value For Money
Transformed tech from a cost centre to a revenue generator at Chemistry Group, scaling licensing revenue from £600k to £4M. At Hammerson, cut annual people costs from £2.5M to £700k.
3
Modernisation Mindset
A highly hands-on AI practitioner who built his own multi-LLM ecosystem and integrated agentic AI into Hammerson's data lake, compressing lease negotiation times by 75%.
Why RSPCA?
Desperately seeking a "raison d'être." Feels entirely uninspired by just getting people into shopping centres and actively wants to make a real "dent in the universe." Having accomplished 90% of his goals at his current role, he refuses to be just a "caretaker" and is incredibly excited to sink his teeth into the RSPCA's meaty modernisation brief.
Logistics
- Location: Kent. Comfortable commuting to Horsham.
- Salary expectations: £120,000 basic
- Notice Period: 3-month notice period
Candidate 10
Rob Romaine
Rob is an intellectual and self-aware leader, proudly acting as a "Babel Fish" to translate executive strategy into technical realities. He's a dedicated family man, engaged in community work like setting up a "Man's Shed" for mental health. Openly autistic, he builds structured safety nets, using "people impact assessments" and AI like Copilot to foster a supportive environment. He prefers to coach, giving teams the "rope" to grow.
Team Transformation
Successfully championed a "product-led model" at St. John's, Sue Ryder, and currently at Mencap, transforming a basic Salesforce setup into a multi-domain product team with multi-year funding.
Value For Money
Driving efficiency at Mencap by consolidating 30-40 systems down to an estimated 10. At Sue Ryder, he creatively connected product teams with fundraising, developing a "Shop in a Box" concept for new revenue streams.
Modernisation Mindset
Leading AI readiness at Mencap, building an HR chatbot, and establishing a £250k AI innovation fund. Deep cyber expertise includes implementing a TDA, outsourced SOC, and MFA to achieve Cyber Essentials Plus.
Why RSPCA?
Motivated by "tech for good," Rob is entirely turned by the RSPCA's "size and scale," viewing it as a "national movement." He's driven to work for a world-renowned brand and is fired up to "shift the dial" as a transformational leader for the next 10-15 years.
Logistics
- Location: Lives in Norfolk. Comfortable commuting to Horsham; plans overnight stays for 2-day-a-week on-site.
- Salary expectations: £120,000 basic
- Notice Period: 1-week notice period until June 12th (after which it extends to 3 months).
Internal Candidate 1
Geoff Carlier (Internal)
Geoff's leadership is incredibly people-centric; he believes in "putting the time in, working out what's going on" rather than dictating. His empathetic, relationship-building approach earned him a massive 100% Net Promoter Score from his direct reports at LexisNexis. In a testament to his deeply human impact as a manager, two of his reports actually burst into tears when he announced he was leaving the company.
Team Transformation
At LexisNexis, completely overhauled how teams functioned by creating and implementing a Large-Scale Scrum (LeSS) framework across 12 different squads.
Value For Money
Managed a $14 million budget at SITA. Having worked at the RSPCA, he intimately understands the charity's financial constraints — "every decision you make, you can literally hear a tin shaking."
Modernisation Mindset
A trailblazer in AI at LexisNexis, managing a data engineering team that processed petabytes of data and architecting AI models to navigate complex US legal landscapes for HR professionals.
Why this role?
Geoff loves the RSPCA and is incredibly loyal, having joined the charity during a personal low point after his father's passing. He is absolutely bursting for a bigger challenge — he can do his current role "in his sleep" — and wants to stop the cycle of people "wheeling in and out" with half-baked ideas.
Internal Candidate 2
Laura Edwards (Internal)
Laura describes herself as a democratic and reflective leader who hates micromanagement. She has a wonderfully unconventional background — before project management, she was a car mechanic and made giant stickers for trucks! Today, she acts as a factual, logical "critical friend" to executives, earning a reputation as a strategic "disruptor" who demands to know exactly what the business objective is before she even thinks about the technology.
Team Transformation
At HSBC, built incredible resilience by rotating roles — having team members take turns leading, testing, or doing quality assurance on product releases. Currently planning the post-transformation structure for her 18-person RSPCA team.
Value For Money
Brings serious commercial grit from the Coast Guard, holding vendors accountable for life-critical uptime on emergency service platforms. Currently chairs the RSPCA's Digital Assurance committee.
Modernisation Mindset
Highly proactive in cybersecurity and heavily involved in the RSPCA's AI Policy SteerCo, establishing guardrails to ensure exponential AI tools are used ethically and appropriately.
Why this role?
With her fixed-term contract wrapping up at the end of 2026, Laura is incredibly pumped for a strategic career inflection point right where she is. She sees the CTO role as the perfect, exciting opportunity to step up and align her personal growth directly with the charity's bold new vision.
Internal Candidate 3
Steven Mileham (Internal)
Steven proudly introduces himself as the RSPCA's "chief nerd" and playfully calls himself a "collaborator and a control freak at the same time." He is celebrated across the charity as a "safe and steady pair of hands" — colleagues literally report feeling "secure" the moment he pops up in a meeting. He is highly accessible and sees his main job as acting as a "conduit" to translate highly complex technical concepts for everyone from frontline workers to the CEO.
Team Transformation
Successfully built the RSPCA's architecture practice from the ground up, introducing ArchiMate modelling and TOGAF methodology to standardise cross-functional projects.
Value For Money
Measures VFM through the lens of intangible charity value, focusing on how technology impacts fundraising and animal welfare. Closely partners with procurement to hold global vendors accountable in the new era of "pay-as-you-go" and AI tokenisation models.
Modernisation Mindset
A pragmatic AI sceptic who champions secure, compliant modernisation. Under his architectural guidance, the RSPCA delivered a critical Animal Shelter replacement platform, a new Data Warehouse, and an Identity Management system.
Why this role?
A 20-year veteran who absolutely bleeds the RSPCA mission. He applied to serve as a "yardstick" to ensure the organisation hires the absolute best possible CTO — and is incredibly excited by the prospect of taking the ultimate step up to drag this 200-year-old organisation "kicking and screaming into the future."