Simon Birkenhead Email & Phone Number

Brisbane, QLD, AU

Auckland, New Zealand

HQT is the world’s largest travel group specialising in impact and educational travel programs, with operations in over 60 countries. Its two brands, International Volunteer HQ (IVHQ) and Intern Abroad HQ, together service B2C and B2B customers from 100+ countries. Both are market leaders, each having been named the world's highest rated travel provider in.

Auckland, New Zealand

Author of 'Managing People', published by Penguin Books in November 2021 as part of Penguin's Business Experts series of professional development books. It became an Amazon Top 40 Business Book and is rated 4.9 out of 5 on Amazon.For more information, go to www.managingpeople.tips

Auckland, New Zealand

KPEX (Kiwi Premium Ad Exchange) was an advertising technology consortium jointly owned by New Zealand’s four largest media companies (Stuff, TVNZ, Mediaworks and NZME) as their exclusive sales channel for their online ads.I took over the leadership of KPEX from its founding CEO, reporting to a Board comprising executive representatives from the four.

London, United Kingdom

Acquired by Gartner in 2017, L2 was a VC-backed business intelligence firm that benchmarked the digital marketing and e-commerce performance of over 2,300 consumer brands and retailers globally. Its ‘Digital IQ Index’ was the de facto industry metric for digital competency. We conducted comprehensive quantitative audits of each brand's effectiveness at.

London, United Kingdom

Diginius is an online marketing optimisation and data analytics platform. I provided strategic consultancy and coaching to the founder and executive management team around value proposition, sales and marketing collateral, fundraising and product roadmap. I had to resign my advisory role when L2 was acquired by Gartner.

Barcelona Area, Spain

Marfeel was one of WIRED's 100 hottest European startups in 2015. It helped publishers monetize their mobile traffic with an ad-optimized reading experience designed for smartphones and tablets. As the Non-Executive Director representing shareholder Wayra, I provided strategic consulting and board-level input to the executive management team in the areas.

London, United Kingdom

Axonix was a SaaS advertising technology company created as a joint venture between Telefonica and private equity group Blackstone. As the founder CEO, I launched the business and grew it from 1 to 32 employees, establishing all sales, marketing, engineering, and support functions, with full P&L responsibility.

London, United Kingdom

I was recruited as the sales leader to launch Telefonica's mobile advertising business globally. I set up a global team based in London to support the business in UK, Germany, Ireland, Czech Republic and Spain, and established new local teams in Brazil, Argentina, Mexico and Colombia. I negotiated our mobile advertising partnership agreement with Sprint.

London, United Kingdom

I was the first hire into Google's Global Agencies Team, tasked with growing Google's share of budgets at media groups WPP, Publicis, Omnicom, and Aegis by engaging with their global leadership through consultative sales and the agreement of joint global initiatives. As the team grew, I took personal responsibility for Google's $1.5BN global business with.

Bracknell, UK

Leading 3M's Optical Systems division in the UK, I had P&L responsibility across an extensive portfolio of B2B & B2C products and was a member of the Management Operating Committee for the $150M parent group. I exceeded sales growth targets by over 20% in both 2006 & 2007 and my marketing strategy was recognised as global best practice and replicated.

Bracknell, UK

Working closely with the Managing Directors of 3M's 11 subsidiaries in EMEA, I launched a standardised business planning process & toolkit across 60 countries and developed market-entry strategies for a selection of new businesses. The planning toolkit I developed was still in use in 2012.For this work, I won 3M’s prestigious Global Sales & Marketing.

Bracknell, UK

As 3M Europe's lead internal strategy consultant, I led the market analysis and business planning for a number of high priority market-entry projects. For this work I received 3M's Special Recognition Award with the citation “Simon provided inspirational leadership to the business team”.

Mid-MBA internship with this global technology consultancy firm.

London Area, United Kingdom

Client service Account Director at this leading marketing agency, managing primarily FMCG clients.

London Area, United Kingdom

Basingstoke

Software engineer (NOSS & SQL) for gap year before joining university then again during the summer between my first and second years of study. Built internal knowledge and talent management platform for IBM UK.

Master Of Business Administration - Mba

Graduated with Distinction (top 10% of class). Winner of LBS Business Plan Competition 2002.

Bachelor Of Arts - Ba, Social & Political Sciences

Great Britain and England Shooting Teams 1991-1998. Captain of Cambridge University Rifle Team 1995.

High School

Great Britain Under-19 Shooting Team.