Who we are
We are a team of over 30 consultants who share a passion for enabling real and sustainable change in the public sector.
The management team:
Ben has worked in all sectors, but primarily public services. He started on the front line in an advice centre before working with politicians and senior management, and consulting extensively to local and central government. He enjoys work that puts systems thinking into action, and is a qualified Lean Six Sigma Black Belt with PwC Europe and Power+Systems organisational workshop accredited trainer – reflecting the fact that he aims to work effectively with both processes and people to make change stick. Ben is a Liverman of the Worshipful Company of Management Consultants, a director of SCiO, the systems thinking for organisations group, and a founding host of the London chapter of the Operational Excellence Society.
Dennis Vergne - 07980 541990
Dennis began his career with marketing strategy for multinational organisations, but most of his work has reflected his passion for the actual delivery of change. He has worked on organisational change for consulting organisations such as Accenture, iXL /Scient, and Agilisys, during which time he has combined both public and private sector work including Flemish Community (Belgian regional government), GE Capital, Lloyds TSB, Motorola, Norsk Hydro, Novartis, and many UK public sector bodies. With an MSc in consulting and coaching for change from Oxford University Said Business School / HEC Paris (cohort 4, with distinction) and also an MSc in Marketing from the Catholic University Leuven (Belgium), Dennis’s focus is not only on mobilising and delivering large change programmes but simultaneously on building internal capacity.
Ben and Dennis are the founders and managing partners of RedQuadrant.
Lorna Smalley – 07881 780383
Lorna started work developing and implementing IT solutions for private sector organisations in the retail, motor & airline industries before moving to local government in the early 1990’s.One thing that occurred to her was that however good the IT solutions were from a technical point of view, people didn’t necessarily want to use them. And that was usually because business processes had not been aligned to the new systems, or staff were not prepared to change the way they worked – or both. Over the past six years, Lorna has been working in process improvement and change management within local government, running a number of projects with and without IT elements, and in recent years focusing on culture change through organisational development interventions including coaching & mentoring.
Lorna is our director for people, coaching, and learning and development.
Consultants – please note we operate in a fast-changing environment, so this list is not always completely up to date!
Paul Bettle
Paul is a senior consultant with 10 years of experience and an excellent track record of delivering value to both the public and private sector in business change. Paul started his career delivering process driven change in the water industry, before moving into business transformation consultancy in local government. Before moving back in to local government consulting with RedQuadrant, he worked for global consultancy firm, providing consultancy services to large multinational organisations, in financial services and manufacturing, focused on implementing process best practice and company interworking models to support large multinational outsourcing contracts.
Kevin Corrigan
Kevin is a recognised Lean Six Sigma Expert with fifteen years’ business improvement experience and nine years’ consulting experience. He is pragmatic in his approach and passionate about the subject of business improvement and transformation. Kevin has delivered multiple transformation programmes and has received many accolades and recommendations for his work. He has in the past been a panel member of the prestigious Institute of Mechanical Engineers MX Awards, for operational excellence and has also been recognized for his work by the IPQC for the “Best Public Sector improvement project 2007.”
Steve Dixon
Steve is a senior transformation consultant with over 20 years experience in both the public and private sector. He started his career in local government where he held a number of operational management positions before moving into project and programme management and finally into transformation consultancy. Steve is a passionate advocate of the systems thinking methodology and is adept at blending it to fit different organisational cultures in order to facilitate the transformation process and maximise benefits for his clients.
Sarah has over 20 years’ experience of working in change management, operational delivery and business transformation in central and local government, the private sector, and now in a freelance capacity. This is complemented by training, human resource and programme management experience. Sarah has delivered effective and cost-saving business transformation in senior operational roles and taken the strategic lead in driving change through major transformation programmes including as Deputy Director, Public Service Reform at the Cabinet Office.
Emma Franklin
Emma graduated from Cambridge with a BA (Hons) in English in 2008 and started work for an independent company working alongside social care to provide parenting assessments and fostering for families with complex needs. After this, she moved to Barnardo’s to create and develop a consultation project to facilitate the set-up of 11 Sure Start children’s centres and a specialist service offering respite care to families with disabled children, before joining Buckinghamshire County Council to work with the Youth Offending team. Her particular interests are adult and children’s services and education.
Gilli Galloway
Gilli started her career in the City of London, and then moved into the commercial sector, central and local government departments and the third sector. Amongst colleagues who have worked with her over the years Gilli is known as “The Fixer” for her ability to trouble shoot complex initiatives and challenging projects. She has been a Director in both the commercial and not for profit sector and a Board Member of several national organisations during periods of major transition, refinancing and restructure.
Deborah Jones
Deborah has been working as a change management consultant and trainer for over 7 years, most recently within the public sector on shared and merged services programmes. She specialises in designing & implementing strategic programmes to improve leadership, employee engagement, business transformation and change. Deborah has also led change from an in-house position, with 10 years launching new products and businesses in Financial Services. She is a trained coach and completed an MSc in Consulting & Coaching for Change with HEC Paris and the University of Oxford.
John Lakin
John is a leading strategic adviser on education policy and management having been responsible for one of the major national education consultancies in the UK for many years. Now working as an independent consultant and non-executive director he is particularly interested in supporting education clients going through major organisational change and facing key strategic and policy changes. He has extensive experience of supporting schools, local authorities, further education colleges and universities, as well as the national bodies that support and regulate them.
Peter Lip
Peter is currently working with RedQuadrant as a junior consultant on a number of projects such as the London Library Consortium project for a shared bibliographical service with 15 boroughs coming together. Additionally, he is working on the launch and running of a new academy for Lean Six Sigma transformation programmes. Peter’s background is from a wide range of commercial markets as well as entrepreneurial adventures. His passion lies with lean transformation and system optimisation and is certified as a NLP practitioner. Peter also completed an MBA dissertation on “A productive and human perspective of lean transformation”.
David Lynn
David has worked in the UK financial services industry for 30 years up to and including senior executive level. He has significant experience across both private and public sectors, in a broad range of business management roles, which has included leadership experience of delivery across a range of business disciplines such as business performance, productivity, strategy development, service delivery, operations, communications, risk, finance and human resources. He has also worked in financial planning, management and control, profit improvement, cost reduction, credit and operational risk assessment and control, and management information – delivery and analysis.
John has a long success record in senior management roles in multi-national corporations, local government and management consulting. A natural leader and change agent combining a clear focus on strategic outcomes with the attention to detail needed for success. Now as an independent consultant / interim manager, 25 (+) years of experience applied to enable organisations to mobilise complex programmes, define more efficient and effective operational models and build the capacity and skills to deliver transformation internally.
Jan became a consultant in 2000 having previously worked for the Open University (in particular developing its activities in central and eastern Europe) and prior to that in local authority housing. Jan has worked in her own practice and for PwC on learning and skills-related projects for a range of clients including: Central Government Departments including the MOD, DfE and BIS; universities and others in the sector (local authorities, sector skills councils, the National Apprenticeship Service, the Skills Funding Agency and other education/skills-related NDPBs) as well as for private sector organisations, where she worked on a range of e-learning and management information systems projects. More recently Jan has focused on social enterprise projects in the skills sector.
Russell is a director at The Research Unit and is an expert on local government research and community engagement. He has worked in the local government team at Ipsos-MORI and on social marketing projects for the health research company, Dr. Foster, as well as at Reuters. In the public sector, he has led consultation and engagement functions for Westminster City Council and Hammersmith & Fulham council. Russell has been working extensively on the reputation of local government for the LGA. He also conducted the Chief Executive Challenge research on local government communications as well as ‘Civic Leadership for 21st Century’ for the Local Government Leadership centre.
Janice Prentice
Janice is an experienced project manager and business analyst with experience across both the public and private sectors. Currently, she is managing customer-focused transformation projects at Westminster City Council. Prior to that, she provided project management, business analysis and process improvement workshops for a variety of projects across a range of London and other local authorities and within LGID. She has particular experience in customer-focused projects and within libraries. She also manages RedQuadrant’s consultant pool.
Jason has built on his research degree in Computing Science with a passionate focus on improving performance in customer service. Jason had a hands-on role in leading a range of consultancy projects with Deloitte and BT Syntegra. This included the development of customer strategy, CRM implementations, contact centre and CRM performance reviews in industry sectors such as investment management, policing, legal, telecommunications and government. Jason also had an operational role as Customer Relations Manager for Birmingham City Council for four years, responsible for the contact centre, CRM, complaints management and developing the city’s customer service strategy. He has also worked with central government, serving on the 101 Programme Board and the Cabinet Office Contact Council. Jason was a finalist in the Institute of Business Consultancy’s 2009 Management Consultant of the Year award.
Sharna is a dynamic and driven professional with experience on the global stage in change management and organisational strategy. A diverse achiever who has enhanced worldwide trade, improved public services in the UK and overseas governments, and delivers effective change through ICT-enabled initiatives. Sharna brings a unique combination of proven business acumen with excellent government and public sector knowledge. A natural leader, who enjoys being part of a successful and productive team.
Andrew is specialised in business transformation and has over ten years’ experience as a business consultant, programme and project manager working across both the public and private sectors. For the last six years he has focused on the local government and healthcare (NHS) sectors. At BT Global Services he specialised in mobility transformation, leading a number of business case and delivery engagements in the local government space including Rotherham and Peterborough Councils. Prior to BT he gained extensive experience working with numerous Acute NHS Trusts in managing the implementation of an e-rostering and workforce planning solution and associated process and organisational change. For the past year he has been working at Hammersmith & Fulham Council programme managing the corporate rollout of smartworking, having developed and gained senior level buy-in to the business case and having delivered the foundation stage of the programme.
Rebecca is a business analyst and project manager from a local government background, with extensive experience of the entire lifecycle of transformation programmes, from business case to implementation. Her particular areas of expertise are detailed analysis for business cases, process improvement and change management, and the design and delivery of stakeholder engagement activities, including change network management, workshop facilitation, intranet design and maintenance.
Olivia is a passionate advocate for effective and excellent public service, specialising in service transformation through staff development. Her specific expertise is in libraries, museums and archives; community partnership and local engagement. An experienced facilitator, she supports teams in building strategic thinking, emotional intelligence, resilience, team cohesion, skills and understanding at times of radical change. Olivia has extensive experience of local government and designs and delivers innovation, new ways of working and leadership development training tailored to clients. She is a qualified librarian and studies acting at Birmingham City University’s School of Acting.
Sarah Wilkie
Sarah worked for many years in local government and, during five years at the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council, acted as Programme Manager for the national strategic public library transformation programme, Framework for the Future. More recently Sarah has worked as a consultant on projects such as the evaluation of a Race Online/MLA initiative to get housebound library users online; managing a year-long training programme for archives and museums staff (part of the Strategic Commissioning programme); and Light Touch Peer Reviews for museums services in Derby City and Canterbury. Her work with RedQuadrant includes the London Libraries Change Programme and support for strategic change in library services across England, including Camden, Ealing, Slough, Thurrock, Durham, Central Bedfordshire and Plymouth.
Duncan Wood-Allum
Duncan is founder Director of the Sport, Leisure and Culture Consultancy www.sportleisureculture.co.uk and an associate consultant with RedQuadrant. He is regarded as one of the leading strategic advisors in the sport, leisure and culture sectors. He has achieved this through years of hard earned experience working in inner city sports facilities, schools, local government, central government, niche and FTSE 100 blue chip consultancies; complimented by international study tours and academic study. Duncan has an exceptional track record in the development and delivery of major capital schemes, experienced in the development of leisure and cultural trusts and the radical transformation of services. Duncan is also a popular keynote speaker and regularly contributes new thinking and challenges to the sector through his writing.
Alumni – we are proud of the people who have ‘graduated’ from RedQuaddrant and gone on to pastures new elsewhere…
Daniel Nisser
Daniel began his career as an artist, painting pictures for a living with the purpose of trying to figure out the interconnectivity and meaning of things. When he settled in the UK, he set up a charity to deliver a better local community. He got a taste of local government and the excitement of changing things and then made the transition to the business world by completing an MBA at Cranfield School of Management. From there he went into shared service provision for the public sector. From there he moved to a career in process design and change management. As a Swede, he has a love of process and structure, which he exercises through process design and managing change. He’s also worked on four continents on a range of HR, change, process design, operations and IT related projects. He loves working directly with client teams and helping them deliver on the front line.
Monika Singh
Monika has over 20 years’ experience of delivering major IT and business change programmes in large complex organisations in both the private and public sectors. She has delivered new service oriented architectures, launched and optimised on-line services, and embedded robust customer relationship management (CRM) systems, all of which have enabled exceptional service improvement and a platform for making ongoing operating efficiencies for the organisations she has worked for, which include American Express, Islington Council and Enfield Homes. She also has robust experience of managing large scale front and back office operations including 24 x 7 multichannel contact centres. Monika is an accredited practitioner of Prince 2 and MSP. Monika has accepted an interim customer contact post with Barnet – we wish her all the best and hope to have her back in the RedQuadrant fold soon.
Kirsten Jongberg
Kirsten is an experienced business consultant across both the public and private sectors. She has worked with Hammersmith & Fulham Council, managing the stakeholder engagement, change and communications activities on the council’s SmartWorking programme. Prior to her work at Hammersmith & Fulham Council, Kirsten worked as a freelance consultant for an international energy consultancy, as Consultant & Business Development Manager for an e-Government consultancy, and as a recruitment consultant in industry. Kirsten started her career in consulting at Deloitte, where she gained public sector experience working on a contact centre transformation programme for HMRC and on a CRM solution implementation for Investors in People. She also worked on a Deloitte internal project and on projects for Sony Pictures, O2 Telefonica and O2 Ireland. As well as working in the UK, Kirsten has worked in Belgium and speaks five languages fluently.
Fenja Hill
Fenja has worked in the public and voluntary sectors for over 20 years. Her roles have included delivering and managing housing options services for a number of London boroughs, managing information services, designing and delivering training packages, developing procedures and policy and facilitating the implementation of new IT systems. Since 2006 she has chosen to do this on a consultancy basis and has managed the implementation of revised service delivery for the London Borough of Hillingdon, West Berks Council and Dacorum Borough Council. She has recently returned to Hillingdon to support their transformation team, writing procedures, managing transformation projects and delivering training and support to front line staff. She is a passionate advocate of the Campaign for Plain English and has facilitated workshops and delivered presentations at their national conference. In her spare time, she is a Justice of the Peace.