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Cantium's Executive Committee and Leadership Team

Meet the team that sets and oversees the strategy, execution and operations at Cantium.

Mark Cobb

Chief Executive Officer

Mark has a wealth of experience in private and public sectors, including local government, health, education, manufacturing, and retail. With a valuable combination of leadership, commercial, and technology experience, he has a proven track record of delivering exceptional customer service and consistently surpassing targets.

Mark excels as a dynamic leader and coach in creating the right environments and culture for partners, teams, and individuals to succeed.

Mark Cobb

Chief Executive Officer

Clare Farrow

Business Manager

Clare started her career in the private sector, working for almost 15 years in the commercial and corporate banking sector. Many of those years were spent in a relationship management role, assessing lending propositions with particular emphasis on debt management, including implementing and monitoring work out agreements and lending risk assessments.

Clare also has experience in contact centre management in a commercial banking environment. Latterly, Clare has been employed at Kent County Council (KCC) and Cantium for 20 years, working in various roles across different directorates.

Clare Farrow

Business Manager

James Young

Chief Technology Officer

James is responsible for Cantium’s technology strategy, driving innovation through R&D and leveraging emerging technologies to bring the newest innovations to clients.

James has experience of delivering architecture, design and outsourcing services across a wide range of sectors including public and private sector clients at C-Level for FTSE 100 firms.

Throughout his career, James has end to end experience of procuring and delivering enterprise ICT services from all sides of the equation, as a customer, as an advisory consultant and as a service provider delivering complex technology services and transformation.

James Young

Chief Technology Officer

Jamie Parish

Financial Controller

Jamie has extensive financial experience, having worked in the private sector for 19 years, where he had responsibility for ensuring the operational efficiency, regulatory compliance and direct management of financial functions.

With 12 years post qualified Chartered Accountant experience, Jamie has led finance teams that deliver commercial focus to improve processes, deliver efficiencies and meet business objectives through technical expertise and team leadership.

Jamie Parish

Financial Controller

Joe Andrews

Head of Service Management

Joe joined Cantium in July 2022 as Head of Service Management to lead on Cantium’s Service Delivery, End User Technology and ITIL Service Processes (Incident and Problem).

Joe has over 11 years’ Service Management Experience from working across private and public sector organisations, including financial services (insurance), military and government. Joe’s viewpoint is unique, where he has held various roles across the IT department, including Helpdesk, Desktop Support, Infrastructure, Service Manager, Head of Service and Head of Infrastructure.

His passion is for providing an outstanding customer service through Cantium’s ICT Service Desk, and he focuses on ensuring services are fit for purpose and customer requirements.

Joe Andrews

Head of Service Management

Max Leonardov

Head of Strategy & Architecture

Max joined Cantium in 2021 as Head of Strategy and Architecture. In his role, Max leads the Strategy and Architecture practice, encompassing the full lifecycle from strategy and roadmap development, strategic planning, pre-sales technical design and proposal production, solutions and technical architecture, through to project technical resources.

Max is a highly motivated technology leader with over 20 years of experience in IT, including over 12 years in senior leadership roles. He has led diverse teams of technical experts and business professionals delivering transformational change in all areas of technology, information and data.

Max has previously worked across various sectors including professional services, regulated healthcare, retail/commercial, higher education and government, working for names such as Foster + Partners, University of Cambridge and the InHealth Group.

Max Leonardov

Head of Strategy & Architecture

Nancy Seaton

Head of Application Support and Development

Nancy has worked for KCC / Cantium for over 35 years. Nancy has held various roles in Finance including Accounts Payable Assistant, Capital Finance Assistant and Investments Assistant, before settling in a Finance Systems role in 2000.

Nancy has a wealth of experience delivering application support maintenance and development for KCC. As Head of Applications & Development, Nancy is responsible for the support, training, maintenance and development of approximately 98 line of business applications supporting 30,000 users across KCC, schools, TEP, Invicta Law, CSG and Cantium Business Solutions.

Nancy Seaton

Head of Application Support and Development

Nick Hunter

Head of Strategy

Nick is a driven professional with over 10 years’ experience delivering successful transformation within local and central government. Since joining as a graduate trainee in 2010, Nick has held several roles within Kent County Council (KCC) and Cantium.

Nick is passionate about establishing Cantium as a thought leader and maximising value to our customers, and KCC as our shareholder. A creative, visual thinker, Nick brings his strong analytical skills to bear shape to strategy and drive performance and quality improvement. Nick is a trained ISO internal auditor and holds qualifications in leadership and management, and project management, as well as a first-class degree from the University of Oxford.

Nick Hunter

Head of Strategy

Simon Austin

Account Director

Simon is an experienced leader, in both the public and private sector, with a background in services, delivery and transformation. Outcome focused with a real drive for making things happen, Simon is passionate about high standards and delivering on customer promises.

As Head of Account Management and the Account Director for Cantium’s largest customer and Shareholder, Simon’s role works across the entire business and customer base to ensure high quality underpins everything at Cantium.

Simon works closely with Cantium’s clients and partners to nurture and develop relationships and opportunities that will be mutually beneficial by reviewing processes, governance and systems to identify efficiency improvements or problems to resolve. Simon is also passionate about developing and enhancing Cantium’s culture.

Simon Austin

Account Director

Steve Whiting

Head of Commercial

Steve is an experienced Commercial Manager in both Private and Public Sectors including Education, Local Government and Health. His background is as a senior manager of major programmes, services, projects and procurements. Steve has provided leadership for a number of Local Government and NHS Integration Transformation projects including the recent successful Kent and Medway Care Record for Cantium.

Steve is responsible for customer retention, propositions and longer-term growth of the business, building the growth strategy and pipeline.

Steve Whiting

Head of Commercial

Ursula Wouldham

Head of ICT

Ursula is responsible for delivering stable, resilient and secure Infrastructure services to Cantium’s customers. Ranging from network connectivity, cloud operations, storage, backups, server maintenance, through to database administration.

Ursula is a performance-driven, ITIL Expert professional with over 17 years’ experience in the IT industry, across a variety of technical and management roles. Ursula is passionate about continuous improvement, data-driven decision-making and delivering operational excellence.

Ursula Wouldham

Head of ICT

Mark Hodges

Education Sector Lead

Mark has worked in the Education sector for over 20 years, 10 of these as a senior leader within schools. Mark’s extensive experience in IT includes leading procurement, training, and transformation strategies in schools, as well as the completion of two new school builds, and leading large numbers of staff in Cantium’s School Network and MIS teams, supporting c.600 schools.

Mark has been instrumental in achieving accreditation with the market-leading MIS providers while expanding Cantium’s education sector services, especially MIS consultation, training, and support.

Mark has strategic responsibility for services that Cantium delivers to schools, ensuring that these services offer value for money and continue to meet the needs of the education sector. Mark also works closely with the operational teams with a focus on delivering an exceptional customer experience.

Mark Hodges

Education Sector Lead

Peter Meddemmen

Commercial Technology Lead

Pete’s primary passion is using technology as a useful means to solve commercial problems. As a keen problem solver, Pete has tackled projects from network infrastructure for small schools to building and delivering data and communications systems for global firms.

As a student of electronic engineering, Pete joined the UK’s first IBM dealer, who was also an early adopter and vendor of Microsoft products. After 10 years of solving problems for local authorities, schools, and small businesses, Pete moved into managing technology & products in the financial services industry for some of the world’s largest companies, including Thompson Financial, Sungard, ADP, and Bloomberg.

After 25 years of technology and product management for investment banks, Pete has returned to his passion is creating social value and solving problems in the UK’s public sector, Education, Health Care and Local Authorities. As Cantium’s Commercial Technical lead, Pete is responsible for bringing the commercial and technical operations together to design technology solutions that leverage emerging technologies to bring the newest innovations to our clients in the sector.

Peter Meddemmen

Commercial Technology Lead

Related Press Coverage

16 September, 2022

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Mark Cobb

Clare Farrow

James Young

Jamie Parish

Joe Andrews

Max Leonardov

Nancy Seaton

Nick Hunter

Simon Austin

Steve Whiting

Ursula Wouldham

Mark Hodges

Peter Meddemmen

Cantium's Executive Committee and Leadership Team

Mark Cobb

Clare Farrow

James Young

Jamie Parish

Joe Andrews

Max Leonardov

Nancy Seaton

Nick Hunter

Simon Austin

Steve Whiting

Ursula Wouldham

Mark Hodges

Peter Meddemmen

Related Press Coverage

South East Connected

FE News

Education Briefing

Who We Are

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Cantium's Executive Committee and Leadership Team

Mark Cobb

Mark Cobb

Clare Farrow

Clare Farrow

James Young

James Young

Jamie Parish

Jamie Parish

Joe Andrews

Joe Andrews

Max Leonardov

Max Leonardov

Nancy Seaton

Nancy Seaton

Nick Hunter

Nick Hunter

Simon Austin

Simon Austin

Steve Whiting

Steve Whiting

Ursula Wouldham

Ursula Wouldham

Mark Hodges

Mark Hodges

Peter Meddemmen

Peter Meddemmen

Related Press Coverage

South East Connected

FE News

Education Briefing

Who We Are