We have a global reach & influence across Europe / U.S.A / Australia & Africa along with experience in working across more than 20 different industry sectors, and over 70 clients. Our experience extends across all business ownership structures, business functions and leadership and management roles.
Over the past 10 years, we have worked with over 3,500 people, in 70 clients, across over 20 different industries; Professional Services, Food Manufacturing, Retail, Property Management, Telecoms, Technology, Field Marketing, Contact Centre Management, Automotive, Financial Services, Aerospace, Engineering, Defence, PR, Entertainment, Chemicals, Publishing, Public Sector, Logistics, Recruitment, Hospitality.
- We pride ourselves on building long standing, trusted client relationships, where our average client relationship is over 5 years. Our personal and business integrity is critical for us, where we always seek to be honest, transparent and loyal to our clients.
- We work with FTSE 100, Private Equity and privately owned businesses, working 121 with CEO’s, owner operators, and board directors across all functions.
Our People
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Peter Birkholm
Simon Burleton
Mark Whybrow
Lori Weber
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Darren Daley
Dan Oakley
Grahame Cox
Jacinta Bowater
Peter is the founder, majority shareholder, and chief executive of the business. He had 8 years of board-level experience in Commercial Director roles in Multinationals, both under public and private ownership. He led large scale sales and marketing teams, developing and prosecuting successful strategies in highly competitive markets.
Prior to setting up Into the Zone, Peter was UK Sales Director for KP Snacks, the snacks component of the VC owned, £1.5bn United Biscuits group. Here, he led the most successful worldwide competitive challenge to any Pepsico snacks business, transforming his business into profitable and powerful preferred supplier status with the key elements of the client base.
Previously to UB, Peter was UK Sales & Marketing Director at Cott Beverages, a £1bn turnover international Soft Drinks Group, where he developed both Branded and Private Label businesses.
He was a key figure in the successful integration of their major competitor, prosecuting the significant commercial synergistic benefits identified in the acquisition.
Peter has extensive experience in leading strategic, operational and cultural change in large organisations. He has led teams in excess of 100 people and has worldwide international experience. Peter has an Economics degree from Sheffield University.
- Email: Peter@intothezone.net
- Tel: 07803 850949
Simon has over 20 years experience working within the FMCG industry, operating in a variety of commercial roles, within both public and private equity ownership structures.
Prior to joining Into The Zone, Simon spent nearly 10 years undertaking several leadership roles within the United Biscuits Group in the UK. As Commercial Director, Brand Director and latterly Trading Director, he has gained vast experience in Branded, Retailer Brand and Customer facing roles.
Simon gained an outstanding reputation in leading & transforming the Commercial performance across a variety of businesses within the UB Group.
He was pivotal in leading matrix teams of in excess of 100 people during this period, driving effective cross functional behaviours and leveraging complex stakeholder management solutions.
Simon joined “Into The Zone Ltd” as a Director in early 2008.
Accreditations for Insights Psychological Type Profiling
- Email: Simon@intothezone.net
- Tel: 07803850975
Mark is a mentor for the Entrepreneurial Spark program, and is a licensed practitioner of Insights Behavioural Profiling.
Prior to working with ITZ, Mark spent over five years working in senior commercial leadership roles within ABF group businesses, including Director of Sales for Westmill foods, and Head of Sales AB World Foods. Prior to this, Mark was Channel Director as part of an MBO with P&H, the largest FMCG wholesaler in UK, and also spent a number of years responsible for the UK/Ireland and Denmark convenience retail business for Shell, with a subsequent role as Global Strategy Manager for Food & Coffee.
With experience of large and often international teams within true matrix structures, Mark gained a reputation for being highly effective in driving aligned, collaborative execution of plan, and in a number of these roles undertook root-and-branch assessment and development of the commercial team capability.
Mark’s early career took in spells with Northern Foods and Unilever in sales roles, and also spent four years with Philips Electronics where he was European Project Manager within the Black Belt / Six Sigma organisation, responsible for Commercial process improvement and change programs.
- Email: Mark@intothezone.net
- Tel: 07769 912664
A successful career built on a passion to enable effective communication & creativity. Communication, presentation and creativity are passions of hers and she has been specialised in these fields for many years.
A background in performing arts, teaching and a variety of business roles has equipped Lori with the skills and understanding to get the best out of people, to raise their levels of awareness & delivery and to help them effectively communicate with a wide-range of audiences, personalities and professions.
Lori has worked for Into The Zone for several years, during which time she has provided workshops and one to one specialist coaching at all levels of business.
Previous roles, on and off the stage provide a perfect platform to teach others
Lori’s early business experience is in sports event staging and management (McLaren Formula 1, PGA European Tour), qualitative market research (The Big Picture) and business consultancy (Forward Thinking Inc). She has taught English as a foreign language and both singing and drama in education arenas. Performance experience includes classical singing recital, voice-overs, public speaking, chairing conferences and facilitation at women’s networking and social events.
Working with variety of clients builds an understanding of many businesses
Lori has created and delivered bespoke programmes to help individuals and teams in large and small organisations improve their communication and thinking. These include Coca Cola, Mars, British American Tobacco, Weetabix, Heinz, BDO, Valspar Paints International, Energizer, PepsiCo, British Petroleum, European Bank of Regeneration & Development, Freesat, and UK local government.
Accreditations and wider skills add to capability
She has a good level of French which she has used in delivering workshops in Paris, Brussels, the Ivory Coast and the UK. Lori is accredited in INSIGHTS Discovery, Executive Coaching and she is a qualified NLP Practitioner. When work allows, Lori is studying for a degree in Psychology with the Open University, specialising in cognitive psychology.
- Email: Lori@intothezone.net
- Tel: 07967816631
Prior to joining ‘Into The Zone’ in 2014 Darren spent 18 years in financial services, undertaking a variety of leadership and management roles within the broker dealer and investment banking sector.
As Global head of Client Service and On-Boarding Darren gained an outstanding reputation for driving through change. With responsibility for the client lifecycle experience he designed and sponsored many multi million pound global projects, digital transformation and organisational restructures which resulted in winning industry recognition for service quality.
Darren has vast experience in leading global teams in excess 180 people within complex matrix organisations.
He has a proven track record in producing top performing winning teams that are aligned and in tune with the goals and expectation of the firm and also focused and committed to delivering them on time and in full.
Accreditation for Insights psychological type profiling.
- Email: Darren@intothezone.net
- Tel: 07990743001
Dan, has had 9 years of Board Level experience including 5 years as Managing Director UK & Ireland within the £1bn multinational Puratos (Food Ingredients) organisation.
During this time Dan led the team to year on year profitable growth in an extremely challenging market segment. Throughout this period the development of his team and organisation of 75 people was one of the key pillars of the Strategy to deliver exceptional results.
During 2005 – 2008, Dan was UK Sales Director of Puratos leading a team across a number of sales channels. Dan has also worked as Global Retail Director and was responsible for the development of an international team and strategy, to double sales over 5 years.
Dan headed up the Business Unit responsible for Tesco during his time at Greencore Plc between 2001 – 2004. Greencore Plc are the UK leading own-label food manufacturer across a number of food categories.
Dan started his career with Cargill, the world’s largest privately owned company, as a Graduate trainee. Within 1 year Dan had become UK Sales Manager and was responsible for ensuring the merger of 2 sales teams as part of a strategic acquisition. During this time Dan spent 3 years living and working in Belgium.
He has benefitted from studying at one of Europe’s leading Business Schools, INSEAD University in Fontainebleau, Paris. Dan has a Master’s Degree in Consumer Psychology and a Bachelor’s Degree in Commerce from Birmingham University.
- Email: Dan@intothezone.net
- Tel: 07958195220
Grahame has extensive experience, working in large scale FMCG businesses, healthcare and small scale start-ups.
Grahame has worked in a variety of customer and consumer facing roles in the UK and overseas in both large-scale, multinational organisations, and smaller scale start-ups. His roles at Allied Domecq, United Biscuits and Oasis Healthcare included marketing director, innovation director and marketing and operations director. Today, as well as working with ITZ, Grahame runs his own successful innovation consultancy working with a wide-range of both large and small scale businesses to improve their innovation delivery.
Grahame has an MBA from Henley Management College and is an accredited Insights practitioner.
- Email: grahame@intothezone.net
- Tel: 07785 925361
Jacinta graduated from Exeter University with a degree in Geography in 1990 and then spent 7 seven years as PA to the Group Managing Director of an International Consultancy (subsequently moving to a Business Development role).
Jacinta then spent 10 years setting up a totally new Catering business from scratch with her husband – “Eton Well”, which achieved a very positive reputation in the Oxford/Thames Valley area.
Responsibilities here included new business development and the planning and implementation of events. The business was then sold and Jacinta went to work as a part-time PA to the Ex Chief Executive of a FTSE 100 who held a host of Non Executive Chair and Director positions.
She joined ITZ in the Autumn 2012 where she is Executive Assistant, responsible for supporting the client facing team, client support and event management.
- Email: Jacinta@intothezone.net
- Tel: 01491574170