Board of Directors

Sam Walsh - Managing Director

Sam Walsh joined Findel Education in September 2004 as Sales Director, and since arrival has grown the revenue of the field based sales force by 54%. Sam introduced new routes to market - including telesales, and has actively simplified the market offering to the high spending Findel Customer base. Sam was appointed Sales and Marketing Director late 2006, and brought together the entire Customer handling entities (i.e. Field Sales, UK & International, PFI and Contact Centre) under the sales division, creating a route plan to Customer Excellence, which supports the common goal of profitable revenue growth. At the end of 2008 Sam was appointed the position of acting Managing Director. Before joining Findel Sam spent the best part of 12 years with Xerox, in a variety of sales management roles, including the Account Director for a number of FTSE 100 accounts, being responsible and accountable for the development through to implementation of fully outsourced Document Management contracts. Sam is fully committed to the principles of continuous quality improvement and is an advocate of Lean Six Sigma.



Chris Mahady – Operations Director

Chris has held a variety of key leadership roles within Findel with over 10 years experience at Director Level. Prior to joining Findel in 2003, Chris enjoyed a number of key roles at Creative Publishing and Hallmark where he successfully managed a major UK site rationalisation exercise. Hallmark operates as market leader in an International environment, and Chris helped develop their programmes of ongoing continuous improvement, cost reduction and customer satisfaction. Chris re joined Findel Education in 2003 as General Manager for the Curricular Brands businesses, taking overall responsibility for the operation and development of these brands. In taking on this challenge Chris recruited a dynamic young leadership team, of which two are now on the main Board. Chris was promoted to the role of Education Operations Director in 2005 where he has responsibility for all operational aspects of the Education Division. In the last 12 months Chris has led his Operational team through the integration strategy and consolidated the warehouses of the business. The team is continuing to plan and develop a cycle of continuous improvement and is committed to the delivery of a robust operational strategy supporting the vision, mission and values of the business.

Charles Downes - Finance Director

Charles joined us in January 2010 from New Balance, one of the largest privately owned athletic footwear & apparel companies in the world. As European Finance Director he was responsible for the centralisation of Finance, IT and Customer Services into a single European shared service centre. Additionally, he played a pivotal role in driving significantly increased profits through the development and deployment of new operating strategies. Prior to this Charles worked for Deloittes, qualified as a Chartered Accountant, and then spent 14 years with American Express in a variety of  International Finance and Strategy roles.



Matt Palmer - Sales Director

Matt joins us from global mail solutions provider Pitney Bowes where he was Client Director responsible for services sales and operations across a number of global clients. Previously Matt enjoyed a successful 13 year career at Xerox across its UK operations in a variety of sales, marketing and financial roles. In his final assignment at Xerox, Matt was Head of Sales in the North of England and Scotland leading a large sales team selling outsourced document services and technologies to corporate clients. More recently Matt was Group Business Development Director at Premier Farnell plc for 5 years. In 2007 Matt was instrumental in the restructuring, and divestment, of a £100m turnover subsidiary.



Martin Ashby - Buying and Merchandising Director

Martin joined Findel in Feb 2010 having spent 18 months as Sales and Purchasing Director at Nimans, the UK’s largest SMB telecoms distributer. Prior to this he gained extensive experience in the Catalogue/Internet retailing sector through 10 years at The Shop Direct Group: he held various roles including Buying Director for non-clothing, Trading Director, Strategic Planning Director and Sourcing & QA Director. He has also spent 5 years with the sports brand Umbro where he was the General Manager of Sourcing Operations. Martin has a MBA from Manchester Business School and a BSc (Hons) in Chemical Engineering from Loughborough University.