Our Credentials
Why the people behind The Board Brief are the reason it works, not the CIO logic in the room.

CIOs who bring us in have already done the analysis. The programme is sound, the numbers work, the business case is complete. What fails is translating it into something a board without a technical background can act on. We know because we've been the ones responsible for building that translation, under pressure, with real money on the line. We also know that delay has a cost, in lost revenue, in execution risk that compounds the longer a decision drags, or in company risk that grows the longer the business runs on ageing IT foundations.

Iain Maclean, Programme Delivery and Executive Advisory (LinkedIn)
30 years accountable for delivering programmes that require board approval.

• Interim Head of IT Delivery, IAG Global Business Services. Full accountability for a £650m portfolio of 50+ programmes, reporting directly to the Group CIO.

 

• Led the $1bn Etihad Airways PSS transformation, migrating the airline's core reservation, inventory and departure systems from Amadeus to Sabre. Delivered on time, on budget, with zero operational disruption.

 

• Portfolio Manager for British Airways' PSS migration to Amadeus Altéa, the platform underpinning all reservation and departure control globally.

 

• Recovered a 150-project aviation portfolio running three years behind schedule. Delivered in eight months.

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• 12 years at PA Consulting, working at the intersection of IT delivery and business leadership.

Paul Walton, Business and Board Communication (LinkedIn) 
25 years appointed repeatedly to one role: translate IT into language boards and senior business leaders act on.
 

• On the IT leadership team at DTZ when a £26m programme submission became £2m. That experience is the reason The Board Brief exists.

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• At Accenture, managed communication through a live £232m finance issue and a daily £40m exposure across 250 Sainsbury's stores during the national chip and pin rollout.

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• IT Client Engagement Director, Prudential. IT Business Relationship Manager, Avios. Head of IT Business Relationships, Berkeley Group and Square Enix. Each role centred on senior stakeholder alignment and board-level communication of complex IT decisions.

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• Earlier career at PwC and Ernst & Young, operating at the same intersection of IT delivery and business leadership.

Why this matters to you
Between them, Paul and Iain have sat on both sides of the table: building the programmes that need approval, and building the case that gets them approved. That is not a consulting framework applied from the outside. It is 25+ years of pattern recognition in what makes a board say yes.