Our team
Sir Michael Lyons - Chairman
Following a distinguished career in local government Sir Michael Lyons now acts as a strategic adviser to a range of organisations in the public and private sectors.
Sir Michael completed a four year term as chairman of the BBC in 2011 and is a former chief executive of Birmingham City Council, Nottinghamshire County Council and Wolverhampton Borough Council.
He is chairman of the English Cities Fund, which aims to bring together the public and private sectors to promote sustainable urban regeneration and a strategic adviser to CB Richard Ellis.
He was formerly a non-executive director of Mouchel Group plc, acting chairman of the Audit Commission, professor of Public Policy at Birmingham University and chairman of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. He completed a ten year term as a governor of the Royal Shakespeare Company in 2011.
Sir Michael Lyons led a major government sponsored enquiry on the Role and Funding of Local Government (pub spring 2007) and was responsible for the 2004 Lyons Review of Public Sector relocation for the Treasury. He is currently leading a review of housing supply for Ed Milliband.
Roger Quince
Roger Quince combines experience at board level in industry and property investment with consultancy in the field of public policy.
Roger Quince is a co-founder of SQW and a former managing director of the company. As well as leading the development of the firm to become one of the foremost in its field he directed many of SQW’s flagship projects, principally in the science and technology field. His consultancy experience includes a strong international dimension, with assignments spanning the Asia Pacific, Latin America, Africa, the Mediterranean, and several countries in Western and Eastern Europe.
Mr Quince is a former executive director of MEPC Ltd, one of the UK’s leading property companies, and was responsible for three business parks including Granta Park near Cambridge which is focused on the biotechnology sector.
Roger Quince is chair of a medium sized NHS acute hospital in Suffolk and also chairs the Cambridge Music Festival, a triennial classical music festival which comprises over 70 separate events.
Martin Hess
Martin Hess is VP, Enterprise Services at Hewlett Packard, a US listed multinational information technology company. HP is headquartered in California, has a market capitalisation of £30.86 billion and a turnover of £80.90 billion. Martin has sat on the HP UK board for eight years.
Within Martin’s current role, which he took up in August 2010, he is responsible for the growth of Enterprise Services (formerly EDS) in the UK&I, a $2.2 billion revenue business. He has been with HP since 2001 in a number of positions; VP, Global Accounts (Nov 2009 – Aug 2010), VP, Technology Solutions Group, UK&I (Nov 2004 – Oct 2009) and Sales Director, Financial Services UK (June 2001 – Nov 2004).
Prior to this he worked in a number of organisations in varied roles including being part of the startup management for Interliant, a French application services provider, he also spent 10 years at IBM in a number of management roles. Martin began his career at Imperial Foods as a graduate marketing trainee.
Martin has a degree in Economics and International Relations from LSE, and an MBA from London Business School.
David Crichton-Miller
Group Chief Executive Officer
David Crichton-Miller joined SQW Group in June 2015 as Chief Executive and main Board Director. Prior to joining SQW Group, David’s career has been with consulting and support service organisations, serving both public and private sector clients. His career started as a strategy consultant with McKinsey & Company and has since included being Chief Operating Officer of WYG plc, Managing Director of the Environmental and Planning Consulting Division at WYG, Director for Business Development and Strategy at Mouchel, Managing Director for Amey Technology Services, and most recently Executive Director at A4e, one of the main operators of UK Government employability and skills outsourcing contracts.
Andrew Strivens
Group Chief Operating Officer
Andrew Strivens has overall responsibility for central support functions at SQW Group, with a particular focus on Finance and Human Resources.
Prior to joining SQW Group, he was Chief Operating Officer, Finance Director and Company Secretary at TMG, an IT-based professional services firm.
Andrew was also formerly Chief Operating Officer at the London office of Weil Gotshal & Manges, a New York based city law firm, ranked 12th globally, where he led a turnaround of the office’s financial performance and substantially improved the HR services.
Andrew trained as an accountant at Coopers & Lybrand and subsequently worked for PricewaterhouseCoopers as a management consultant.
Kate Wright
Group Finance Director and Company Secretary
Kate Wright joined SQW Group as Group Finance Director and Company Secretary in November 2016.
Prior to joining the Group, Kate held a number of senior finance positions in public, private and not-for-profit organisations including that of Group Finance Director for Concateno plc (now ‘Alere Toxicology plc’). Whilst at Concateno, the group grew rapidly (organically and via acquisition) and became the European leader in the field of medical diagnostics ahead of being purchased by Alere Inc in August 2009 (NYSE: ALR).
Kate qualified as a Chartered Accountant with Deloitte in 2004. During her four years with Deloitte, Kate specialised in working with high growth SMEs across the Thames Valley region including managing advisory work on two highly successful client IPOs.
