James Parton was Twilio's first hire outside of US and headed up Europe for them from June 2012 until June 2017.

To say Twilio have been an important company would be an understatement and James was key part of that but this is also a slightly more personal podcast as well.

I think it's the kind of Podcast I want to make more of! I hope you enjoy listening.

In addition to His superb broadcasting Edward is Senior Editor at The Economist and was Moscow Bureau Chief from 1998 to 2002 and has written multiple books covering amongst other things; cybersecurity, Vadlimir Putin and Edward Snowden. He has also been a correspondent for The Independent and the Daily Mail and is Senior Fellow & contributing editor at the Centre for European Policy Analysis in Washington DC.

Edward was so interesting he distracted me almost immediately!

A wide ranging conversation against the backdrop of internet security. We touched on collaboration between the Security Services and the private sector, the Banks and their responsibilities, Brexit, Trump, Snowdon, Russia and the recent Ransomware attack on the NHS.

Edward speaks with an informed and passionate voice on these topics and if you are looking for a place to start learning about this vital topic for your business or personal life, you just found it.

Please check out Edward's highly acclaimed books 'Cyberphobia', 'The New Cold War' and his first class Podcast on iTunes.

His twitter handle is 'edwardlucas' and his website is edwardlucas.com

Ian Ritchie is not an easy man to summarise, when I look at his background I'm simply left wondering how he managed to fit it all in. I'm really only going to be to scratch the surface here so please look him up but he is the Non-Exec chairman of Iomart PLC, Computer Applications Service and Krotos, he founded OWL in 1984 which pioneered hypertext application development - a forerunner to the worldwide web - and since then he has been involved in over 40 high tech start-ups.

He is a board member of the Edinburgh international science festival, a founding member and chairman of the Scottish Software federation and on and on... so please take a look at his webpage coppertop.co.uk to learn more! I wanted to add that he was also awarded a CBE in 2003 for his services to enterprise and education and is a fellow and past president of the British Computer Society.

He is also a published author and for the last 30 years has helped to build Scotland as a centre for high growth technology companies.

As if all this wasn’t enough he even has that very modern hallmark of overachievement his very own Ted Talk where he very amusingly talks about his encounters with Sir Tim Berners Lee.

Helping us explore the role of the Non-Exec today is James Davies. James had a front row seat for the Dot-com boom in the 90's and has just a wealth of knowledge in the areas of Market Strategy, Portfolio and Product management, innovation management, product marketing and go to market experience in the UK and USA. Notably he was President and CEO of Accept Software a few years ago and has recently moved to AnswerSpace as Chief Product Officer and for nearly 3 years has been Non-Executive Chairman at i-Nexus.

Martin has a background that frankly makes me a little jealous. Not just because he has worked at some great companies but because of when he worked at these great companies. Cast your mind back 5 or 6 years and wonder just how interesting it would have been to be Head of Business Sales at Skype at the time? Go back a little further think how exciting it must have been to be a founder of Salesforce.com in EMEA? Fast forward to today and Martin is with insidesales.com as International Managing Director and has been a Non-Exec with Netigate since 2013.

Martin really has been at the absolute forefront of the cloud revolution

In this opening episode of the Podcast I am going to be talking to Steve Bennetts. For those of you who don’t know, Steve is the Chief Financial Officer of Actual Experience and has been a Non-Exec with Input Media since late 2011. His career prior to this has been equally interesting and includes EMEA Finance Director for several Nasdaq quoted companies such as Avid Technologies and Pyramid Technologies but most recognisable is probably his time leading the team that established Amazons European operations.

It's a great way to start the Pathfinder Executive Search Podcast!