Executive team

Steve Coates

CEO / Co-founder

Steven co-founded Brainnwave seven years ago. His vision was to improve the quality and speed of decision making in business by bringing together the best cloud technologies and the latest thought leadership in AI and Data science.

He is a former “UK Entrepreneur of the Year” and is passionate about helping clients deploy practical technology led solutions that have a real impact.

Prior to co-founding Brainnwave, he had a career spanning 20 years developing complex business strategies for some of the world’s largest companies as a consultant at top tier consulting firms Accenture and The Boston Consulting Group.

Graham Jones

CTO / Co-founder

Graham co-founded Brainnwave with Steve seven years ago. Graham’s technical background is the perfect complement to Steve’s business experience. He helped form the vision based on the “mega trends” he was seeing in technology, and the speed at which cloud and AI was starting to have an impact on how businesses make decisions.

He is an expert software engineer with over 25 years’ experience delivering state-of-the-art solutions for some of the world’s leading information companies.

A veteran hands-on technical manager and chief engineer, Graham has led numerous development teams through major ground-up projects, including company start-ups, acquisitions and migrations.

Christopher Magennis

Chief Operating Officer

Chris qualified as an accountant with BP before joining Accenture where he enjoyed more than 25 years performing roles in all areas of the businesses and in multiple geographies.

Most recently, Chris spent 3 years as COO for the Natural Resources businesses in Europe, Africa & Latin America, and 4 years as MD responsible for oil & gas, metals, mining & chemicals in the CIS countries.

Gianna Illenseer

Chief Product Officer

Gianna joined Brainnwave in 2019 when the company was still relatively young. She oversees product development at Brainnwave and has been instrumental in crafting the product vision and roadmap to ensure Brainnwave’s Mosaic platform enables our clients to deploy AI at scale. She is responsible for the productization of the platform, ensuring that it is solving real problems, is scalable, meets its business objectives, and results in delighted customers.

She is an experienced product professional with over 14 years of building innovative digital products. Prior to Brainnwave, Gianna was pushing the boundaries of mobile innovation with a focus on IoT and AI, helping her clients optimise their customers’ end-to-end experiences for clients such as JLL, Heineken, and Audi.

Alex Cowles

Creative Director

A designer since 2005 and a Brainnwave employee since 2017, Alex has a deep understanding of digital design, branding and user experience; he spends his time balancing a smooth user experience with an intuitive interface while maintaining a sympathetic understanding of business, client and platform goals.

His work has won a number of visual design awards from both BIMA and DADI and he contributed to a project which received a BAFTA Scotland New Talent award.

Alex has worked freelance, for both digital and service design agencies as well as product-side. He’s worked on projects for BBC Worldwide, IKEA, Ryanair, 20th Century Fox, Tesco Bank, Edinburgh International Festival and countless others.

Tim Hurst

Chief Data Scientist

Tim leads the Data Science team at Brainnwave. After completing a PhD in applied mathematical modelling, he moved towards the area of statistical analysis and machine learning.

Tim enjoys working on many different projects in statistical learning. He can create and apply state-of-the-art machine learning techniques to our clients’ data, to help them explore and understand its predictive and analytic potential.

Non-execs

Paul Chowdry

Chairman

Paul served for 10+ years as a member of the Executive Team at Wood Mackenzie, where he led large teams (c. 500 people), acquisitions and integrations, transformation programmes and the strategy and planning process.

He was a part of the leadership team that led the successful growth and acquisition of Wood Mackenzie (by Verisk for $1.8bn). Paul is a Director of several technology startups and an active angel investor.

Paul Atherton

Non-Executive Director / Investor Representative

Paul is a qualified accountant, having qualified with Deloitte & Touche, and holds a degree in Geology from Imperial College London. He has a corporate finance background with over 20 years’ experience in the natural resource sectors.

He is the former CEO and CFO of Heritage Oil which had a premium listing on the Main Board of the London Stock Exchange and was a member of the FTSE 250 until being acquired for US$1.6 billion in 2014.

Steven Stegenwalner

Non-Executive Director / Investor Representative

Steve is a Chartered Accountant with over 25 years operational experience in a professional services environment. Having qualified with Ernst and Young, Steve joined Carey Olsen in 1996 as Chief Operating Officer.

Steve oversaw the expansion of the firm and its various trust company business interests as the Group grew from 30 people to 350+. Steve left Carey Olsen in 2004 to head up the family office of the Somerston Group, an international investment group focused on real estate and private equity. Steve represents Somerston Group’s investor interests as a NED.

Andrew Strain

Non-Executive Director / Investor Representative

Andrew qualified as a Chartered Accountant with Deloitte where he specialized in international tax matters for several years prior to joining Hatch. He is currently the Global Managing Director, Corporate Development & Investments at Hatch and a member of the Board where he is responsible for mergers & acquisitions, portfolio investments and chairing the Investment Committee.

Some of our wonderful team

Anne
Beth
Helen
Kerri
Araldo
Carlos
Christian
Dave
David
Emmanuel
Jack
James
Simon