Testimonial 1

Darryll Colthrust (CTO & Co-founder CHAPTR)

“CHAPTR is the new entertainment business within the Holtzbrinck Group that I have co-founded, alongside Philipp Nastaly (CEO) and Andy Landle (CPO).

Calum Mackenzie has been instrumental in guiding and supporting our thinking around the safe implementation of Generative AI within our organisation. I worked with Calum during his time at Faculty AI during my time at Springer Nature in 2021 as I was building out Springer Nature's AI strategy. Within a short period of time, he had gained the trust of the executives within our programme and showed his business acumen.

At the earliest opportunity after setting up our business, I reached out to Calum and asked him to join the setup of the business and guide us through the murky waters of Generative AI. This is an emerging technology that will affect every single industry in some way and we needed his background expertise and forward-thinking mindset to help shape our AI strategy. He is now supporting me at the Holtzbrinck level as we embark on a new AI strategy at the board level.

Calum has a great perspective on the future of AI within a number of different industries.”

Testimonial 2

Rich Pearce (Investment Director at ECI Partners LLP)

“Cal helped us understand the potential future disruptive impact AI would have on a business we were looking to invest in. He got us in a position to quickly and confidently conclude that it would, which ultimately led to us walking away from the deal. Cal’s analysis was quick, thoroughly detailed and above all easily translated into real commercial arguments that helped us make our decision.”

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Career Headlines

  • I started my career with Capgemini Consulting and was promoted 6 months early from the graduate scheme due to exceptional performance. This experience equipped me with fundamental management consulting frameworks and skills. I also learnt how organisations needed to adapt to new innovations (i.e. people, process and technology).

  • Wanting industry experience, I joined the BT Fast Track Leadership Scheme. This allowed me to rotate across the Group, taking on various commercial and strategy leadership roles. When the scheme finished I made TV / Sport my permanent home. I worked with a great team taking this innovative new proposition to market.

  • I joined Amazon as Senior Vendor Manager - accountable for a £70m P&L (TV & Video business). I grew Amazon TV market segment share in a declining market. A really important experience that helped me to understand that I am more suited to innovation and strategy roles rather than retail. Exposure to a world-class Data Science business.

  • Joined Iris Worldwide as a Director, sitting on the Consulting Leadership team. Led the European relationship for Starbucks. Given the freedom to deliver some ambitious and innovative data projects. Examples include:

    • Starbucks - using location data to understand market share at store level.

    • Private Equity Due Diligence - using e-commerce data to assess competitor ticket sales rate and venue utilisation in the UK Cinema Industry.

    • Value Retail - implemented a third-party AI solution to optimise website content.

  • Understanding the potential of AI, I joined Faculty AI as Commercial Principal, and within two years, was promoted to Director. I helped them become one of Europe’s leading applied AI companies and personally delivered £2.5m in sales. I managed teams of consultants, data scientists, and engineers to deliver AI strategy and software projects in Consumer & Private Equity. Examples include:

    Moonpig - Led an AI strategy project immediately following the IPO - to build a 3 year AI Strategy & Roadmap.

    Pandora - Led this European relationship for 12 months managing a team of 10 delivering ongoing AI software solutions.

    ECI Partners / Mobysoft - Led an AI Due Diligence project which led to the investment from ECI Partners into Mobysoft.

    Brunswick Group - 4 month Strategy project to assess the potential of AI in critical issues advisory.

    ThoughtRiver - Led a groundbreaking NLP project where we built and deployed a customised version of GenBERT to assess the minimum term of legal contracts.

  • In 2022 Calum joined CHAPTR (a Generative AI Startup & wholly owned subsidiary of HPG) as Director of AI Strategy. In this role I have written the AI Strategy and AI Safety/Ethics Strategy. I am now working with CHAPTR to implement this strategy as they launch multiple Generative AI propositions in 2023.

Career Background

  • CHAPTR

  • Faculty AI

  • Iris

  • Amazon

  • BT

  • Capgemini