Group Board
David Evans, MBE – Chairman & Founder
Since David founded Grass Roots on the 1st of April 1980 in a basement office behind London’s Oxford Street, Grass Roots has come far. Today he is Chairman and Chief Executive of The Grass Roots Group with offices around the world, employing over 1000 people, billing some 350 million Euros annually and with over 2000 active clients.
Nigel King – Group Finance Director
Nigel King, joined Grass Roots in 1996 after ten years in the marketing and communications industry. He qualified as a Chartered Accountant with Spicer and Oppenheim (now part of Deloitte & Touche) after gaining a BA in Philosophy from Nottingham University.
Andy Lister – MD Grass Roots
Andy Lister set up the Employee Benefits division upon joining Grass Roots in 2001. He was made a Board Director in 2004. Prior to arriving at Grass Roots he held a number of senior HR positions within the former NatWest Group and latterly with The Royal Bank of Scotland.
Helen O’Byrne – Company Secretary
Helen trained with Baker & McKenzie, London where she qualified as a corporate lawyer. After some years in private practice, she moved into industry, joining BBA Group PLC.
Helen joined Grass Roots Group PLC in 2005 after 4 ½ years as General Counsel & Company Secretary of ebookers plc (the online travel agent then listed on London Stock Exchange and NASDAQ).
Nick Bender – MD Grass Roots Eventcom
Nick Bender began his career as a travel representative at Thomas Cook and his love of travel and events has kept him busy ever since. Nick joined Eventcom in 1998. Following the acquisition of the Marlow based business by Grass Roots Group, he was made MD in 2007.
Stephen Humphreys – MD Projectlink and President, Grass Roots America
Stephen Humphreys joined Grass Roots in 2003 when Projectlink, the business he co-owned, was acquired by the Group. Projectlink was founded in 1985 and Stephen joined as a Project Director in 1996 taking over as MD in 1997. Prior to that, Stephen worked for TSB in roles in Marketing and Internal Communications before the banks merger with Lloyds.
Andrew Wilmot - Chief Technology Officer
Andrew Wilmot was the founder of customer strategy agency BDR which was acquired by Grass Roots in spring 2006. He was made Chief Technology Officer for the Group at the end of 2007 with global responsibilty for the platforms and processes that support all client facing programmes.
Nat Solomon – Non-executive Director
Nat Solomon spent 23 years with Unilever, the last ten as a Director of United Africa Company Limited. Nat’s subsequent career has a leisure industry bias and includes the Chairmanship of Pleasurama plc, Gala Group Ltd., Crown Leisure plc, RAL Holdings Limited and Tottenham Hotspur plc where he is a Life Vice President. Amongst other current appointments, he is a non-executive Director of Wolsey Group whose principal activity is the provision of finance for housing developments. He is also an advisor to the Corporate Finance house, Livingstone Guarantee and to the Private Equity firm Aberdeen Murray Johnstone.
Andrew Scott – Non-executive Director
Since 1999 Andrew has been WPP’s Director of Corporate Development leading the Group’s global Mergers and Acquisition activity. In this role he is responsible for managing the large number of strategic acquisitions made by WPP each year to help position the group in faster-growing functional and geographic areas.
Andrew also leads WPP's International Specialist Communications Division which contains businesses in a diverse range of marketing services sectors – Promotion and Relationship Marketing, Sports Marketing, Custom Publishing and Media, Technology and Production Services.
Prior to joining WPP Andrew was a strategy consultant at LEK Consulting. He holds an MBA with distinction from INSEAD.