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President
The Rt Hon Sir Geoffrey Pattie PC -
Chairman
Julian Wheatland -
Chief Executive Officer
Nigel Oakes -
Director
Alex Oakes -
Director
Alexander Nix -
Director
Roger Gabb -
Director of Information Operations
Ian Tunnicliffe -
Company Secretary
John Bottomley FCIS
Advisory Board:
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Lord Birdwood
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Gavin McNicoll
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The Rt. Hon. Sir James Mitchell
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Lord Ivar Mountbatten
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Professor Phil Taylor BA PhD - Behavioural Dynamics Institute
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The Rt Hon Geoffrey Pattie PC - Chairman
Sir Geoffrey was educated at Durham School and St Catherine’s College, Cambridge, where he graduated with an MA Honours Degree in Law. He was called to the Bar at Gray’s Inn in 1964. He served with the Queen’s Royal Rifles (now 4th Royal Green Jackets TA) from 1959 to 1966, achieving the rank of Captain. Since January 1996, he has been Honorary Colonel of the 4th Royal Green Jackets. He was an elected member of the General Synod of the Church of England from 1970 to 1975. Having entered the advertising industry in 1959, he became a Director of Collett Dickenson Pearce, one of the country’s leading advertising agencies, from 1966 to 1979 and was Managing Director from 1960 to 1973. He was elected Member of Parliament for Chertsey and Walton from February 1974 until April 1997.
Following the General Election of May 1979, he was appointed Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Defence (RAF) then Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Defence Procurement, and from January 1983 until September 1984, Minister of State for Defence Procurement. He was then Minister of State for Industry, responsible for information technology, civil aviation, space, biotechnology and advanced research until June 1987. In that capacity, he carried through the privatisation of British Telecom in November 1984. In January 1987 he was made a Privy Counsellor and in the same year, Sir Geoffrey was knighted.
In April 1990, Sir Geoffrey was appointed Vice-Chairman of the Conservative Party with particular responsibility for liaising with other parties in Europe and emerging democracies in Eastern Europe. In May 1992, he was appointed Vice-Chairman (International) of the Conservative Party. He resigned from his seat in Parliament at the General Election in 1997. In July 1997 he was awarded the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Law by Sheffield University. He was Chairman of Marconi Electronic Systems Ltd. from June 1990 to 1999, Director of Marketing at GEC plc from 1997 to 1998, and Director of Communications at GEC from 1998 to 1999. He was a Non-Executive Director of the Fairey Group from 1987 to 1993, and Chairman of the Intellectual Property Institute from 1994 to 1999. -
Nigel Oakes - CEO
Nigel Oakes was educated at Eton College and UCL, where he studied Psychology. In 1982 he joined Monte Carlo TV as a producer and in 1985 became its Head of International Production. Two years later, Nigel joined Saatchi and Saatchi as a Senior Producer. In 1989, he established the Behavioural Dynamics Working Group at University College London and in 1990, the Behavioural Dynamics Institute (BDi) was formed as a centre of excellence and a research facility for strategic communication. Over the next nine years, BDi commissioned $17m in pioneering communication research programmes. In 1993 Nigel set up Strategic Communication Laboratories and, using the new communication methodology from BDi, ran election campaigns and national communication campaigns for a broad variety of international governments. Published clients include South Africa, USA, St Vincent & the Grenadines, Antigua, Indonesia, Thailand, Philippines, Grenada, Nepal, Pakistan and Switzerland.
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Alex Oakes - Director
Alex Oakes was educated at Eton College, Brookes University, Oxford and the Chartered Institute of Marketing, before moving to Hong Kong in 1992 to work with Cazenove & Co. In 1994 he was offered the opportunity to join Drax Myanmar Ltd, an enterprising new venture in Burma, as Operations Director. In 1998, he joined Nigel, his brother, in Strategic Communication Laboratories, where he was responsible for coordinating many of the longer-term projects. In 2003, Alex established The Diagnostic Clinic with ex-Orange founder Hans Snook to introduce a one-stop diagnostic facility in London.
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Alexander Nix BA - Director
After graduating from Manchester University, Alexander Nix started his career working as a financial analyst with Baring Securities in Mexico. In 1998 he moved to Buenos Aires, Argentina, where he was a co-founding partner of an electronic Customer Relationship Management Outsourcing business. He retained an active role as Director, working on corporate finance and structure: between 1999 and 2001 he developed the business across three countries and built a close personal relationship with the government with whom he negotiated material contracts. In 2001 he returned to the UK and joined Robert Fraser & Partners LLP, a boutique Corporate Finance and tax advisory firm, and then Robert Fraser Corporate Finance shortly after as a Registered Representative of the Financial Services Authority. As an Assistant Director he worked as principal and, in an advisory capacity, on M&A and transaction work including IPOs, RTOs and capital raising for SMEs.
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Roger Gabb – Director
Roger Gabb is Executive Chairman of Western Wines Ltd, a £100m turnover business that he built up over twenty years to supply wine to the UK supermarket sector. His earlier career included introducing Volvic mineral water into the UK, and a period with Distillers Company as European Brand Manager.
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Julian Wheatland – Director
Investment Manager at Consensus Business Group
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Alexis Everington – Operations Director
Coming Soon...
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The Rt. Hon. Sir James Mitchell
Coming Soon..
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John Bottomley FCIS – Company Secretary
John Bottomley qualified as a Chartered Secretary in 1972 and is a Fellow of the Institute of Secretaries and Administrators. From 1968 to 1974 he was a senior manager of the secretarial department at PricewaterhouseCoopers and between 1985 and 1992 was a director of Robert Fraser and Partners Limited. In 2003 he moved to Sprecher Grier Halberstam LLP to head up the Company Secretarial services division.
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Ian Tunnicliffe
Coming Soon..
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Lord Birdwood
Lord Mark Birdwood was educated at Radley and Trinity College, Cambridge, before commissioning with the Royal Horse Guards. Thereafter he joined J Walter Thompson as a copywriter, was Creative Director of another London agency and also Development Director for Cambridge Consultants (now Cambridge Communications). He has operated in executive search with Boyden International, co-founded Wrightson Wood, and is Director of Martlet, a company that he also owns. Lord Birdwood is Chairman of Steeltower Ltd (a property development company which he co-founded), a trustee of two charities, and was on the select Committee for Science and Technology. He is an honorary Research Associate of the Centre for Philosophy of Natural and Social Sciences at the London School of Economics and a patron of Mansfield College, Oxford.
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Lord Ivar Mountbatten
After graduating with a degree in geology, Lord Ivar spent seven years in South America working on a variety of international projects as a mining consultant. He returned in 1993 to take over the management of his family estate, which he turned into a successful corporate venue prior to its sale in 1998. Today, he works as Director of his own company, Crown storage Ltd. Additional appointments include diplomatic roles for UNICEF and other prominent charities.
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Professor Phil Taylor BA PhD - Behavioural Dynamics Institute
Professor Phil Taylor graduated with a first class honours degree in History from the University of Leeds in 1975 and secured his doctorate, also from Leeds, three years later. His PhD was an examination of the Foreign Office News Department between 1914 and 1939, externally examined by the late W N Medlicott. In 1978 he joined the School of History at the University of Leeds as a Lecturer in International History and Politics. In 1982 and 1983, he was Visiting Professor of Political Science and History at Vanderbilt University in the USA. He was made a Senior Lecturer in International History in 1988 and a Reader in International Communications in 1992. He secured his Chair in International Communications in 1998. In between, he was seconded to the newly created Institute of Communications Studies, where he served as its first Deputy Director until 1998, when he became its second Director (succeeding Professor Nicholas Pronay). He was Director for four years until 2002. He is currently the Programme Leader for the MA in International Communications. His research interests are government-media relations, public and cultural diplomacy, propaganda, psychological operations/warfare, information operations/warfare, military-media relations, international film, radio and television (international communications) - all in an historical or contemporary context.
He is Associate Editor of both the Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television and The Journal of Information Warfare and he serves on the international editorial board for the new journal Global Media and Communication. He also served for many years as Executive Secretary or Chairman of the InterUniversity History Film Consortium.
In the UK, he has lectured widely for military education courses, including at the Defence Intelligence and Security School (DISS) at Chicksands, the Royal College of Defence Studies (RCDS) and the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), both in London, and at the Joint Services Command Staff College (JSCSC) at Shrivenham. On military matters outside the UK, he has lectured at, among other places, the Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE) in Mons, and on NATO courses at the Polish Land Forces HQ in Warsaw, the Norwegian Defence and Security School (NORDISS) in Oslo, the Swedish Defence College in Stockholm, the Italian Air Force Academy in Naples, the United States Air Force Special Operations School (USAFSOC, now University) at Hurlburt Field, Florida, the Canadian Armed Forces at Montreal Garrison, and at the US Army War College in Pennsylvania. He was also consulted by the prosecution of the Milosevic trial at the International War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague on Serbian propaganda in 2002. He has published 10 books, including War and the Media: Propaganda and Persuasion in the Gulf War (2nd edition 1997), Munitions of the Mind: a history of propaganda from the ancient world to the present day (3rd edition, 2003); Global Communications, International Affairs and the Media since 1945 (1997) and 70 articles and book chapters. He has made many media appearances, including on the BBC’s Newsnight and Timewatch programmes, Channel 4 News, Sky News, BBC Radio 4 and 5 Live, and he has written op-ed pieces, inter alia, for The Washington Post and Al Ahram (Egypt). -
Gavin McNicoll
Coming Soon..