Our team

Been there. Done it. Still doing it.

This is not a job board with a call centre attached. Between the fourteen people on this page there is more than a century of board search, executive appointment and time actually spent in the chair: founding companies, chairing boards, taking the decisions nobody else wanted to take and living with them afterwards. When you speak to someone here, you are speaking to someone who has already done the thing you are about to do.

Every person on this page is reachable by every member, founder included

Experience, not theory

100+ years of board search
between them

A hundred years is not a marketing line, it is a headcount of careers. Chairs placed. Non-executives appointed. Whole boards assembled from scratch, for start-ups and for listed businesses. Everything this team tells you about getting onto a board is something it has done, on the other side of the table, for somebody else.

Join the network Hire a NED or chair

Already a member? Login

Start-up to PLC, and back again FTSE100 & PE-backed mandates Founders, operators, investors

What sits behind you

14

People on the team, all named, all contactable

30,000+

Members they have brought into the community

8,000+

Investing directors inside the room

Ian Wright Ian Wright · Founder & CEO

The founder

Sold at 40x. Then spent fifteen years building this.

Ian Wright is a multi-exited founder. He sold his first business at a 40x multiple to a UK private equity house, and has since advised scale-ups through exit and well beyond it, most recently with exits to Leonard Curtis, now backed by institutional private equity investor Pollen Street Capital.

For the last fifteen years he has been building the UK’s largest non-executive and board advisor ecosystems, and hiring a team the same way he hired his own boards: people who have already done it, not people who have read about it.

“Everything we do is guided by our own experience, as non-executives ourselves, or advising the businesses that hire them.”

Ian Wright · Founder & CEO

40x

Multiple on his first exit, to a UK PE house

15 yrs

Building the UK’s largest board advisor ecosystem

30,000+

Members in the community he built

No theory, no middlemen

What “been there and done it” actually means.

Every network says its people are experienced. Here is the specific, unglamorous version of what that means when you pick up the phone to us.

We have hired this role

Between us we have written the brief, sat on the interview panel and made the appointment. We know what a chair is really assessing in the second meeting, because we have been the one assessing.

We have been the new NED

Walking into a boardroom where everyone else has ten years of history is its own skill. Most of this team has done it: first day, first paper, first difficult question.

We have built and sold companies

Founded, scaled, restructured, exited. The commercial advice you get here comes from people who have carried the risk personally, not observed it.

We answer the phone ourselves

No account-management layer, no ticket queue. From the founder down, every person on this page is reachable by every member of the network.

The team behind the network

A proper team, 100+ years deep.

Fourteen people. Four disciplines. One rule: nobody advises on something they have not done themselves. Every name below is reachable by every member, from the founder down.

Leadership

3 people

They built it, and they have sat on the other side of the table. Three careers' worth of founding, running and chairing companies. When a member asks what a board really wants, the answer does not come from a playbook.

Ian Wright

Ian Wright

Founder & CEO

Gary Cain

Gary Cain

Managing Director

Michael Critchley

Michael Critchley

Non-Executive Director

Board search & interim

3 people

The people who actually make the appointments. Chairs, non-executives, whole boards and interim leadership, placed across start-up, PE-backed and listed businesses. They have run the process from both ends: writing the brief, and being on the shortlist.

Chris Beevers

Chris Beevers

Head of Search

Sarah Lovell

Sarah Lovell

Head of Interim

Calvino Elliott

Calvino Elliott

Head of Sales

Membership

4 people

Your first call, and the one who keeps picking up. Every member gets a named person who has had the career conversation a thousand times over, and had it themselves. They know what the transition into a portfolio career actually feels like, because they have made it.

Mike Wain

Mike Wain

Membership Manager

Neil Wright

Neil Wright

Membership Manager

Jonny Halford

Jonny Halford

Membership Manager

Joanne Stubbs

Joanne Stubbs

Account Manager

Community, brand & platform

4 people

The engine room behind 30,000 members. Events that fill, profiles that get read, and a platform that puts a boardroom in front of you every day. Unglamorous, relentless, and the reason the network keeps compounding.

Laura Archbold

Laura Archbold

Business Manager

Dominique Dempsey

Dominique Dempsey

Events Manager

Nadia Cassim

Nadia Cassim

Professional Branding Specialist

Adam Hembrough

Adam Hembrough

Head of Development

100+

Years of board search between them

100%

Of mandates filled in the last 12 months

<5 days

To a warm-introduced first shortlist

The whole point

Nobody here is reading it off a slide. Every conversation you have with this team is with somebody who has already sat where you are about to sit.

The operating principle, from the founder down

Track record

What this team has actually done.

Four things, all of them measurable, none of them accidental.

01

Chairs, non-executives and entire boards, appointed

Not advertised. Appointed. The team has run mandates for founder-led start-ups, PE portfolio companies and listed businesses, and filled every one of them in the last twelve months.

02

A network of 30,000, built one conversation at a time

The community did not arrive fully formed. It was assembled member by member, introduction by introduction, by the people on this page.

03

8,000+ investing directors inside the room

Funds, family offices and founders search this pool first. Getting them here took years of doing what we said we would do.

04

Events that people actually turn up to

Peer-to-peer, on the record, no pitching from the front. Because we have all sat through the other kind.

Put us to work on a mandate See board vacancies

What members say about them

Named, not anonymous.

Members do not review a platform. They review the person who picked up. Rated 4.7 out of 5 on Trustpilot.

Community

“Not only does VirtualExecs provide an outstanding networking experience with ones’ peers, but also it’s a way for getting to know a diverse number of people from diverse perspectives and background...”

Emmanuel 5 stars · May 2026
Membership

“I have had the pleasure of speaking with Michael Wain a number of times now. The conversations are always extremely productive and the feedback is not only quick but gives practical advice.”

Deeps Mistry 5 stars · February 2026
The whole team

“Massive thank you to Jo for everything she does for us, Laura for always having the assist, Ian for making the time and the wider team for making us so welcome. We look forward to a long and fruitful partnership with you all.”

Jaycob Ball 5 stars · October 2025

Read every review on Trustpilot

Work with the team

Borrow a hundred years of having done it before.

Access every board opportunity in the network, the roles this team identifies for Networker Pro members, and a named person who has already made the move you are making. Join 30,000 non-executives and chairs already inside.

Become a member Hire a NED or chair

Already a member? Login