Board & Management
Andrew Kitchingman
Andrew is an experienced board chairman and non-executive director. In addition to chairing Surface Transforms, he also chairs Mpac Group plc and HC Slingsby plc and sits on the board of a number of other companies. A trained mathematician by background he is a chartered accountant who worked in corporate finance advising mainly smaller quoted companies for over 25 years.
Dr Kevin Johnson
Kevin has a doctorate in Chemistry from the University of Liverpool and an MBA from Manchester Business School. He has spent six years in product development for the chemical industry and has a broad experience with OEM multinationals in the area of new technology development. Previously he worked for Avecia, formerly AstraZeneca.
Isabelle Maddock
Isabelle brings extensive experience as Chief Financial Officer with 9 years at James Cropper Plc a £130m manufacturing Group of highly engineered industrial performance veils and paper materials. Isabelle is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants with over 30 years of experience and has held a number of financial roles across a variety of sectors covering manufacturing (Angus Fire Amour, Ethicon Ltd) software (Adobe Systems Europe Ltd), retail (Landmark Ltd), PFI (Haden Building Management Ltd) and publishing (CGP Ltd). Isabelle is Chair of the CBI’s Economic Growth Board and joined the Board of Surface Transforms in September 2023.
Matthew Taylor
Matthew joins the Board after retiring from his role as CEO of Bekaert SA in 2020. Bekaert SA is a €5billion, 30,000 employees global steel cord business headquartered in Belgium with 45% of its business in automotive. Prior to this role Matthew was CEO of Edwards Vacuum, CEO of JC Bamford, and Global MD of Land Rover following his early career in sales and marketing roles with Ford after a short spell in the Royal Navy.
Julia Woodhouse
Julia spent her executive career in Automotive with Ford Motor Company where her roles included
Director, Global Power Train Purchasing, based in USA and Director, Global Chassis
Purchasing, based in Germany. Following her retirement from Ford in 2018, she moved into non-executive roles. Julia is currently a non executive director of Outokumpu a leading global stainless-steel manufacturer based in Helsinki and is also a member of their external ESG Council.
Ian Cleminson
Ian is currently Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of Innospec Inc., an international speciality chemical business employing 1900 personnel, in 23 countries with sales of over $1.5 billion and quoted on the US NASDAQ exchange with a market capitalisation of over $2 billion. Ian joined Innospec in 2002 and has served as CFO since 2006. Prior to joining Innospec, Ian held several senior financial management and accounting positions including Financial Controller at a division of BASF and an accountant in practice at KPMG. Ian has a Master of Social Science degree from Birmingham University and is a Fellow of the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants.
Stephen Easton
Stephen has over 26 years of experience and joins the organisation from SGL Carbon, a €1bn revenue global graphite and fibre manufacturing company, where he was Managing Director for their UK operations. During his 16-year tenure he held various leadership positions both in the UK and US, specialising in carbon and oxidised fibre. Prior to this, he worked in a variety of different senior operational roles within the manufacturing sector. He holds an honours degree in Manufacturing Engineering & Management from the University of Dundee. Stephen joined Surface Transforms in September 2023.
Leigh Welch
Leigh has over 30 years experience, in the automotive industry including senior positions at Bosch, Delphi and Chassis Brakes International, ranging from Program Management to Sales Director. Leigh started his career as an apprentice toolmaker, and has a Degree in Engineering from the University of Wolverhampton.
Geoff Whitfield
Geoff has over 15 years experience in product and process design, development and testing within the automotive and aerospace sectors. In his early career he gained experience in polymer composite product design and testing when he worked for a small composite materials consultancy. He then moved into high volume manufacturing with Mondi Packaging where he was responsible for capital project implementation to align production cells to the business’s capacity and quality targets. Geoff joined Surface Transforms in 2004 and has developed friction products and industrialised some of the key manufacturing processes which form part of the proprietary know-how required to make cutting edge carbon-ceramic brake discs. Geoff has a BSc (Hon) in aeronautical engineering and an MSc in engineering (composite materials) from the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa.
Kerry Wood
Kerry joined Surface Transforms in 2017 having previously held the position of Head of Quality Coordination at NGF Europe one of the world’s leading manufacturers of performance glass products for the automotive sector and part of the Nippon Glass Fibre Group. Holding industry recognised qualifications in quality, health and safety and environmental compliance, including VDA qualifications, Kerry has worked in various roles within these areas over the last 10 years and brings a wealth of experience to the company. Since joining the company Kerry has been instrumental in the transfer of the company to the new industry standard of IATF 16949 and the award of ISO 14001 for environmental performance. She has also driven significant improvement in overall product quality and control.
Mark Strutz
Mark brings over 20 years of IT leadership experience to Surface Transforms. After leaving the army he completed a BSc in Computing from Lancaster University and has, since then, had several roles leading large scale change and IT transformation projects within the automotive, aerospace and pharmaceutical manufacturing sectors. With a background in enterprise architecture, process digitalisation, data integrity and cyber security he joined the Company in June 2022.
