MEET THE TEAM

Richard Clancy

Group CEO

Richard’s vertical market software career began over 20 years ago during which he has progressed to Group CEO of Vesta Software Group, where he spends his time managing and building multiple brands within the Jonas Software UK Group. He currently oversees the Education and Retail brands within the UK, however, Richard is also responsible for acquisition activity into new and existing sectors. His extensive knowledge of vertical market software solutions through his various positions within Jonas, give him a meticulous knowledge on the industry, the group and the services they provide.

Richard joined Jonas via the Gladstone MRM acquisition where he was the Professional Services Manager, working within their leisure management software. Since then, his experience has allowed him to gain knowledge within many different brands and sectors within Jonas.

Before joining Jonas, Richard worked in sales and marketing within the leisure, attractions and telecommunications sectors. Richard’s philosophy lies in developing his employees, providing them with new opportunities, thus giving them room to grow and flourish. His attitude to his colleagues and team spirit has led to the incredible growth within many of the Jonas UK businesses.

In his spare time, Richard enjoys spending time with his young family and playing the occasional round of golf.

Tom Baptie

Chief Operations Officer

A friendly, organised and hardworking individual who can work to strict deadlines and pays great attention to detail. Possess excellent customer service, numerical and PC skills as well as being able to interact with people at all levels.

Fully Qualified (ACCA), highly driven Accounts Professional to whom career progression and success are vital. Tom is always learning new skills, techniques and furthering his knowledge base and never shys away from new challenges, priding himself on time management, communication and presentation.

Jenny Jones

Chief Commercial Officer

An ambitious, hardworking individual who enjoys coaching sales and marketing teams to help them achieve success, Jenny thrives on seeing other people succeed beyond what they thought possible.

Jenny has been part of the Vesta Software Group since 2017 working within marketing and commercial roles before moving into the position of Chief Commercial Officer. Her role is to work with the businesses in the group, helping them build successful sales and marketing teams while implementing best practices to ensure continued organic growth.

Having studied Marketing Management at University, Jenny has worked in both sales and marketing positions, before moving into the Commercial Manager position at Greycon (a business acquired by the Vesta Software Group). While there she helped to elevate the organic growth of the business to 15% - 20% YoY by building a marketing function from scratch, and implementing sales processes and procedures, leading to two of the highest new sales revenue years in their history.

Ken Barragan

Head of M&A

Ken joined Vesta in 2021 to lead and implement the group’s global acquisitive growth strategy. He leads Vesta’s M&A activities throughout the globe and guides the deal origination team’s activities in Northern and Eastern Europe, Latin America and other geographies. Ken has extensive experience in leading international deals in the US, Europe and several Emerging Markets, from both a buy and sell side perspective as a direct investor, advisor and through other senior and partner level roles in Private Equity, Corporate Finance and Corporate Development. Throughout his 20+ year career, Ken has also led operational, business development and integration teams and activities in several industries, including Telecommunications, Pharmaceuticals, financial services and SME banking.

Ken has lived in three continents and multiple countries and enjoys getting to know and understand business owners’ aspirations and motivations to design mutually beneficial deal structures that close transactions. When not busy enjoying the British countryside with his young family, Ken can be found reading in his native Spanish, playing the classical guitar or trying to escape to the water for a spot of angling.

Tess Mayne

Head of Human Resources

Tess is a people-oriented Senior HR Leader, with strong experience across UK and European markets and a demonstrable track record of accomplishment across multiple industry sectors. She combines high levels of commercial acuity with deep subject matter expertise across the full HR remit to design and deliver HR solutions that enhance business operations. Tess is a confident and proactive HR professional who operates well at both a tactical and strategic level and consistently delivers above and beyond expectation. She is also an instinctive and proactive culture builder who employs empathy, passion and credibility to build best in class HR functions.

Tess holds a BA Degree in Communication Science with a focus on psychology and a BA Honours Degree in Industrial Psychology.

Patrick Pounds

M&A Associate Northern Europe

Patrick has a keen interest in technology, particularly Artificial Intelligence and Big Data. During his undergraduate studies at the University of Birmingham, he completed a semester at The University of Hong Kong studying Business Management and Digital Transformation Strategy – a data analytics approach. This galvanised his thoughts regarding his career.

After completing a degree in Accounting and Finance, Patrick found himself working as an Investment Manager for 2 years. The combination of advising business owners post-exit as a Wealth Manager, along with his background in accounting, technology and a genuine, passionate interest for technology, makes him a perfect fit to lead Vesta’s Deal Origination activities across the UK and Europe.

Gabriel Cocean

M&A Associate S&E Europe

Gabriel is a multifaceted professional that has spent the last decade in the fast moving world of IT Sales & Business Development, covering mainly the CEE and EMEA regions He has amassed a breadth of experience gained from his 25 year career working in several industries such as automotive, printing, IPTV, IT Sales Management, broadcasting, FinTech, confectionary and simulation training solutions for the military.

He has helped grow small start-ups and has also led teams in larger corporate environments, such as Espial, Levira, Oracle, Saxo Bank and Bohemia Interactive Simulations. Gabriel is a self-starter team player and a networking enthusiast. His motto is "It does not matter how many times you fall down, what is important is that you stand up again every time".

Gabriel speaks several Eastern European languages and currently resides in the beautiful city of Prague with his partner, where they overlook the historic city’s forested hills from their balcony.

Jerónimo Alvarez

M&A Associate LATAM

Jeronimo joined Vesta in 2018 as part of the Greycon acquisition, where he enjoyed a successful career since joining in 2005 after obtaining his degree in Software Engineering. As part of the Professional Services team at Greycon, he travelled the world implementing Greycon products throughout 20 countries in 4 different continents. After his success as Latin America Professional Services Manager, he moved into business development where he effectively led the expansion of Greycon’s presence throughout the Latin American region.

In 2021, he joined the Vesta M&A team to lead our Business Development efforts throughout Latin America as part of our global acquisitive growth strategy.

Jeronimo is a native of Uruguay and resides in Montevideo. In addition to Spanish, he is fluent in English and Portuguese. He enjoys playing sports and keeping up to date with worldwide sports news, especially football.

OwenJones

Chief Technical Officer

Owen joined Jonas UK in October 2011, initially as the Technical Director for Gladstone Ltd where he was responsible for the company’s software product portfolio, managing the Product Design, Development and Testing teams. Owen has also held other posts within Jonas including the General manager for SDA and as Technical Director for Tucasi. Since January 2020 Owen has held the post of Group CTO for Vesta Software Group, an operating group of Jonas UK.

Owen has more than 30 years’ experience in software development and is passionate about developing high-quality software systems using agile practices. He holds a BSc (Hons) in Computer Science from De Montfort University