Our Executive Management team

Martin Rowland was appointed as non-independent non-executive director and Chair of the Company in October 2024. Martin is currently Executive Director of Transformation of Carr's Group plc (Carr's), in which Harwood Capital has a shareholding. Harwood Capital also has a shareholding in Centaur. Martin was previously a non-executive director of Carr's. He is also Chair and a shareholder of Pace XL, a transformation consultancy specialising in process and systems design. He was previously non-executive director and Chair of Smoove plc, a UK-based conveyancing technology provider, and a Chair and shareholder of Inzpire, the defence company. Prior to this, he held investment roles at LDC, the private equity fund, before moving into an advisory role with businesses.

Chair of the Nomination Committee

Simon joined Centaur in November 2019. He spent the previous 10 years as CFO of BMI Research, a leading provider through its subscriptions model of macroeconomic, industry and financial market analysis, which was acquired by Fitch Group in 2014. During his time at BMI Research revenues more than doubled as the company expanded internationally with Simon’s support. Prior to this, Simon was CFO of Newfound, an AIM-listed property and leisure group. Simon began his career at PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP where he qualified as a Chartered Accountant and worked in London and Australia.

Steve joined Centaur in March 2015. He is responsible for the eleven brands in the Xeim portfolio including Econsultancy, Influencer Intelligence, Marketing Week and the highly successful Marketing Week Mini MBA series. Steve has extensive experience in leading content-led, multi-channel businesses in both B2B and consumer sectors. He has played a key role at Centaur in accelerating the growth of the company’s digital information and training business with a focus on establishing long-term relationships with customers and developing repeatable revenue streams. Prior to joining Centaur Steve held Managing Director roles at WGSN, i2i Events, Emap Communications (now Ascential) and Emap Consumer Media (now Bauer).

Ian joined Centaur as part of the 2012 acquisition of The Profile Group, where he was Senior Technology Director, and joined Centaur's Executive Committee in November 2022 as Chief Technology Officer. With responsibility for all technology at Centaur, including digital development, data and IT, Ian has extensive experience running digital and IT teams and specializes in subscription systems, digital strategy, growth and product innovation. He has played a critical role at Centaur leading the transformation of the business's print and digital information services into technology-enabled, scalable, high-growth products. Prior to Centaur, Ian headed technology at research agency MRIB.

Sarah is Managing Director of The Lawyer. She joined Centaur in May 2024, following more than 30 years in global market research organisations (Kantar Group, Ipsos) where she worked in partnership with clients across a wide range of industries and target audiences, both B2B and B2C, to deliver actionable customer insight programmes. During 17 years in senior leadership roles at Kantar Media she played a key role in growing subscription revenue for its market-leading consumer intelligence business (the Target Group Index, TGI) and in developing new data, analytics and insights offers.

Anna joined Centaur as Chief People Officer in August 2024 after 20 years in international businesses across a range of sectors including fintech, SaaS, retail, media, data and people services. During her career she has led the people agenda in change and transformation, mergers, acquisitions, integrations and organic expansion. She holds a Bsc in Business Psychology, MA in Human Resource Management and is a Chartered Fellow of the CIPD.

Tim is the Managing Director of Mini MBA and joined Centaur in October 2023. He was previously Managing Director at The Open University where he established a new commercial unit, delivering a world-leading portfolio of paid short courses and microcredentials in partnership with a range of industry partners including Cisco and AWS. He draws upon a 25-year career building ground-breaking products and services across media and education. He has held a number of senior roles within large, complex global organisations including the BBC, The British Museum, News UK, Nesta and XPRIZE foundation.