Robin Murray Brown
Robin Murray Brown handles senior level executive searches and advises boards on wider strategic issues including corporate governance, effective board practice and board development.
His executive search practice focuses on recruiting chairmen, NEDs, CEOs and senior managers and executives for quoted and unquoted companies and for clients in the public and not for profit sectors. The majority of his work is in regulated markets and those affected by public policy, stakeholder engagement and the promotion of reputation. He has a strong history of securing candidates from non-traditional and international backgrounds for senior roles.
Robin’s career in executive search and board consultancy since 1995 has included appointments as a Partner at Tyzack, as Managing Director at Norman Broadbent and as a Vice President with the American-owned A.T. Kearney Executive Search. A graduate in English and French, he has lived and worked internationally, and speaks French and German. His first career was in the Army, during which he completed operational, training and staff tours in the UK, Germany, Belgium, the Caribbean and the Persian Gulf.
His first-hand board experience includes serving as the independent chairman of the Nominations Committee of a trade association; as a retained advisor to the board of another trade body; and sitting on the management committee of a military museum.
In parallel with his professional work, Robin is an occasional speaker on management issues at a number of business schools and has commented on similar issues in the media.
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Chris Matchan
Chris Matchan is an accomplished board-level consultant who specialises in supporting clients around the world on complex, challenging people issues. His pragmatic, robust and evidence-based work for boards, senior teams and individuals complements Kinvara’s executive search and wider board advisory activity.
Chris’s particular expertise encompasses coaching, management education, leadership development and strategic HR/change consultancy. He is a member of the NeuroLeadership Institute and has a particular interest in the neuroscience of change and leadership. He has also regularly spoken and consulted on the subject of Productive Engagement – the ability of organisations, leaders and managers to create and sustain the vital conditions in which their teams drive productivity – and sat on the Macleod Review of Engagement, which reported to the UK Government.
The calibre of Chris’s work in these fields is reflected in his extensive portfolio of academic appointments and lecturing commitments, including The University of Aberdeen (Honorary Visiting Fellow), Henley Business School (Executive Fellow/Programme Director) and as a Visiting Tutor at the Universities of Maastricht, Southampton and Warwick.
Chris has a first degree in History and a Masters in Human Resource Management and spent his early career in increasingly senior HR and OD roles in the UK, US, AsiaPac and the Middle East with major corporates including Fujitsu, Diageo and CitiGroup. He was subsequently Group HR Director of the sports, outdoor and fashion group Pentland before spending three years running the European consumer markets practice of global headhunting firm KornFerry.
Sean Costello
Sean Costello specialises in providing Board- and ExCo-level support to clients on transformational, commercially-focused change programmes. A pragmatic and strongly people-orientated leader, his expertise encompasses coaching, mentoring, leadership development and strategic change consultancy, with a particular emphasis on enabling organisations and teams to translate emerging strategy into coherent, sustainable business operations.
Sean’s career has spanned a range of sectors across the EMEA region. After early experience in education and the Army, he moved into the professional services sector, spending 12 years with Deloitte, and then PwC, working as a Director in both the UK and the Middle East. More recently he worked for Jersey Finance, successfully advising and representing the island’s finance industry on their overseas expansion strategy into the Middle East and India.
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In parallel with his executive career, Sean has served as an Adviser and NED to UK and overseas professional and representative bodies and is a Lieutenant Colonel in the Army Reserve, where he has led a major engagement and empowerment programme.
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Sean has a first degree in History (Goldsmiths' College, University of London) and a Masters in Legal & Political Theory from University College London. He has completed the McKinsey Change Agent course and is a Fellow of both the Institute of Leadership and Management and the Institute of Marketing.
