TEAM.BLUE - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Member of the Board
- Board of Directors
Ali brings a deep understanding of both the industry and the experience of entrepreneurs developing successful enterprises to our board of directors.
Born in Canada to Iranian parents, Ali set up his first company when he was just 16 years old. In his early twenties he founded TransIP, the biggest domain name and web hosting provider of the Netherlands. TransIP remains a hugely successful anchor brand of team.blue.
In 2012 Ali set out to change the banking industry radically and founded bunq, a fully mobile bank whilst remaining an active team.blue board member.
Job Titles:
- Talent Acquisition Specialist
As CEO, Claudio Corbetta brings more than 25 years of experience to team.blue in leadership roles that have transformed brands meeting the online needs of the small business community.
After graduating in Mathematics from Cambridge University in 1994, Corbetta started his career as a Consultant in the Strategic Services Division of Accenture. In 1998 he joined McKinsey & Co, where he worked on several projects, mainly in the banking and telecommunications sectors. In 2000 he obtained a Master's degree in Business Administration at INSEAD, France.
Prior to joining team.blue, Claudio was CEO of DADA S.p.A, the parent company of the companies that today make up the southern European territories of team.blue. During this time of international expansion, he consolidated the business to focus on hosting services and developed data-driven marketing capabilities that enabled brands to thrive.
Dawn Marriott is the Executive Chair at team.blue, having joined in 2021. Additionally, she Chairs a Nordic based business, Geomatikk, is on the Board of Azets, a large European accounting firm, and Citation, an international HR and compliance business. She has previously served on several other Boards of European software and Services businesses. She is also a Partner at Hg.
Dawn is focused on senior operations. She was previously Executive Chair of Kinapse, a leading advisory and operational services provider to the life sciences industry and an Hg investment. During her time at Kinapse, Dawn led the business through a period of rapid growth and transformation before finally overseeing the sale of the business in 2018.
During 2019 to 2021 she was CEO of Azets, a large accountancy services firm operating throughout Europe. During he time as CEO, she drove a significant transformation programme to integrate 50+ acquisitions and delivered the blue print for the future organisation. She remains an active Board member and coach to the Executive team.
Before joining Hg, Dawn was a Board Member and Joint COO of Capita plc, a then FTSE100 BPO and software business. She was responsible for six of the 11 operating divisions and also led Group IT, Group HR and Group Talent. During her 17 years with Capita, Dawn was involved in and responsible for many acquisitions, Chaired multiple companies including two joint venture companies with the British Government, Axelos and FERA.
She has served on the Board of the Institute for Collaborative Working, Chaired a startup/scale up in the green home energy sector, Hometree. Today she holds Board seats on a charity Advisory Board, Bookmark Reading, the Royal Engineers Board, a division of the British Army and is a Board Advisor to Boardwave, a European network for CEOs and Chairs in the tech industry.
Job Titles:
- Director of Transformation
Gaia joins us following her time as an associate partner in McKinsey's Milan office, supporting clients in transforming their organisations, improving performance, and managing change. She has worked with a range of clients to bring deep implementation expertise to her work on operational excellence, lean management, and capability building.
Before joining McKinsey, Gaia spent two years as an engineer with the Kaizen Institute, followed by a role as a knowledge expert at EFESO Consulting. She holds a Master of Science in engineering management.
Job Titles:
- Chief Product Officer
- Group CPO
Hans joined as group CPO in September 2021 to further strengthen the groupwide product strategy and the delivery of products that support entrepreneurs in their digital success. He can leverage his more than 30 years of experience in various leadership roles in the Information Technology industry.
Prior to joining team.blue, Hans led as Senior VP the product units Webhosting, WordPress, Cloud and Server of 1&1 IONOS, the hosting division of the TecDAX listed company United Internet. During his tenure he led the product innovation, platform optimization, (inter-)national expansion and was the overall business owner of these products.
After his bachelor's degree in 1988 he started in IT consultancy at the system integrator RAET in the Netherlands. In 1998 he joined the Dutch SME IT Consultancy company Caesar Group and worked there in various senior management roles. In 2011 he relocated from the Netherlands to Germany to join 1&1 IONOS. In 2008 he obtained a Master's degree in Business Administration at the Rotterdam school of Management / Erasmus University. Hans is married and lives again in the Netherlands since 2021.
Job Titles:
- Board of Directors
- Non - Executive
- Non - Executive Board Member
- Non - Executive Team.Blue Board Member
Jeroen Hüpscher is a non-executive team.blue board member. He brings a broad expertise derived from an ongoing dialogue around customer, product and company needs.
As the CEO of TransIP Group he led TransIP to clear market leadership, creating a trustworthy partner for mainly tech savvy customers. Starting in 2013, Jeroen began the consolidation of the Dutch hosting market, by acquiring a range of brands including Cloud VPS, Signet, Breedband, VDX and Spango.
Jeroen studied at the University of Amsterdam and started his career working for an investment company (PE avant la lettre). He then moved into the communications industry, where he worked for national and international consumer-oriented brands.
Job Titles:
- Board of Directors
- Non - Executive
- Non - Executive Board Member
- Non - Executive Team.Blue Board Member
Jon Wrennall is a non-executive team.blue board member. He brings more than 25 years of leadership experience in the technology sector in roles including HMRC's first CTO, advisor to AppDynamics, CTO for Fujitsu and over 10 years at Accenture.
Job Titles:
- Founder
- President
- Founder & President of Team.Blue
Jonas is a highly pragmatic, self-made entrepreneur with an impressive track record beginning when he was just 16 with the launch of Combell, a Belgium based web hosting company that continues to thrive today. Through his leadership, team.blue is delivering a successful ‘buy and build' strategy, fuelling impressive growth and forging new paths into emerging segments set to play a critical role in the group's evolution.
Jonas co-founded in 2019 team.blue after merging three customer-obsessed hosting groups: the group Combell Group which Jonas founded in 1999, the Dutch TransIP Group, and the Italian Register Group. Since then, many new businesses have joined team.blue, and we are constantly welcoming new brands into the team.blue family.
Today as President of team.blue Jonas is focusing on the long term strategy of the group, investor relations and driving our external growth strategy. Jonas' emphasis is to meet exciting founders and inspire them to join the most successful ecosystem in Europe which is making online business success simpler and helping our customers achieve their business potential by connecting them with the world.
Jonas is also a Private Equity investor in multiple tech/non-tech companies and acts as a board member for some.
Jonathan joined team.blue in April 2023, bringing with him over 30 years of experience from several senior telecoms finance and commercial roles at EE, Virgin Mobile Group and E.ON.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Board
- Board of Directors
- Partner at Hg
Next to team.blue, Joris is a Board Director at Silverfin, Septeo and Citation. His other investments at Hg include Gen II, Zenith, Parts Alliance, Raet/Visma, JLA, Kinapse and A-Plan. Prior to joining Hg, Joris worked with McKinsey & Company.
Joris is Belgian and holds a Masters in Commercial Engineering from the University of Leuven and an MBA from Harvard Business School. Joris loves running, mountain biking and travelling.
Joris represents the Hg Funds shareholdings in team.blue. As a Partner at Hg, Joris invests in SME enablement and software solutions.
Job Titles:
- Social Media Talent Sourcer
Job Titles:
- Chief Technical Officer
- Group CTO
Kirk has a Degree in Accountancy from Manchester Polytechnic in the UK, lives in Zurich and speaks fluent English and German.
Kirk brings more than 26 years of experience leading global technology organisations, having started in application development with Oracle and moved through various leadership roles within Global IT service providers such as Digital, Compaq, HP, Siemens and IBM. He then moved on to CIO roles within commercial organistions such ABB, Novartis, Credit Suisse and latterly with PE owned Belron Group.
Kirk has specialized in transforming federated technology functions into agile integrated teams putting customers firmly in focus and considering cost effective service excellence.
Job Titles:
- Chief
- Corporate Development Officer
Lorenzo brings more than two decades of industry experience to his role as Chief Corporate Development Officer for team.blue, having previously served as Deputy Group CFO.
In his current role, Lorenzo is responsible for all corporate and business development across the group and is critical to any M&A, post-merger integration, legal & corporate affairs and ESG matters.
Before joining team.blue, Lorenzo was General Manager and CFO of Register Group, where he played a key role in transforming the group into a multinational market leader, listed in the STAR segment of the Stock Exchange. Prior to this, he worked at Mediobanca as Deputy Director in the Corporate Finance & ECM Department, responsible for extraordinary financial transactions and IPOs. Additionally, Lorenzo co-founded and served as CEO of WEB2B, an e-procurement company.
Lorenzo graduated from Bocconi University, majoring in Business Administration.
Job Titles:
- Recruitment Business Partner
- Recruitment Business Partner - HR
Job Titles:
- Director of Data and Analytics
Manuela joins team.blue after working in Bain and Company as Strategy Manager, focusing on the Digital/Advanced Analytics sector. Besides her key role in various Artificial-Intelligence based projects for high-profile clients, Manuela led the creation of the data science hub for Bain & Company in Italy.
Before entering the commercial world, Manuela obtained a PhD in Physics. She worked for several years at CERN (Switzerland) as part of the ATLAS experiment, taking a decisive role in the search, discovery and property measurement of the Higgs Boson, the last missing piece of the Standard Model of Particle Physics.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Board
- Board of Directors
Matthijs Deroo represents the Hg Funds shareholding within team.blue, and as principal at Hg's Genesis team, Matthijs focuses on investments in SME technology-enabled services and ecommerce technology.
He has been involved with Hg's initial investment in Combell group as well as the subsequent mergers with TransIP and Register Group to form team.blue. Other Hg investments for Matthijs are Citation, Septeo and HHAExchange.
Before joining Hg in 2018, he worked as a strategy consultant with Roland Berger, focusing on private equity support and B2B services. Matthijs is Belgian and holds an MSC in commercial engineering and information technology from KULeuven.
Job Titles:
- Head of SaaS Portfolio Management
Miguel is responsible for the portfolio of SaaS companies at team.blue, from M&A stage to facilitating post-merger integration, overseeing companies' strategic priorities, financial performance, value creation plans and coordinating involvement from central functions.
Before joining team.blue, Miguel launched two technology start-ups and worked as a strategy and marketing consultant in the global advisory firm Simon-Kucher & Partners. He then moved to Hg Capital in 2019, where he was Portfolio Lead to team.blue. In 2021, he transitioned to team.blue full-time as Head of Value Creation and later Head of SaaS Portfolio Management.
Nick represents the Hg Funds shareholdings in team.blue and as a Partner at Hg is focused on SME enablement and software solutions. He is also a member of the Hg Investment Committee.
Alongside team.blue, Nick currently also sits on a number of Boards, including, ITM8, Commify, F24 and Citation.
Prior to joining Hg in 2015, Nick worked for 12 years at Darwin Private Equity and Permira. He has a BA in Jurisprudence from Oxford University.
Stephen helps commercial teams work together across the group, supporting sales and marketing to achieve growth potential and to develop the team.blue brand.
As Commercial Director for the UKIE region, Stephen has many years' experience developing team.blue marketing capability in established and new brands and has focused on developing customer led sales cultures embedded in service delivery teams.
Prior to joining team.blue Stephen was Head of Strategic Marketing for IKANO Bank UK, part of the IKEA family, delivering big data direct marketing strategy and developing loyalty products supporting retailers to drive commercial value through data insight.
After graduating in Psychology in 1998, Stephen started his career as a consultant in an affinity marketing agency, TransNational, where he worked with a range of high-profile UK based clients developing financial services and loyalty propositions driving income and member insight.
Job Titles:
- Talent Acquisition Partner
Job Titles:
- Chief Human Resource Officer
Sylvia joined team.blue in June 2022, bringing over 25 years of international HR experience with her. Before joining the group, she worked within the chemical, food and pharmaceutical industry, running many transformational people programmes to drive engagement and organisational growth.
At team.blue, her focus will be on building an engaging environment where people live by our core values and thrive in their work.
Sylvia holds a Master's degree in Strategic Management and brings a diverse range of HR experience from different leadership roles in the Netherlands and Germany. Sylvia is based in Belgium.
Job Titles:
- Head of Mergers and Acquisitions
- Mergers & Acquisitions
Torsten is the Head of Mergers and Acquisitions for team.blue, responsible for coordinating all mergers and acquisitions processes across all geographies and segments. Before joining team.blue, Torsten worked for 12 years as Managing Director of M&A/Investment at United Internet AG, the parent company of IONOS and 1&1. During this time, Torsten played an active role in the further expansion and internationalisation of the United Internet Group to become a leading player in the telecommunication and hosting industry. An essential part of his work is getting to know new companies and entrepreneurs. Torsten is passionate about entrepreneurs and their stories and loves to find innovative ways to connect and get conversations rolling with new partners. Torsten holds a master's degree in Business Administration from the International University of Osnabrück, including an exchange period at the University of Quebec in Montreal, Canada. In 1999 Torsten started his career as a consultant at KPMG and later, SAP.
Job Titles:
- Group Sustainability & Legal Director
- Group Sustainability & Legal Director / As Group
Sustainability & Legal Director, Vanessa brings legal experience along with a leadership approach that allows her to look at the broader system of how legal services connects with a wider range of business goals.
Vanessa's aim is to connect corporate governance with leadership and to create sustainable relationships (internally & externally) where financial and operational processes, market trends and new opportunities are aligned to facilitate good and sustainable decision making within our company.
Vanessa started in 2005 as a lawyer at the Belgian bar and then quickly decided to switch to the business side where she worked as a legal interim manager for many years, serving several SME and larger cooperation's (including IT & telecom service providers such as Telindus, Belgacom, Orange) in the wide range of business law.
Prior to joining team.blue, Vanessa was general counsel of an international helicopter services company where she led corporate transactions from A to Z and built a solid team coordinating almost every legal transaction in-house, managing risks throughout the value chain, implementing legal awareness campaigns, and acting as sound advisor in key business (development) initiatives. Vanessa was also the driver of several cultural and ESG initiatives globally, to create a positive impact for the company in a challenging industry.
Vanessa holds a Master's degree in law from the University of Ghent and a Master of Business Administration (MBA) obtained at Vlerick Business School.
As Group Sustainability & Legal Director, Vanessa brings legal experience along with a leadership approach that allows her to look at the broader system of how legal services connects with a wider range of business goals.