Meet our team

Mike is a social entrepreneur focussed on running organisations that support people who struggle with numbers and data. Following a military career, an MBA and a brief stint in banking, he joined Numicon Ltd, a maths education business as Chief Executive in 2008. Rapid growth led to sale to Oxford University Press in 2010. Having enabled a successful transition of the business into OUP, he launched National Numeracy as founding Chief Executive in 2012, building the organisation from little more than an idea to become a well-respected national charity with strong evidence of impact.

The seeds of the idea for Plain Numbers were sown at National Numeracy. Having handed over there in 2020, Mike is now utilising his unparalleled knowledge of this largely hidden consumer vulnerability to work with firms to enable people to make informed decisions across all areas of their lives.

Ben is responsible for our growing portfolio of clients, development of our offer and delivery of our services. Ben spent five years working with National Numeracy supporting those with the lowest confidence in their numeracy to develop the positive attitudes and confidence needed for success. He brings a comprehensive understanding of numeracy issues and unique insights into the impact low confidence has on people's lives. He has vast experience in training, product development, customer relations and project management as well as holding an NCTJ diploma in Journalism and a degree in Geography. He has also been involved in a number of projects aiming to support suicide prevention.

Diane has wide-ranging experience across many sectors of the UK economy and is a Fellow member of the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants. Following her accountancy training, and a range of roles in practice and in small commercial companies, she moved into the charity sector with a broad Operations and Finance role in a Further Education college offering specialist residential care, education and training. This was followed by four years as Financial Controller at National Numeracy.

She is passionate about enabling all of our employees to deliver the highest quality services to our Partners by fostering a supportive, effective and sustainable environment within Plain Numbers.

Mark is responsible for engaging with new partners and developing proposals to help them meet their challenges around improving communication and customer understanding.

Mark has a wealth of experience in sales, marketing and business development across B2B sectors including professional services and employee benefits.

James’ work focusses on providing high quality support to our partners and stakeholders. He spent four years working in local government, building relationships with a range of stakeholders in the community, being responsible for operational logistics and fixing a wide variety of customer issues. He also has a military background where he gained experience in training and coaching people as a Physical Training Instructor. James is passionate about helping people who struggle with everyday maths.

Frances’s work focuses on developing our suite of training activities as well as working closely with our partners. She brings extensive experience of learning and development, having designed training programmes across multiple sectors for more than 25 years. Before joining the team at Plain Numbers, she’s held roles in relationship management, communications and project management which make her well-placed to support our partners.  Frances is passionate about clear and effective communication. Having worked for seven years on communications within the advocacy sector, she feels strongly about people being able to understand the information needed make important decisions – and the link this has to people’s personal confidence and social equality. 

Will is an experienced Partnership Manager, a sector he had already worked in for seven years before joining Plain Numbers. Five of those years were spent managing teams and relationships within Higher Education recruitment, this gave him an opportunity to work with partners both in the UK and across the world. Like many people Will struggled with numbers, so is passionate about the difference Plain Numbers is making and proud to be part of its impact.

Jo enjoys working in an organisation that has a positive impact on the world. This was evidenced in her past involvement with helping students improve their literacy and numeracy skills. Before joining the team at Plain Numbers she spent ten years working in the health and wellbeing sector. This involved working closely with the marketing and product development teams at leading industry brands on how to best represent their ongoing partnerships whilst empowering consumers to make informed decisions. This experience makes her well placed to manage Partner relations at Plain Numbers and she values the opportunity to do so.

With extensive experience as an Account Manager, Doug has consistently focused on helping his customers succeed. Throughout his career, he has worked with clients across diverse industries—including marketing, medical technology, customer service, and advertising—to leverage products and services to their fullest potential. Doug is excited to bring his versatile expertise to Plain Numbers, where he is committed to helping partners enhance their communications and better serve their customers.

Holly joined us after a career as a TV Producer. Having worked on various national TV shows, both in the features department and in documentaries, she brought with her a wealth of transferable communication skills. She works on continuing to establish a growing and open relationship with our Partners and supports them with any of their communication requirements.