Our Team.
Vlad Komanicky
CEO & Co-Founder, Agency Models & Strategy
Vlad co-founded Alchemists in early 2019, and was part of the team that sold Oystercatchers to Centaur Media, where he headed up the Consultancy practice. Vlad has run major consultancy projects for EY, Post Office and Invesco among others. Vlad has worked client side for GSK where he was the Global Category Leader for Creative/Professional agencies and prior to that, worked in senior procurement positions for Vodafone, Mars, John Lewis and RBS. Vlad has a remarkable ability to combine creativity with an ability to master numbers, data and complex strategic concepts.
Angus Crowther
Chief Growth Officer & Co-Founder
Angus is the Co-Founder of Alchemists and is a specialist at new business and growth, having led over 300 high-impact pitches for some of the world's leading brands including Lloyds Banking Group, Delta Air Lines, Samsung and GoCompare. He is also the Client Lead for some of our other services including in-house agency creation, Client/Agency evaluations and Ways of Working. Prior to founding Alchemists in 2019, Angus helped set up Oystercatchers and was part of the management team who sold the company to Centaur Media in 2017. Angus also has 15 years' experience agency side working in Hong Kong, Madrid and London and has invaluable knowledge of the agencies and their key people.
Julia Whittaker
Senior Consultant
Julia is an experienced communications consultant with a portfolio career over two decades, across both agency and client side. She has managed teams across a range of in-house, local and international full service and media agencies, servicing clients including Visa, Johnson & Johnson, Mattel, Colgate Palmolive and Ferrero. Her work heading up media for 20th Century Fox gives her real insight into challenges facing communications teams on both sides of the table. She brings passion, determination and a can-do attitude to everything she does.
Emma Harrison
Senior Project Manager
Emma is an experienced Project Manager who supports a number of our projects for including agency evaluation and pitch processes. Emma joined Alchemists from NatWest Group where she spent 5 years working across a range of customer facing projects and supported the successful delivery of a large, high-profile project in India.
Louise Fowler
Principal Consultant - Strategy
Louise’s talent lies in her ability to combine clear strategic thinking with pragmatic, commercial insight and a collaborative style. A former CMO, Louise has deep service-sector experience including 15 years in financial services. Louise has led customer & marketing for Barclays, Co-op Bank, first direct, Post Office & British Airways. Louise has had C-suite commercial, operational and P&L accountability, understanding how solutions work for our clients’ business and has led transformation programmes for M&S, AXA, O2, BBC, RBS, HSBC, & Allianz among others. Louise speaks fluent French, Spanish and has worked in USA, South Africa & France.
Lenka Ornova
Director, Finance & Commercials
Lenka is an experienced finance and commercial professional with an agency and accounting background. She has led many strategic commercial consultancy assignments, with a key focus on commercial models and benchmarking for clients such as Sanofi, Nivea, Arla and MFM. Lenka’s specialty is creating Output-based models and making these work. She also has regional agency finance experience, having worked at Wunderman Thompson's EMEA HQ.
Maria Kiuber
Project Director
Maria is an expert Project Director with experience working on various complex projects including consolidation and pitch processes. Maria has a wealth of experience working in both agencies and marketing consultancies, most recently managing L'Oréal and eBay at McCann.
Hadrien Uyttenhoven
Associate Consultant, Data & Commercial Analysis
Hadrien is a recent graduate from the London School of Economics, having completed an MSc in Marketing. He has previous experience working in various marketing agencies, namely on accounts for clients such as Mars, Evian and Lexus. Overall, he prides himself on his ability to think analytically, interpreting complex datasets in order to bolster strategy.
Roo Mackie
Principal Consultant - Strategy
Roo is an expert in helping to empower marketing organisations using her understanding of the potential in brand, marketing and people. A strategic planner by training Roo has helped shaped brands and businesses such as EY, UBS, Capco, Joelsons Law and ThinCats as well as, Brintons, Xbox & McVities. Roo has worked extensively across North America and Canada, Australia and EMEA. Roo combines her knowledge of brand and marketing to help build more effective marketing functions – through structural change, ways of working and people development. She has led transformation projects for organisations including EY, BlackRock, TSB, Sanofi, Anglian Water and Royal Mail. Roo is also an AOEC Accredited Executive Coach.
Russel Wohlwerth
Head of Agency Search, USA
For more than 20 years, Russel has been advising companies around the world on all aspects of marketing agency supplier management. His curiosity, broad experience and creativity have made him one of the most highly regarded consultants in the field. Russel sees marketing agency supplier management as a complex system involving much more than just firing and hiring agencies. Although he has conducted searches accounting for billions of dollars in billings, Russel’s greatest achievements have been revitalizing client-agency relationships and reengineering marketing departments and agency rosters. Russel has previously led projects for Activision Blizzard, Adobe, BMW, GSK, HP, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Major League Soccer, Nintendo, Porsche, Pringles, Wells Fargo Bank, Visa and many others. Russel has conducted more than 25 complex global consulting assignments and searches including several prominent international media reviews.
Simon Tilden
Senior Consultant
Simon likes to stand in the future to defined innovative solutions to marketing challenges and turns these into reality. He spent 20+ years agency side in London and Moscow working for Saatchi, D’Arcy and McCann leading assignments for brand owners such as Mars, P&G, Unilever, Philips, Reebok, Wrangler and Gillette to name but a few. In 2006 he joined Diageo as Global Category Director Advertising leading a global commercial team responsible for improving value and effectiveness from A&P, the development and implementation of marketing operational change programs and bringing innovations and the best agency, production, M&E and technology talent to Diageo marketing. Simon led global creative pitches for all Diageo brands Guinness, Johnnie Walker, Smirnoff, Baileys, J&B etc. He’s passionate about the power of consumer insight to inform creativity and was an IPA Effectiveness' Awards judge in 2012.
Geoff Parkin
Chairman and Strategic Council
Geoff Parkin is a consumer markets expert and has broad experience assisting UK and international corporate and private equity clients with mission critical strategic issues, commercial performance improvement plans and due diligence assignments. He is a partner at L.E.K and previously worked in commercial line management roles for British Airways and American Express, based in London, Copenhagen and Amsterdam. Geoff graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in Management Sciences from U.M.I.S.T. and studied Corporate Finance at London Business School.