Our People

Fokhrul Islam

CEO

Fokhrul Islam. CEO, is a leader who delivers outstanding results and inspires his team to achieve the very highest standards.

Self-confident, organised, highly driven, energetic and resourceful, he has achieved incremental growth with his business Global Procurement Group, developing its presence across three continents, providing focused, entrepreneurial and innovative leadership. GPG employs 550 people across the globe with growth projected for 750 and 1,250 respectively over the next two years. GPG achieved compound annual growth over the last four years of 148%. Its revenues reached £29m for the year ended 2018; and are on track for a projected £44m for 2019 and £62m in 2020. This year, Fu (to his colleagues) is a finalist in several national entrepreneurial awards – the EY ‘Entrepreneur of the Year’ and also the NatWest ‘Scale-Up Entrepreneur of the Year’.

Brendan Garvey

Chief Operations Officer

Martin Nicholson

Director

Martin Nicholson is the group’s Director and has been in this role for four years. He is a consummate leader with vision to tackle challenges whether they are software, R&D or strategic planning. He offers strategic insight at a senior level into exploiting new sectors and markets. He helps build customer relationships and supports on web developing and content with particularly focus on new technology and secure data storage.

Carl Bowles

Customer Service Director

Carl has nearly 30 years’ experience working for corporate brands such as British Airways, Orange, HBoS, Cable and Wireless and npower. During his career, Carl has spent over a decade focused on regulated utilities, where he was instrumental at npower overseeing the customer service and metering services areas.

Prior to joining GPG his last role was as npower’s Director of Customer Contact, managing all inbound service channels and contact with customers, from sales through to complaints. He possesses extensive experience of complex large-scale transformation programmes.

On joining GPG, he said: “It’s great to join this successful procurement business that is driving the compliance agenda and diversifying its business offers to include new sectors (trading and flexible purchasing). It also possesses outstanding energy management products and solutions to help businesses successfully journey to net zero.

“My emphasis will be to build upon the solid foundations of the Customer Service facility and further improve the support we offer to customers beyond their initial energy procurement; preparing the department for further growth into exciting, new areas of activity.”

Simon Hutton

Finance Director

Simon Hutton is an experienced finance professional who has held numerous senior leadership positions in large, complex organisations, with extensive experience in the energy sector.  Most notably, prior to joining GPG, Simon was the Head of Finance and Performance Improvement for EDF at their Heysham Nuclear Power plant, responsible for providing financial governance and reporting, managing the enterprise risk for the near and medium term and more importantly, developing and delivering strategic performance improvement.

On his appointment as Finance Director, he said: “I am really excited to join GPG; the level of energy, enthusiasm and drive is palpable.  I am looking forward to leveraging my experience of financial governance to build on the solid foundations of the company. I’m also excited to help further develop the strategic corporate structure to ensure the group is set to deliver on its ambitious growth plans, ensuring it continues to provide the very best service to customers.”

Leah Barrett

Global Operations Director

After joining Northern Gas and Power in 2016 as a Sales Team Manager, Leah quickly proved herself as a driven and capable leader. She was promoted to the role of Service Operations Director in 2017 where she quickly established an award winning compliance process and demonstrated leadership and dynamism whilst overseeing the Service and Operations Department. Securing Platinum Accreditation from supplier partners and industry wide recognition, including being highly commended nationally at the Energy Efficiency Awards 2018 for Quality Management, Compliance & Training, Leah quickly demonstrated positive impact at a strategic level.

The Global Procurement Group are now proud to appoint Leah Barrett as our Global Operations Director. With a unique blend of entrepreneurial flair, business acumen and a dynamic approach to all elements of the energy industry, Leah will now drive performance, innovation and standards across our European, Asian and American operations.

Paul Barrett

Director of Customer Service

Paul Barrett is the Director of Customer Service at Northern Gas and Power. With a career spanning 23 years, Paul has operated at a strategic level performing senior management roles across the public, private and third sectors. Paul possesses a track record of exceptional achievement in performance management and customer service, having operated across the globe to deliver the highest level of customer service within the police service, locally based charities and within international corporations. He recently joined Northern Gas and Power and quickly developed a Customer Service Department, which blends market leading energy management solutions with an exceptional and experienced team.

Mark Leeming

Global Sales Director

Mark Leeming is the company’s Global Sales Director and has been with the business for three and a half years. He is integral to the efficient communication across GPG’s whole sales environment, streamlining performance and ensuring the business maintains its competitive advantage. Mark has worked in sales for roughly 20 years and been in senior management roles since 2002. In 2009 he took an underperforming regional Orange franchise to the top five in the country. At former Utilitywise he achieved £9.2m revenue in 12 months, progressing to a senior Operations position, before joining GPG in February 2017. For GPG last year he exceeded his £19m sales target, by £5.5m.
He drives high-performing sales teams, supporting the successful growth of their customer base. He is a highly respected and personable professional, dedicated and driven, with an excellent relationship-building mentality, whether with colleagues, suppliers or wider industry influencers.

Andrew Laird

UK Sales Director

Andrew Laird is Northern Gas and Power’s UK Sales Director, with over 10 years experience in the energy sector, he brings a wealth of knowledge of the global business utilities market to NGP.

Providing strategic direction on business vision and planning. He works with both the senior directors of the business and the Board to deliver input on the technology roadmap that the business is taking to drive key future growth.

He has operated at a high level in the energy industry for the past decade having worked for PLCs and helped grow start-ups into multi-million business operations. Building his knowledge in this time he has developed a strong network of relationships with stakeholders, customers and suppliers internationally and ensures the extremely high quality standards of service levels are maintained throughout all of NGP’s international operations.

Scott High

Global People Director

Scott High, Global People Director, is responsible for the colleague life-cycle, including Employer Brand, Recruitment, HR, Learning & Development, Employee Engagement, Internal Communications and Health & Safety. He is an integral part of the senior director level team inputting daily in the direction of the business.

He has years of experience in the  people engagement and talent acquisition space and is an accomplished leader who has a collaborative work ethic driving his teams forward to achieve excellence at all levels.

Ralph Attard

Chief Technology Officer

Ralph Attard is based in Malta and is Chief Technology Officer across the group. He holds a Masters Degree in Software Engineering, an MBA in IT Management, and various industry certifications. As an educator and public speaker, Ralph covers server infrastructure, software development, data platforms, enterprise architecture, management, and IT operations. His 17 years of hands-on and leading positions on building fully-integrated and high-performance systems takes our platforms to the next level.

He has been with Northern Gas and Power and ClearVUE Systems for two years, driving the software development for the roll out of the proprietary systems.

David Summerhayes

Director of Legal Services

David spearheads our growing legal team, strengthening the legal department in terms of personnel and expertise.

David Summerhayes is Director of Legal Services for Northern Gas and Power. He has extensive knowledge in commercial law, having represented multinational corporations, FTSE 100 companies, and fast-growing SMEs, occupying senior positions at global and national law firms, including Partner with Sintons LLP.