Board of Directors

Mark built a career as a Corporate Finance partner at PKF Francis Clark, where he was also responsible for developing their role in the international network PKF and leading an internal change programme based upon the digitalisation of the practice. His international duties included arranging trade visits to China and building closer links with Australian, European and American firms.

Mark has more than 20 years of dedicated transaction experience and is highly regarded for his commercial approach and negotiation skills. He has advised on many high profile deals such as the Management Buy Outs of Sutton Seeds and Dartington Crystal. He has a particular interest in media agencies and consumer branded businesses, and advised on the sale of Dr Organic to Holland & Barrett.

He also hosted a podcast series called Business Noodles and is a governor at Arts University Plymouth.

Mark is married to Claire and is a keen traveller, having been to many places around the world from South Africa to Norway and Japan to Alaska. Mark is also a keen theatre and cinema fan, regularly attending productions in Plymouth but also in London and abroad in New York and San Francisco.

Chris is an experienced executive and non-executive leader having delivered success in senior roles within the defence, engineering, social support, and health sectors.

A varied public and private sector executive career has seen him serve in the Royal Navy, enjoy secondments to the UK civil service, lead within a UK support alliance focused on warship availability, manage strategic national infrastructure in NZ, and lead support to vulnerable young people on behalf of four local authorities within the SW peninsula.

As a non-executive, he held several governance leadership roles for the IMarEST, is a past Chair of Devonport Services RFC, a former Non-Executive Director of Careers England, and in NZ, was Vice Chair of the Defence Industry Association. Committed to the SW community; he is a graduate of Common Purpose, and currently Vice Chair at City College Plymouth where he also chairs the Audit & Risk Committee, and a Director of Torbay & South Devon NHS Foundation Trust, where he chairs the Finance & Operations Committee.

He has a reputation for focussed delivery through compassionate leadership, transformational change with meaningful collaboration, and the consistent building of shareholder value. His principal skill sets revolve around strategic thinking, organisational planning, risk management, governance and assurance alignment, and promoting the voice of the people he serves.

Chris is a passionate learner, recently completing the Institute of Directors’ pathway to become a Chartered Director and Fellow of the IoD. Across his career, Chris has also been a Chartered Engineer, a Fellow of the IMarEST, a Fellow of the RSA, and a Member of the APM. He is a graduate of the NHS Aspiring Chairs Talent Programme.

Now an enthusiastic armchair sportsman; he attempts to maintain his fitness through more sedate pastimes which include walking with his Old English Sheepdog, having outgrown his youthful obsessions for rugby and rowing!

Lorna qualified as a nurse in 1982 at the Royal United Hospital School of Nursing, Bath and as a midwife in 1986 at the Peterborough School of Midwifery. She moved to Devon with her family in 1996 after returning from living and working in Canada for 10 years. She has experience in business management following the completion of an MBA at Exeter University in 2006.

Lorna has worked across both NHS provider and commissioner organisations and, in July 2014, she became the Chief Nursing Officer for NHS Northern, Eastern and Western Devon CCG. In April 2019, Lorna took on the same role for the new pan Devon CCG.

Lorna was elected onto the national NHS Clinical Commissioner board as the board nurse and chaired the NHS Clinical Commissioner nurse forum. Lorna was also the Caldicott Guardian for the two CCGs.

Eur Ing Nick Buckland OBE has a portfolio career. He chairs and is a member of a number of boards both locally and nationally, in the private, public and voluntary sectors. He lives in Cornwall where he owns and operates an organic livestock farm with his wife Debbie, In Plymouth he chairs three schools, the Theatre Royal, the Plymouth Waterfront Partnership and KARST (Plymouth’s largest visual arts facility). He is also a Trustee of the Peninsula Medical Foundation and the Plymouth Marine Laboratory. He chairs an independent school in North Devon and an FE College in Hertfordshire. Nationally he chairs the Soil Association Certification Board, Future First (an education charity) and the Riverford Organics Trust. Nick is also the Deputy Chair of South West Water’s WaterShare+ Panel and is a member of the GWR Advisory Board as well as Travel Watch SW.

Having previously spent over 20 years in the IT industry, Nick is an acknowledged expert in strategic planning, audit, governance, review processes, quality and he has worked closely with many board and board committees. He was Deputy Chair of the South West Regional Development Agency and a founding member of the governing board of the Technology Strategy Board – the government’s innovation agency. He was Pro Chancellor and former chair of Governors of University of Plymouth, one of the largest Universities in the UK and for five years was an External Member, Governance, of the Council of the National Trust.

He holds a BSc in Mathematics from the University of Bath, is a Fellow of the British Computer Society, the Institute of Maths and it’s Applications, the Royal Society of Arts, the Institute of Engineering and Technology and the Chartered Management Institute. He is a member of the Institute of Directors and the Royal Institution. He holds a Dip RSA, is a Chartered Engineer, Chartered Information Systems Practitioner, Chartered Manager and a European Engineer.

He was appointed OBE in the 2009 New Year Honours List for services to Innovation & Technology and was awarded an Honorary Doctorate in Technology by Plymouth University in 2013.

Nick and his wife have one son, three dogs, and five cats as well as numerous sheep, a herd of Ruby Red cattle and Gloucester Old Spot pigs. He is an avid fan of all forms of theatre and travel and enjoys cricket at Lords as a member of the MCC.

Husband, father, IT guy, magician, hypnotist, dragster driver: Giles came to Delt in January 2015 after a varied career that started in theatre and television but turned into management consultancy and IT leadership on both sides of the Atlantic. Giles has been CIO for the MoDs US operations, both Head of Transformation Communications and Change and Head of Solution Delivery for Babcock International.

Giles lives in North Cornwall with one wife, two children, four and a bit rabbits, two dogs, at least three cats, a hamster, many chickens and an ever increasing zoo of other fluffy carbon based life forms that seem to turn up when he isn’t looking. When not being passionate about delivering the opportunities presented by Delt, Giles is usually found building or repairing things, tinkering with his custom motorcycle or wondering what this new animal is that just jumped onto his bed.

Giles came to Delt because of the opportunity to improve people’s lives in the South West and show that a public interest company could do things better, faster and cheaper.

Originally from Northamptonshire, Karen moved to Devon in 2003 to be closer to friends and to live near the sea.

Karen joined Delt in 2018. A finance professional with 30 years’ experience in multiple sectors including Formula 1, manufacturing, and retail. She enjoys the challenge of the fast pace of change at Delt and gets a lot of satisfaction from helping people to do amazing things.

When not working she is a fair-weather sailor and loves sailing around the South Coast with her husband. She also enjoys flower arranging and kick boxing at an amateur level.

Stuart, originally from Devon, moved to North Somerset in 1999 to embrace rural life and raise his family after a career in London. He has worked in various roles within local government since 1996, achieving significant success in transformation initiatives. For the past fifteen years, he has focused on contract management, overseeing services such as Revenues, Benefits and Welfare, Customer Experience, ICT, Facilities Management, and Libraries.

Having previously served on a Local Government Pension Board, Stuart is eager to take on the new challenge of contributing to the Delt Board. He holds a degree from the University of Portsmouth and has successfully applied his transferable skills across the diverse range of services in local government.

Outside of his work, Stuart enjoys family life, caring for his beehives, staying active and renovating his cars.

Andy joined Plymouth City Council in 2009 and has undertaken a range of roles across the Council, initially in transport before moving into a service transformation as a Programme Manager and then Head of Business Improvement with a key focus on modernising services focusing on facilities, digitisation, health and safety, organisational strategy and culture. Currently working as Head of Environmental Operations Andy leads a team of 200 frontline staff to deliver highly valued waste collection, cleansing, grounds maintenance and arboriculture functions. Andy started his career by undertaking a graduate scheme with First Group and worked for two Train Operating companies based in Manchester and London.

Having initially undertaken his undergraduate degree in English and Film Studies at Exeter University Andy returned 17 years later to complete an MBA in 2021 at their Business School.

Mathew started his career at East Cheshire NHS Trust and has since worked for a variety of public and private sector organisations with the majority of his work within the NHS and Local Authorities. A RICS chartered surveyor by background, the majority of Mathew’s work has been within estates, infrastructure management and sustainability.

Mathew has held some key system-wide positions and helped to develop the combined public sector land and property boards under the Manchester Devolution development in 2018 and was the first individual system partner to manage both NHS and Local Authority estate under one governance structure. Mathew also took the lead in resolving a significant fall out for the public sector after the national contractor Carillion collapsed. During the COVID-19 pandemic Mathew took the lead role in setting up the testing and vaccine centres for parts of the North West.

In 2022 Mathew joined NHS Devon Integrated Care Board as the system Director of Estates and in 2023 established a collaboration with Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly Integrated Care Board to manage the delivery of the estates and infrastructure strategy for the South West Peninsula.

Aaron is the Print & Mail Services Manager at Delt. He transferred from Plymouth City Council with his team in 2018.

Before starting a job in the print industry, Aaron graduated from Exeter University with a degree in English Literature and began working for Plymouth City Council as a temp. Initially, he worked in HR as a PA, where his duties included audio typing. He then moved through many different jobs including Environmental Health, The Care Leavers Service, various Social Services roles, Street Services and Finance before finding his feet in the Print and Mail sector.

Born in Kent to a Services family, Aaron lived in Gibraltar and moved to Plymouth in 1984. He has been an adopted Janner ever since, with hiatus periods of living in Sweden and Bristol in between, he has always boomeranged back to Plymouth.

In his free time, he likes to attend live music events with his youngest daughter, loves reading, discovering new restaurants and has been a season ticket holder at Plymouth Argyle since 1986.