state of flux's leadership Team

Board of Directors

Alan Day

Chairman and Founder

Alan Day

Alan is responsible for State of Flux’s major client accounts and developing its business outside of the UK. He has over 20 years' experience in procurement and supply chain best practice. Prior to founding State of Flux in 2004, Alan held roles as Director of Procurement and Supply Chain at Cable & Wireless, and Director of Accenture’s Supply Chain European Centre of Excellence, where his clients included British Airways, Shell, Microsoft, BSkyB and Morgan Stanley. Alan started his supply chain career at Fisher & Paykel, the leading New Zealand-based manufacturer of domestic appliances.

Patrice Day

Chief Operating Officer

Patrice Day

Patrice has over 20 years experience working in marketing and professional services. She is responsible for our marketing and shared services team and for the past 9 years has overseen the editing and production of our global Supplier Management research. Prior to working at State of Flux, Patrice held various roles at KPMG within transaction services, tax and global markets.

 

 

Charles Findlay

Non-Executive Director

Charles Findlay

We are pleased to welcome Charles to our Board. After graduating from Oxford University, Charles spent five years with GEC as an industrial engineer working in various manufacturing industries in Europe and the United States. Following an MBA from London Business School, he joined Andersen Consulting, now Accenture, first in the Strategy practice, then running the UK Supply Chain practice and finally helping set up the Procurement outsourcing business; in all 16 years. For the last few years, he has worked as an independent consultant, an angel investor in early stage technology companies and a founder member of the International Supply Chain Finance community.

Denisa Ruttkay

Chief Financial Officer

Denisa Ruttkay

Denisa has almost 20 years of experience in overseeing finance, accounting, consultancy business, and audit functions across European countries and New Zealand. Her expertise has been in finance business partnering and supporting businesses across various industries as a key part of the Executive team during the change/transition time. Prior to State of Flux, she delivered results for international corporates, well-established national companies as well as start-ups.

Denisa holds a degree in Accounting and Audit from the University of Economics in Bratislava, Slovakia and she is also ACCA qualified since 2013. After living in the UK for almost 10 years, she now resides in New Zealand.

Tony Shortt

Non-Executive Director

Tony Shortt

Tony has joined State of Flux in Australia as non-executive director. He has 25 years of business experience and leadership in roles such as franchisor developer, corporate trainer, company director and general manager with responsibility for strategic planning, sales & marketing, finance, operations and HR in companies operating in the Australian & New Zealand telecommunications industry and training industry.

Tony’s previous experiences include working for Brightpoint, Vodafone, Crestcom and his skills span start-up operations through to multi-national corporate operations, entrepreneurial cultures and corporate cultures.

Jonathan Currie

Non-Executive Director

Jonathan Currie

We are pleased to welcome Jonathan Currie to our Board as Non-Executive Director. Jonathan is currently CEO at Qv21 Technologies, serving the US midstream Oil Field Services industry. Prior to Qv21 Technologies, Jonathan co-founded & was CEO of NiSoft, the world's leading provider of Safety Management Software. He led the company's strategic growth as CEO since its formation in 1993. Jonathan successfully sold the NiSoft Group in June 2008. From 2010 through 2014, Jonathan served as CEO of Biznet Solutions in Houston, TX. From a position of insolvency, profound losses, and devoid of strategy, he successfully led the organization through a challenging rescue and turnaround in 2010 & 2011 to achieve revenue growth and the Company’s first ever period of profitability in FY 2013. Following Biznet Solutions, Jonathan spent tenure in 2015 as CEO-in-Residence at Houston Ventures, a venture capital fund with an exclusive focus on midstream & upstream oil & gas technologies.

Jonathan is a past Chairman and Board Director of Momentum, the Northern Irish Software Industry Federation, which represents the interests of several hundred technology companies across Northern Ireland. He also held a variety of positions in accounting, finance and commerce, working in both Belfast and London.

Karen Sutton

Non-Executive Director

Karen Sutton
Karen Sutton is a senior business executive with experience in managing both national and global procurement and supplier risk portfolios ranging between $4.6Bn-$7.5Bn per annum. Over thirty years, Karen’s knowledge has spanned technology and indirect categories of expenditure, insurance claims, banking products and services, third-party risk, and outsourcing industries.
 
Her key focus is on maximising the value within local and international supply chains to deliver increased competitive and financial outcomes for the company whilst meeting ESG commitments and managing residual risk across the supplier lifecycle. She has a proven track record in delivering sustainable and material outcomes as evidenced by the benefits generated whilst working in the government, insurance, and banking industries. With her newly established company, Supply Chain Intelligence, Karen is focused on delivering solutions for organisations with complex supplier and third party risk challenges.

Executive Team - Regional Leads

Nick Hyner

Managing Director Europe

Nick Hyner

Nick has been in the Technology sector for 15 years managing high growth technology and consulting businesses. Nick joins us from Dell, where he was European Director of Cloud Services - which he grew from inception to a thriving business operating in the U.K. Continental Europe and South Africa.  In his 12 year tenure with Dell, Nick held several senior roles, including Director of Partners for Dell Services and Commercial Director for Dell’s Global Segment. Prior to that, Nick worked as a Corporate Finance adviser advising technology businesses on strategy, fundraising and Mergers and Acquisitions and originally trained as a private equity lawyer at Clifford Chance. 

Nick is responsible for growing our European business. 

Function Leads

John Newton

Executive Consultant and Head of Training

John Newton

John is Head of Training and Development at State of Flux and is responsible for leading the design, development and delivery of client education. He regularly consults with clients on the soft skills and human performance aspects of supplier relationship management (SRM), category strategy implementation and creating value through collaborative working. John is a training professional with over 20 years' experience in the field of adult learning and organisational development.

He holds a Masters degree in education and is a fellow of the Learning and Performance Institute. John has had articles published on training, coaching for sales performance, and learning design and deployment methods, and has presented at many training and HR related conferences throughout Europe. Prior to joining State of Flux, John was the Global Sales Learning Director at NCR Corporation with worldwide responsibility for development of the sales and professional services functions. In this role, he led the training programmes to support the deployment of NCR’s products and solutions.

Mel Shutes

Executive Consultant and Head of SRM

Mel Shutes

Mel leads on supplier relationship management (SRM) strategy and consulting for State of Flux, which includes the highly regarded, annual SRM global research report. His career includes over 20 years in senior procurement and supply chain management roles with Ford, Fiat and Toyota, where at the latter he was Head of Component Purchasing. Mel also worked for BAE Systems as Procurement Director responsible for strategy and development, and Barclays where he was Head of Supplier Development. Since moving into consultancy seven years ago, Mel has been responsible for both domestic and international projects, including the development of best-practice SRM, strategic sourcing and procurement transformation for clients in the financial services, information services, transport, mobile telecommunications and public sectors.

Jennifer Hall

Head of Marketing

Jennifer Hall

Jen is Head of Marketing at State of Flux, responsible for State of Flux's global marketing and brand strategy and leading the globally dispersed marketing team. Supply Chains are her speciality, with over 20 years of experience blending sales, product management and marketing roles within some of the world’s largest IT distributors and vendors. Jen’s greatest strength is her ability to craft best of practice B2B disruptive marketing programmes backed by data-driven insights using a well-orchestrated marketing stack. Educated at Auckland University and has travelled and worked globally, Jennifer now resides in Auckland, New Zealand.

Deniz Kafali

Global VP of Customer Success

Deniz Kafali

Deniz joined the ranks of our leadership team in March 2023 as Global Vice President of Customer Success.

With an unwavering focus on enhancing customer experiences on a global scale, Deniz is at the helm of Supplierbase's transformative journey, guiding clients to unlock the full potential of their supply chain through adept Supplier relationship management technology adoption.

Deniz brings into State of Flux a wide range of domain knowledge and transformational experience. She started her procurement career in 2004 within the automotive industry as a direct category buyer, moving into global category management services and technology solutions in Ariba. From 2011 to 2017, she extended her focus to deliver technology-led managed services design. In 2018, Deniz moved back to delivery and took on an Account Management role for multiple customers in the Energy sector for Source to Pay services. Since 2022, Deniz has embarked on customer success leadership in technology start-ups to release value for customers and reduce risk in the supply chain through collaborative & data-driven interactions.

Deniz is a Certified Procurement Manager and holds a Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering and a Master's degree in Business Administration.

Alex Tsagkas

Head of Technology & Product

Alex Tsagkas

Alex is Head of Technology & Product at State of Flux. He is responsible for our supplier management technology SupplierBase product development roadmap; transforming State of Flux’s expertise in SRM into an innovative software solution; enabling and embedding SRM technology into complex organisations. With a mission to make SRM easier for all, Alex regularly consults with clients on their business challenges and needs, reviews market trends and aligns Statess’ product strategy to ensure it meets our client’s needs. Alex has over 12 years of experience working with leading global organisations in software implementation, change management, procurement and supply chain transformation, supplier relationship management, contract lifecycle management, strategic sourcing,category management and risk management

He holds a degree in operational research and marketing from the Athens University of Economics and Business, and a master’s degree in decision sciences from the London School of Economics (LSE). During his academic life, he had been a scholar of the Greek Scholarships Foundation. Prior to State of Flux, Alex has worked at the National Network of Research and Technology, 3M and Deutsche Bank.

Frank Lai

Global Head of Sustainability

Frank Lai
Frank leads State of Flux’s sustainability practice. He has over 10 years’ supply chain experience working both directly for large blue-chip organisations and in consulting. Frank holds a PhD from the University of Melbourne and delivers lectures to postgraduate students at the university.