Appointments: Connect Gazelles, Wrigleys; Mobile Tornado; Sirius Minerals; Transline Group

28 YEAR-OLD Sophie Patton has been promoted to operations director of entrepreneur’s organisation Connect Gazelles.

She has been invited to join the board of directors after three years with the business.

Nick Butler, chief executive said “Sophie Patton has already made a major contribution to Connect Gazelles and has a plan, which has been approved by the Board this morning, to accelerate the growth of Connect Gazelles while continuing to provide unique top level advice and support to Yorkshire’s growing businesses.

“I am delighted to welcome Sophie to our distinguished Board and am confident that she will play a major role long into the future”

Paul Rose, ex-CEO of Rixonway Kitchens and director at Connect Yorkshire, who own Connect Gazelles, said: “I am delighted to see Sophie appointed as operations director, Sophie is very committed to Connect Yorkshire and our members. Sophie has been instrumental in the development and retention of our membership and offer.”

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WRIGLEYS has made a trio of promotions in its private client and charity property teams.

Jane Netting is based in Wrigleys’ Sheffield office, and deals with all areas of private client work such as powers of attorney, wills, probate but has a particular interest in court of protection work.  As part of this she deals with applications to make gifts or to sign wills on behalf of clients who lack capacity.  

Oliver Hallam trained at Allen & Overy before joining Wrigleys and handles a mix of high value tax and succession planning work for family businesses, farms and landed estates.

Before joining Wrigleys Tim Wrigley worked at the Charity Commission and now specialises in complex charity property matters for charities, property and governance for schools, religious institutions, other not-for-profit organisations and social enterprises.

Paul Nash, managing partner, said: “Jane, Oliver and Tim have excellent reputations in their specialist fields and their promotion is an important part of providing continuity for private and charity clients over the long term.

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AIM-LISTED communications group Mobile Tornado has made Avi Tooba chief operating officer.

Mr Tooba was previously the senior director of engineering at Motorola Solutions overseeing engineering operations and some 500 engineers at the Israel Design Centre.

Prior to that, he was Director of engineering at Motorola Networks which was later sold to Nokia for an estimated US$1bn.

Jeremy Fenn, chief executive, said: “Avi will lead our technical and operations teams and bring huge experience to our business as we continue to engage Tier 1 MNOs, major global enterprises and public sector bodies. Having worked across all major radio platforms, his inputs as we develop our strategy for next generation critical communication platforms will be invaluable.”

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SIRIUS MINERALS, the company behind the transformational York Potash Project, has announced a non-executive director change.  

Louise Jane Hardy has joined the board.  She has more than 25 years’ experience in the engineering sector and currently has a part time executive role at Skanska, Civil Engineering UK and holds non-executive director roles at Ebbsfleet Development Corporation and Defence Infrastructure Organisation, both executive non-departmental public bodies sponsored by the Department for Communities and Local Government and the Ministry of Defence respectively.  

Prior to this she was European Project Excellence Director at Aecom.  

Previously she worked for Laing O’Rourke, working as infrastructure director within CLM, which was the consortium delivery partner for the Olympic Delivery Authority for the London 2012 Olympics.  

Stephen Pycroft has stepped down from the board after over two years at the company due to increasing work commitments in his role as executive chairman of Mace.

Russell Scrimshaw, chairman of Sirius, said: “On behalf of the board I would like to thank Stephen for his valuable involvement and support over the last few years.

“Louise Hardy brings a wealth of experience in delivering large-scale construction projects and we are delighted to add her to our board.”

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RECRUITMENT agency Transline Group has appointed Chris Birkby as managing director.

He will report to joint CEOs Paul Beasley and Jon Taylor, as well as group operations director, Mark Elms.

Mr Birkby said: “Transline Group has seen impressive growth in recent years, surpassing £200m in revenue in 2015.

“The sectors we operate in are constantly changing and Transline will need to be adaptive and innovative if we are to see continued growth financially and geographically – it’s a challenge I am looking forward to.”

Transline is based in Brighouse.