Management Team

Chief Executive - Russell Gould

Russell Gould returned to Kelvin Hughes in 2001 having first joined the Company in 1985. From 1998 until his return to the Company, Russell worked at GEC Marconi Radar and Defence Systems. On his return, Russell ran the Commercial Equipment Division, becoming Chief Executive in 2007, leading the Management Buyout from Smiths Group in November of that year.

Russell is a board member of the Society of Maritime Industries, as well as being an Associate Fellow of the Royal Institute of Navigation, a Member of the Institution of Engineering and Technology, and a Chartered Engineer.

Chief Financial Officer - Chris Easteal

Chris was appointed Chief Financial Officer for the Kelvin Hughes Group in November 2010. A Chartered Accountant, he was previously Group Finance Director for Hobbs, the Private Equity backed fashion retailer based in London.

Chris brings a wide range of experience to the Group having held various financial roles within many industries, both public and private, more recently as Finance Director of Olympus UK (optical/medical) and Group Financial Controller of DS Smith PLC (paper & packaging). Upon leaving Coopers & Lybrand in 1995 Chris held various financial roles within the Head Office functions of Harrisons & Crosfield PLC (now Elementis PLC, Chemicals/Industrial) and Unigate PLC (now Uniq PLC, food manufacturing/logistics). He holds a degree in Economics from The University of Manchester.

Charts Managing Director - Martin Taylor

Martin Taylor joined Kelvin Hughes in 1996. Initially as a Senior Systems Engineer, Martin led both Commercial and Naval projects within the engineering department continuing on to project manage the development of Electronic Chart Systems. As part of his MBA studies during 2000, Martin implemented the 'New Product Introduction (NPI)' process into the company ensuring products were developed efficiently and reviewed in accordance with constantly validated business cases.

From 2004 to 2007 Martin ran the highly successful SVDR sales campaign and in 2007 Martin became the Director responsible for the Equipment Business. In 2010 Martin took over as the Managing Director of the Charts Business.

Martin is very active in the international maritime field and sits on the board of the CIRM trade organisation for Kelvin Hughes. He also represents the company at the International Maritime Organisation and sat on various IEC committees developing international maritime equipment standards.

Marine Systems Director - Spike Hughes

After a sea-going navigating career spanning 13 years in the Merchant and Royal Navies, Spike gained commercial experience in the publishing and educational markets. In 1998 he returned to the maritime industry as an Area Sales Manager with Kelvin Hughes and was promoted to General Manager (Asia) in 2001.

Based in the Singapore Office, he oversaw a period of sustained and rapid growth in the Far East before returning to the UK as Director, Sales and Marketing in 2007. Spike is now the director for Marine Systems Business.

Surveillance Systems Director - Barry Wade

Barry joined Kelvin Hughes in 2004 as Technical Development Manager with the specific objective to develop a solid-state navigation radar product of comparable cost to existing magnetron based technology. This led to the launch of the highly innovative SharpEye™ radar.

As Director of the Surveillance Systems Business and following the first commercial maritime navigation applications, he has led the business into new markets including on-land security applications. In July 2011 Barry was presented with a prestigious Navigation Award by His Royal Highness the Duke of Edinburgh for Technical Achievement from the Council of the Royal Institute of Navigation (RIN) for his work in leading the design of the SharpEye™ radar.

Previously Barry worked as a senior engineering figure for blue-chip defence companies and has carried out technical and managerial reviews of a number of projects within the AMS and BAE Systems organisations, the largest of which had a contract value of approximately £1 billion.

Operations Director - Paul Watson

Paul joined the Kelvin Hughes group in December 2010 as operations Director. Paul was previously Operations Director at Esterline Racal Acoustics where he was part of a management buyout team which took the company from corporate ownership through two periods of Private Equity ownership and then successfully integrated it into the trade ownership of the Esterline Corporation.

Having completed 26 years in the defence manufacturing industry Paul has held a variety of operational roles both technical and managerial and completed his MBA in 2000. Subsequently, Paul has specialised in Lean Manufacturing, Business process improvement, International outsourcing and organisational development.