Our Team

Samuel Ellis

Chief Executive Officer

An EMBA graduate from Imperial College Business School, focused on customer acquisition and growth for start-ups.

Sam was previously Head of Innovation for M&C Saatchi, where he spent his time building and managing consumer brands, including a number of start-ups. Prior to that, Sam led the agency’s relationship with Jaguar Land Rover, across digital, CRM, advertising and dealer marketing. He possesses a deep knowledge of the automotive sector, its marketing and product.

Sam also brings prior experience of running his own digital training start-up, as well as working with and growing a variety of start-ups, as a consultant, advisor and angel investor (Graze.com, Tails.com and Nature Metrics).

Dominic Thomas

Chief Operating Officer

As a former Senior Equity Derivatives Trader at investment banks, Dominic is an expert in probability, risk-modelling, complex data-driven analytics and decision-making. He has worked with, managed and led technical and data teams for over 15 years.

Experienced in building and unwinding profitable businesses within financial services, he is highly motivated to build a sustainable organisation that stands for more than just making money.

Also an EMBA graduate of Imperial College Business School, Dominic has additional start-up experience from his own angel investments.

Jon Chandler

Chief Technology Officer

In his time at M&C Saatchi, Jon was Lead Software Engineer, across all group companies. He has built car comparison sites for MINI, finance calculators for BMW and online shops for Porsche.

Jon is a natural problem solver and hands-on software engineer. He has proven ability to recruit, develop, motivate and manage the mental health of technical staff over the long term.

With over 20 years full stack experience, across a huge variety of client and internal products and projects, he’s utilised Node, PHP, C#, JAVA, AWS, Swift, SQL, noSQL, CMS (Drupal, Concrete5, Joomla, Umbraco), HTML, CSS, Javascript, webGL, Processing, openGL, Unity, UnrealEngine, Lua, RESTful and SOAP APIs, IOT and Hardware development.

Chris Martin

Senior Developer

As an experienced developer who has spent most of his development career in the travel industry, Chris has experience in leading development projects which involve everything from quickly, and efficiently, processing large amounts of data to bringing complex frontend designs into reality.

Chris is someone who enjoys rising to a challenge and is always looking at ways to continuously improve, and upgrade, his skillset. Having worked in the travel industry Chris has had the opportunity to work with, and lead, diverse teams from all sorts of cultures and backgrounds which has given him an ability to adapt and appreciate ideas from unique angles.

As a developer with over 15 years experience Chris has had exposure to a number of mainstream technologies such as PHP (Laravel, Codeigniter), JavaScript (React, Vue), CSS (SASS), HTML, CMS (Strapi, Joomla, WordPress), XML, JSON, API's (REST, SOAP), databases (MySQL, SQLite, SQL) and AWS.

Harry Leahey

Marketing & Content Executive

Born and bred in Merseyside, Harry graduated with a degree in Journalism at Liverpool John Moores University in 2019. During his studies, he gained some experience in PR at bespoke sports car firm BAC, and accreditation from the Broadcast Journalism Training Council (BJTC).

He later became a freelance contributor for his local paper, before working in the third-sector as a press officer for a specialist Merseyside-based men’s mental health charity.

Though keen to have worked for such a worthwhile cause, Harry later left the organisation in September 2021 to pursue his long-term goal of becoming an automotive journalist.

He is now a graduate of Coventry University’s unique MA course in Automotive Journalism, having completed his studies in August 2022.

Tom Butler

Branding & UI/UX Consultant

Having worked in agencies at every level for many years Tom now runs his own consultancy, focussing on digital design, brand identity and art direction for clients of all shapes and sizes. From global brands like Apple and R/GA to small startups and across a variety of sectors from fintech to interior design.

Tom has worked with Karfu since inception, across naming, brand and visual identity, explainer videos, animation, advertising and merchandise. He has also designed all our prototypes and taken part in internal and external testing. This led to his work in designing the front end UI for the entire Karfu platform which is currently in the process of being implemented.

Tom continues to assist the Karfu team as and when required.

thebutlerdidit.co.uk

Mila Robbins

Data Analysis Intern

A Design Engineering student at Imperial College, Mila is originally American but has lived and worked in Singapore and London.

Her degree focuses on the synthesis of traditional engineering with creative, human-centred design. Sustainability is the focal point of all endeavours and her future career aspirations.

As an intern she brought her experience with UI/UX design, research and reporting, and data analytics to contribute to various projects at Karfu.