Our Team

Paul West - Managing Director
Throughout the nineties Paul enjoyed a successful career in the music industry, managing bands and consulting for A&M records. Later he moved from music into marketing and developing the Stoke Newington Festival before embarking on a business degree and launching Ignite Marketing in 2001. Formerly responsible for delivering the strategic marketing side of the business Paul now spends most of his time managing the growing Ignite team and handling the finance and new business functions.

Michelle Allmark - Creative Director
RSA Award winner Michelle joined Ignite Marketing in early 2002 to head up the creative division. Prior to that she was Art Director at Luxford Advertising with a roster of prestigious pharmaceutical clients including Pfizer. Longing to move into a less restrictive roll, Michelle left Luxford to develop the creative side of Ignite Marketing. After three years, Michelle’s experience, creative flair and unique design solutions have been instrumental in the ongoing success of the company.

Lindsay Kinniburgh - Marketing Manager
Lindsay joined us in February 2006 to augment our marketing function. A graduate in Business and Marketing from Paisley University, Lindsay joined us from Nobel Enterprises (formerly ICI) where she was working as a Commercial Assistant for two years. Lindsay also brings past experience of working on a restaurant marketing plan on a freelance basis, making her perfectly suited to Ignite and her marketing instincts and creative flair would be a welcome addition to any team.

Victoria Searl - Operations Consultant
Vic fell in love with hospitality after being left to sit outside a pub with a bottle of Panda Pops in 1982, and hasn’t looked back since.
After becoming one of the youngest licensees ever for Allied Domecq in the early 90’s she travelled the length and breadth of the UK turning struggling pubs and bars into thriving businesses, finally landing in London in 2001. A few years, and some of London’s busiest bars, later Vic found her real niche, setting up new bars, clubs and restaurant businesses from scratch.
Being an Aries, Vic is a born organiser and, armed with a real passion for amazing service and a keen eye for detail, she left the safe world of management for the exciting world of consultancy. Her experience and unique skills have found her opening sites as diverse as pubs for individual operators and flagship restaurants for the Malaysian government.
Vic joined Ignite in 2008 with her first opening taking place only weeks later. And what does she love most about her job? “The challenge of making months of planning and organising finally come together at exactly the right time to make an opening night run like a dream! And seeing the owners and team see their vision come to life”.
Vic likes chocolate biscuits and wishes Newcastle United would win some silverware.

Sam Trainor-Buckingham - Marketing Manager
An extrovert by nature, Sam's unusually acute psychological sensitivity and fascination for random human behaviour gives him a keen insight into the world of marketing. Sam graduated from the University of Sussex with a 1st class degree in Contemporary History, and realized the lessons learned from the past, can afford an insight into trends of the future. Sam soon developed an interest in marketing through early experience in the film industry. His previous experience, consulting to Building Schools for the Future (£178 million Gov funded scheme), on meeting environmental targets places him in a good position to understanding current environmental trends. His obsession of food, cooking, booze and culture, combined with creative thinking, drive and a visual flare, make him an ideal member of the Ignite team.

Adam Snow - Senior Designer
A student at the School of Art and Design at Salford University, Adam achieved a Student Award from the highly regarded D&AD. Soon after graduating he joined ConfEd (the professional association representing education officers, managers and advisers) as Web designer & Creative Director where he gained a solid grounding in corporate design and branding. Having chosen to pursue a more creative role in London, Adam joined Ignite as Senior Designer in late 2003 and has established himself as a lynchpin of the creative team.

Nina Clark Sletten - Designer
Nina holds a first class degree from the well regarded Birmingham Institute of Art and design. She brings valuable experience of working at Kino, creators of the 2012 Olympic logo and Shoreditch based advertising company Attention, as well as her own distinctive creative vision. Her CV stood out from the hundreds we receive every year and to her credit it took us about five minutes to decide to hire her.

Douglas McKenzie - Web Guru
Doug’s been working with the Internet since 1999, starting out doing design work for leading agencies and then moving on to new challenges as they presented themselves. These have involved event organisers like Earls Court Olympia, funky clothing companies like Cyberdog, government projects like Learn-direct, risqué clubs such as TG, banging DJs such as Ting and some other, less well known, brands like Sainsburys, Top Man, Burtons, Miss Selfridges, Samsung etc etc
In between all of that he’s found time to travel around the world, train up as a scuba-diver, break a few laws on a motorbike and contemplate the sound of one hand clapping (it sounds a bit like wherrpush).
Over this time he’s built up a keen appreciation of how the Internet works and how to apply that to a project and loves putting all that to work to produce results that exceed expectations.

Liz Tray - Office Manager
Manchester-born Liz Tray moved to London in 2000, having landed a job in ad sales, to pursue a career in journalism. Soon after she moved to the world-renowned alternative fashion magazine Skin Two where, although her title was simply Editorial Assistant, she did everything from office management to writing articles to event organisation. A voracious music junkie, Liz has a particular passion for going to gigs and part-time manages an art-rock band. Liz came to Ignite in the autumn of 2008 looking for, and finding, a fresh challenge.

Murphy Dog - Stress Management
Murphy Dog joined us from a refuge in January 2005, his remit was to help combat the stress of deadlines! Not one to be excluded from brainstorming meetings and always happy to let us know when the postman is about to post letters through the box, Murphy helps keep us sane. Whenever things get too frantic Murphy takes team members for a walk around the park and his listening skills are invaluable!