OUR TROOP
beta baboon is made up of permanent and visiting baboons who hang out together on Baboon Rock. We are beta baboons to our alpha clients.
richard hytner
founder
Until setting up beta baboon in 2016, Richard was Saatchi & Saatchi’s deputy chairman, leading its global strategy and innovation practice with clients.
Richard is at his best facilitating candid, courageous and creative conversations when the stakes are high. He has extensive experience doing this with the most complex of stakeholder groups. Most recently, he has helped partners of a global law firm, members of the Governing Body of an Oxford University College, and leaders of one of the world’s most influential music and drama schools. He has been engaged this year to help leadership teams from the worlds of media, medicine, science and business.
Recent speaking engagements have been for Church of England Bishops in Lambeth Palace, barristers in Middle Temple Hall and hospital administrators, cardiologists and anesthesiologists in New York. His speaking and research interests include creativity and how to think differently; how to improve the relationships among those collectively responsible for their organisation’s leadership; building the confidence to have more courageous conversations with colleagues and customers; and how to ignite growth for brands.
Richard is Adjunct Professor of Marketing at London Business School, teaching on both degree and executive education programmes including those for Vodafone, Lloyds of London and ING, and for two open programmes Strategic Branding and Market Driving Strategies. He runs an elective course open to all degree students on Creativity in Business.
Beyond his work as a beta baboon, Richard co-founded the Manchester United Supporters Trust and remains its honorary president; was, for 8 years, a trustee (5 of them as Chairman) of Planting Promise, a sustainable educational enterprise in Sierra Leone; and he served two terms as a trustee of the British Heart Foundation. In 2015 he joined the Met Police Commissioner’s Management Board as a non executive adviser and was re-appointed for a second term in 2017. He is also a non executive director of Foundation for Leadership through Sport.
For reviews of his first book, Consiglieri: Leading from the Shadows (Profile Books) and media coverage, see: www.consiglieribook.com.
Richard is a Meyler Campbell accredited Business Coach.
inken thomas
co-founder
As the co-founder of beta baboon Inken has, from the firm’s inception in January 2016, worked with leaders of Nordics and Baltics’ ambitious telco Telia; global camera equipment manufacturer Manfrotto; FTSE 100 Direct Line Group; and the VC funded start-up team of an electric drive technology company.
Prior to this role, Inken was part of Saatchi & Saatchi’s global strategy and innovation team as its Client Services Director. She worked extensively across the creative company’s global client base and designed and delivered programmes on marketing and communications for senior leadership teams across the world, from the Middle East to Japan to the US and Europe. One of her career highlights was the work she drove for Cushman & Wakefield, whose leaders wished to inspire a culture to empower and fuel their people’s confidence and ability to deliver the real estate firm’s proposition to clients – to transform the way the world works, shops and lives.
Inken began her career at Saatchi & Saatchi in Frankfurt and was integral to the launch team that started-up an agency in Berlin. As its Management Supervisor, she led assignments on brand transformation and positioning for global brands in tourism and telecommunications, and has extensive experience working with automotive, retail and pharmaceutical brands.
Inken studied Communication and Cultural Management at Zeppelin University along with minors in Corporate Management and Economics and Public Management and Governance. Teaching has been a red thread in Inken’s life: she has experience in front of the blackboard, teaching English in sign language to children for a year in Andhra Pradesh, India. Recently, she joined an Open Quest in Kenya, facilitated by Leader’s Quest, to foster leadership capabilities in fast-changing environments.
Beyond Inken’s work, she is fired up to accelerate the movement of gender equality, focusing on how to weave seamlessly together a personal life filled with love, with a professional life driven by ambition.