Leadership Team
In 2022 Alpha Development welcomed investment from the Business Growth Fund (BGF).
BGF are an investment fund specializing in supporting successful businesses to scale further.
Jonathan Tate
Chairman
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Jonathan spent the first ten years of his career working within the oil industry. During this time, he qualified as a Chartered Management Accountant, joining PwC as a management consultant in 1996 and becoming a partner two years later. During this time, Jonathan served many clients, focusing on technology-enabled transformation projects, as well as holding senior leadership positions in the firm including EMEA head of Technology Consulting, Consumer and Industrial Consulting Leader, Global Alliances Leader and Global L&D leader.
Since retiring from PwC in 2019, Jonathan has become Chairman of three companies including Turnkey Consulting and Certo Aerospace Ltd., as well as undertaking high profile advisory engagements and acting as an angel investor to a range of technology start-ups. He also mentors entrepreneurial students looking to start their own business at Greenwich University.
As Chairman, Jonathan is responsible for overseeing the performance of the Board and the Executive Team and for managing our relationship with investors.
Ian Dawson
Non-Executive Director
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Since founding the company in 2003, Ian has undertaken nearly every role at Alpha. Ian worked for over a decade in global investment banking before focusing on the opportunity to build a business totally focused on executing impactful, highly customized development programs for the leading global financial services firms.
As Non-Executive Director and Founder of Alpha, Ian works closely with our CEO and Board to shape the future of our company and to ensure our continued focus on delivering high-quality solutions aligned to our clients’ learning and development strategies.
Jackie Gittins
Non Executive Director
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Jackie is a lifelong L&D professional, starting in Talent in the consumer retail sector, then with 20 years in PwC’s Human Capital division working with clients on major change initiatives. Now in her coaching career, Jackie works alongside CEOs and senior leaders of global organisations helping them to do the tough work of change.
Jackie is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of People Development, an accredited coach by Henley Business School, qualified at the Tavistock Institute in Board level dynamics, and is a member of the European Mentoring and Coaching Council. Jackie is a Non-Executive Director on the Board of Alpha Development.
Nick Pirog
CEO
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Nick is a seasoned commercial leader with over 15 years of experience scaling and transforming education-focused businesses globally. Before joining Alpha Development in July 2025, he served as Chief Operating Officer at Times Higher Education, where he spearheaded global growth initiatives, optimized operations across multi-channel divisions, and delivered sustainable revenue acceleration through data-driven strategies.
Prior to his tenure at Times Higher Education, Nick was instrumental at TES Global, playing a pivotal role in commercial development and market expansion. His efforts contributed to significant international reach and positioning TES Global as a trusted leader in educational resources.
A collaborative and resourceful executive, Nick thrives in dynamic environments, turning complex challenges into clear growth opportunities. His passion for education and technology enables him to build impactful partnerships, fuel innovation, and deliver measurable outcomes.
Michael Lubacz
Chief Commercial Officer
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Michael is Chief Commercial Officer at Alpha Development, where he leads the firm’s global commercial strategy, overseeing new business, client partnerships, and revenue growth across key markets. He works closely with the executive team to scale Alpha’s global client portfolio and ensure the consistent delivery of high-impact learning solutions aligned to clients’ strategic priorities.
Michael brings over a decade of international commercial leadership experience, most recently at Times Higher Education, where he held a number of senior roles spanning business development, product, and marketing. During this time, he played a key role in driving the organisation’s global expansion, building strategic partnerships with leading institutions worldwide, and developing innovative products that delivered measurable commercial impact.
Hector Payne
Chief Learning Officer & Executive Director
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Hector brings over 20 years of experience in the higher and corporate education industry with a specialism in learning data analytics and blended learning technologies. He has been credited with the design and development of learning and development initiatives ranging from professional development programs to large scale corporate university projects for several FTSE 100 firms. To date, the programs he has managed and developed have served the learning needs of over 150,000 individuals primarily in the financial services industry across the US, Europe, Middle East and Asia Pacific
In his current role, Hector is accountable for the Alpha Development product roadmap and ensuring that the quality of the provisions meets with the expectations of our clients. His background in learning design, product development and serving as an account director for large global organizations helps our teams translate industry best practice and cutting-edge innovations into scalable solutions that meets the needs of learners, the managers of learners and ultimately the organizations’ strategies.
Hector is based in Alpha’s Abu Dhabi office.
Stuart Mackie
Chief Technology Officer
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As an accomplished leader and the CTO for Alpha, Stuart has strategic oversight of our technical operations and is responsible for developing our Digital products, leading our technical strategy and enabling Alpha to deliver industry leading learning solutions for our clients.
Stuart spent the first 15 years of his career in UK government. During this time, he held roles such as Head of Data Exploitation and Deputy Head of Engineering, where he built and led large, successful engineering departments whilst strategically transforming and representing big data exploitation capabilities across UK and international governments, law enforcement and partners. Since 2019 he has applied his knowledge and experience in Financial Services as CTO and Partner at a Financial Services consultancy where he successfully spearheaded the development and delivery of strategic vision, business, engineering, data science and technical capabilities.
Paul Kelly
Chief Financial Officer
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Paul has a deep and broad experience that supports his remit at Alpha, to help scale the business, introduce systems and process expertise, and provide the insight to enable effective decisions to be made.
Paul started off in audit with PwC where he qualified as a Chartered Accountant and then moved into industry where he spent ten years in a large market research group and rose to become Finance Director for the UK business.
He has spent the last 15 years working as FD/ CFO for privately owned SME businesses across several sectors including B2B events, endurance sport events and training. In each of these businesses the challenge was to manage and support a program of rapid international growth, both organic and via acquisition, and to create the structures and processes to enable the businesses to successfully transition to a larger scale.