Steve Ball - GC and Founder CEO
Steve has over 25 years experience working in the UK and ‘on the ground’ internationally as an in-house lawyer developing a broad range of legal skills and know-how, as well as a distinctly commercial and rounded approach.
He is passionate about driving innovation, productivity, higher performance and competitive advantage from legal. This is something he put into practise throughout his in-house career, now distilled into the methods applied by Boost. Boost was founded to assemble a unique pool of talent and resources to help drive these objectives, whether your business is at the early stages or already at higher levels of maturity.
Steve started out as a commercial and IP/IT lawyer in the telecoms, software and internet/media sectors. Immediately prior to setting up Boost he was a General Counsel/Head of Ethics & Compliance, managing all legal matters and corporate development initiatives at an international listed industrial company with a portfolio of business in automotive, logistics, mining and power in the Europe, USA, sub-Saharan Africa and Siberia. He has broad experience across a wide range of legal and non-legal skills, having operated in large multi-nationals, mid-caps and pre-IPO scale-ups, as well as with private equity investors.
Steve is committed to unlocking the value potential for lawyers and legal services through a strategic approach and effective engagement of people, processes and technology.
See LinkedIn Profile.
Conor O’Shea - Head of Performance
Conor is a former Irish International Rugby player and currently the Director of Performance Rugby, England Rugby based at Twickenham. Previously he was the Head Coach of the Italian International Team. He is a passionate advocate and practitioner for engaging talent to know and achieve their potential on an on-going basis.
Conor has been instrumental in supporting the development and startup of Boost, injecting insights from his unique experience and deep thinking. He brings an approachable competitor’s attitude and pragmatic practises informed by substantial experience of coaching and developing at all levels of sport. His authentic, ‘people-centric’ character and perspectives adds an energetic additional dimension to the thinking, frameworks and solutions developed and delivered by Boost for the legal sector.
Conor is prepared to think differently and leads from the front taking responsibility for his short and long term initiatives to drive foundational development, maintain focus on winning in the short term and building a continuity of success. His style, on-going coaching and engagement skills always stimulate thinking and help to unlock energy throughout the journey to building and tuning higher performing teams.
Conor has an extensive network of performance and psychology specialists with which client specific solutions can be tailored.
Paula Tully - Leadership Consultant
Paula is a consultant, mentor and coach for Escentia, a company created by Paula to help develop clear, focussed leaders that build trust, compassion, stability and hope.
She uses her collective experience to work with both leaders and teams to explore new and effective approaches to leading, using many of the tools and models she actively used as a senior leader herself. Her philosophy for success comes from a deep-rooted belief that leading a business, team or organisation isn’t something that is unilaterally done to people; it is a two-way relationship that requires time and mutual understanding, consistent language and actions.
Paula has a both a practical and academic background. She has an extensive General Management and Business background, most recently as VP of Pfizer Europe, and also has a Masters degree in Consulting and Coaching for Change from Oxford University and HEC Paris Business School. Paula is a certified mBIT coach and 5 Voices Communications Trainer and has an extensive network of leadership specialists with which client specific solutions can be tailored.
See LinkedIn Profile.
Martin Lupton - Design Consultant
Martin brings his 25 years of experience in design thinking and a PhD from Liverpool School of Architecture to the Boost portfolio. He is a hands-on designer who loves to solve problems, acting as an energising catalyst in any engagement. He injects an authentic style and approach that is definitely not traditional legal, helping clients to advance innovation and design solutions putting people, user experiences and adoption at the centre.
Martin is a former director of BDP, the UK’s largest multi-disciplinary, architecture led design practise. His innovation and success in substantially increasing the volume of design work awarded to the firm was directly connected to his leadership to bring together a unique team of diverse individuals (lighting designer, fine artists, craftsmen etc.) and empower them in a collaborative work group to challenge the norm and produce truly outstanding briefs.
Martin went on to co-found his current private practise, Light Collective. In addition to design projects, the Light Collective also design and deliver events and campaigns created to stimulate engagement with target audiences and the wider market , generating new user experiences and business opportunities. Examples include pop-up restaurants in derelict buildings around the world, curating and creating international trade shows (including [d]arc at Truman Brewery in Shoreditch, London), devising and hosting a global awards programme, creating workshops to demonstrate the social value of good lighting and a successful campaign to promote the work of Women in Lighting.
As a key part of his design thinking process, Martin builds and tests prototypes for projects and ideas using custom software and user-centric interactive control. He believes that engaging the right people in a team, helping them to be open to creativity and non-perfection through prototyping/testing are all critical parts of the design thinking process, which can be adapted to legal challenges where a different flavour of creativity and problem solving is needed.
See LinkedIn Profile.
Tara Wilson - GC & Commercial and IP/IT Specialist
Tara has over 25 years international legal, commercial and leadership experience. She has strong business acumen and a pragmatic approach to getting the job done, matched with deep professional experience and mastery of commercial legal matters. Tara combines this with subtle grit and a determination and inner strength, which makes her great to work with and very effective at what she does.
Tara currently provides support for private equity firms/their portfolio companies and growing media/tech companies, working on transactions in the UK, US and elsewhere getting results efficiently, effectively and mostly by ‘virtual’ means. This helps clients with turnaround times and keeping costs down.
Initially qualifying and working with Burges Salmon in their Company/Commercial department, Tara then spent 16 years working in telecoms and technology at Motorola Solutions. She held various increasingly senior in-house legal and management roles, including responsibility for several geographic regions and related legal needs.
Motorola Solutions provided a rare opportunity for in-house lawyers to gain and hone experiences and competencies valued by business clients, as legal and commercial roles were combined. Operating in a multi-disciplined environment helped Tara develop a clear sense of what is important in sales, procurement and other critical aspects of trading and operations. The instinct and know-how that comes from this is a significant value add to her already strong capabilities as a commercial lawyer.
See LinkedIn Profile.