Our team

Andy Bowie: Partner

Andy is a public service innovator. He has worked across the public, private and not for profit sectors over the last 20 years in a variety of business development, strategy and commissioning roles. He has worked across multiple public service markets and sectors in the UK, including local government, health and social care, children’s services, welfare to work, justice and vocational skills.

Andy brings direct practical experience of helping organisations develop growth strategies; bid for and win multiple, large scale complex bids in different markets; commissioning services, including leveraging social investment; re-designing public services so that they better meet the needs of customers; and leading large scale change programmes in complex stakeholder environments.

Andy is a cycling fanatic. He derives great pleasure from tackling challenging rides, including Grand Tour stages in France and Italy and once inexplicably cycled from Sheffield to Edinburgh in one go, on his own.

Zach Law: Managing Consultant

Zach heads up our Commercial Department at 50D and has an extensive background in various aspects of business, including Business Development, Operational, and Corporate roles. With a focus on Commercial Modelling and Negotiation, Zach is adept at navigating large-scale tenders, reviewing specifications, and ensuring contractual terms are reflected in a comprehensive solution that reflects governance considerations for new opportunities.

Zach stands out through his standard practice of developing financial models that feature intricate scenario analysis for payment structures, meticulously assessing their impact under various contractual performance variations. His proficiency extends to optimising cost bases and comprehending their flexibility, enabling strategic adaptability in dynamic and quickly changing financial landscapes. He possesses a nuanced understanding of how alterations reverberate through Gross Margin and EBIT, allowing for thorough assessments of both financial and commercial implications for Clients.

Another 50D passionate cyclist, he has completed challenging events like the Iron Distance Triathlon, Mallorca 312, and a 24-hour indoor bike ride, raising £10,000 for a local hospice during Covid lockdowns. 

Mark Winter: Managing Consultant

Mark Winter has over a decade of bid development experience in the public services sector. Over the last three years, Mark has taken on the role of Digital Lead at 50 Degrees, responsible for leading on digital bid elements. He has played a critical role in securing numerous high-profile bids for government services, including prison digital solutions/communications systems.

Mark's expertise lies in his ability to bridge the gap between digital subject matter experts and the bid team. He has a keen eye for detail and is skilled in translating complex technical language into winning bid copy that resonates with customers. His understanding of the digital landscape is invaluable to clients, as IT/Digital elements become increasingly complex and central to public service delivery solutions.

Mark enjoys travelling and diving (he is a qualified Divemaster), and often combines these two pursuits. He has been diving in Australia, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, Egypt, and Maldives.

Jemma Gurd: Senior Consultant

Jemma spent four years supporting complex defence tenders following her graduation from university in 2018. Since joining 50 Degrees in 2022, she has led on the development of a range of tender responses covering employability, prison education and refugee services.

Jemma specialises in supporting our clients to assimilate their vision and to articulate how they will deliver a service that effectively meets the needs of service-users.

When she doesn’t have her head in a book, Jemma can usually be found splashing around in muddy puddles with her Labrador, Ziggy (yes, Stardust).

Mark Hamilton: Principal Consultant

Mark has 20 years’ experience in the justice sector progressing through a variety of various roles before pitching up in business development in 2017. Since then Mark has been involved in a wide variety of justice and health tenders covering England, Scotland and Australia. 

Mark’s speciality is staffing and logistics, but he is also adept at applying his expertise to other specialties. As well as bringing in new business Mark has also been involved in several contract extension negotiations, and has successfully rebased contracts helping to make them profitable.

In 1996 Mark moved from Belfast to Glasgow for 1 year. 26+ years later and he’s yet to return, leaving people to ponder if is accent is Northern Irish, Scottish or neither. In his spare time Mark can be found in local forests or parks getting dragged around by his four excitable dogs.

Sarah Mohan: Managing Consultant

Sarah is a highly experienced, versatile Senior Bid Manager with 11 years’ experience, writing and managing bids for large employment and training providers, colleges and charities. Sarah specialises in a range of sectors including Employability, Skills, Justice, Enterprise, Health and Social Care, Financial and Digital Advice, and Youth Services. 

Sarah has a strong track record of bringing together a range of internal and external workstreams to ensure expertise is galvanised and translated into high-quality, successful tender submissions.

In her spare time Sarah enjoys planning tennis for her local club, which she has done since she was very young… but, in reality, most of her time is spent with her young children watching Disney+.

Chris Dunn: Solution Lead

Chris has over 30 years’ experience in the criminal justice and immigration sectors and has worked at all levels of prison operations and senior management in both the public and private sectors. This includes 15+ years’ experience of Justice and Immigration bidding, with bid wins in excess of £2 billion, and experience in: Solution Design, Resource Modelling, Bid Writing, Bid Management, Mobilisation, Project Management, Planning and Implementation.

Chris is driven by the important things in life, namely his wife, family, dogs, Hull City and the prospect of retiring to the sun (literally not figuratively). As part of his grand plan, he’s currently learning to habla español.

Emily Bagley-Duncan: Partner

Emily has been writing winning bids for 20 years.  She is passionate about the craft of writing concise and compelling text to best sell a company and their service, and she loves leading and supporting teams to do just that.  Starting her career in welfare to work, Emily was instrumental in securing more than £1bn worth of employment-related contracts for both private and voluntary-sector organisations. Since then, she has helped secure large contract wins across a diverse range of sectors including justice, health, facilities management, education and skills, defence and transport.

Emily brings expertise in the full range of tendering services, from resource and project management capability, solution development, quality assurance processes and direct writing/production support. And if a customer requires the articulation of a complex service model, Emily’s your woman.

Emily loves reading, speed walking and spending time with friends and family. One day she hopes to build enough strength at the gym to do unassisted chin ups.

Helen Holland: Managing Consultant

Helen has worked in business development for 20+ years, writing and managing bids in a range of sectors, including welfare to work, skills, education and justice. Helen’s expertise lies in in managing large-scale tenders and she has recently led a range of successful multi-million pound tenders in the employability sector, on behalf of our clients. Helen is a specialist in coordinating solution design and tender development across multiple workstreams, producing coherent bids that exceed commissioner and client requirements .

In her free time, Helen ‘enjoys’ taking her two children to the park and dragging them round National Trust properties. She also enjoys jogging with friends, if that means a slow jog for ten minutes, followed by coffee and a chat for half an hour.

Lucy Figini: Consultant

Lucy is an English Literature graduate with a real passion for the English language. She is a skilled communicator who creates compelling content that influences and persuades her target audiences. 

Since joining 50 Degrees in 2021, Lucy has shown a real aptitude for service and solution design, and has supported the development of solutions across multiple tenders. She has a talent for breaking down complex ideas into readily understandable information and graphics that support clients and commissioners to engage with the solution.

In her spare time, she can be found in the company of her family dog, playing netball or sewing new clothes.

Kerry Mullins: Managing Consultant

Kerry has worked in the further education sector for 20+ years, with 11 years experience of bid management and writing. Kerry has led several successful £multimillion further/higher education and justice bids (service and capital).

Kerry has also developed service-focused bids for clients in other sectors, including employability, groundwork, commercial security and care.

Kerry lives in the Northwest in Waterloo, close to the ‘Iron Men’ on Crosby beach, where she can often be seen walking her dog. In her spare time she balances adrenaline-boosting pursuits, such as ziplining and climbing, with more relaxing activities like gentle yoga and Netflix bingeing. 

Jayne Banks: Managing Consultant

Jayne is an experienced bid manager and has successfully led bid teams to secure major public service contracts including Work Programme, Fit for Work, ESF, Child Maintenance and Mandatory Work Placements. In the last few years she has been working in local government, driving the commercialisation agenda and managing a diverse sales portfolio.

Jayne is passionate about developing people and is a qualified coach and undertakes 1:1 coaching of senior leaders, as well as delivering training and development sessions. 

In her spare time, she likes playing dens and doing dinosaur chases with her two young sons and playing tennis and doing yoga… when she has the time. 

John Ashworth: Managing Consultant

John has over twenty years experience of working in public services, spanning employability, health, skills and justice sectors.

John’s work has covered a range of disciplines, including communications, public affairs, project management and contract mobilisation, at both a regional and national level.

Over the last five years John has acted as the 50 Degrees Mobilisation Lead. He works with our clients to help them define and articulate their strategy, and develop detailed mobilisation plans. John’s recent work has helped our clients to secure high-value contracts in the employability and justice sectors.

John is keen on sports and coaches junior football and cricket; he is also a spirited, if limited, cyclist.

Matt Wells: Head of People & Wellbeing

Matt has worked in public services delivery, sales and people development for 25+ years with experience spanning the UK, Australia, Europe and Middle East.

Matt combines a number of roles at 50 Degrees, supporting our business development planning activity, and ensuring that our client projects are resourced effectively.

Matt leads our health and wellbeing strategy and has been instrumental in introducing a range of support programmes for our team. These employee benefits include an annual health and wellbeing allowance, including flexible working and digital GP access (to name just a limited few).

Matt enjoys spending his time walking the local beaches with his family, taking the occasional sea swim, and pointing out to people that where he lives is less busy than London.

David MacDougall: Managing Consultant

David is an experienced and respected business leader who has worked in a variety of operational and strategic development roles across the Employment, Skills, Justice, Health, Economic Development and Regeneration sectors.

Working across a wide portfolio of opportunities David has successfully led bid teams and won contracts and business to business sales worth in excess of £1.5bn.

Exiled from Scotland for over ten years now and living in Sheffield David still craves home comforts like lrn Bru and square sausage, although he draws the line at deep fried mars bars.

Alex Arblaster: Managing Consultant

Alex has worked in business development for over 10 years, writing winning bids across multiple sectors for FTSE 100 companies, SMEs and charities.

He has led the development of bid strategies and partnership development in a broad range of sectors, including employability, policing, energy, justice and health.

Alex enjoys playing basketball and football, is a long-suffering Sheffield Wednesday fan, and spends far too much time playing with Lego and tinkering with his Fantasy Football team.

Maddy Trigg: Consultant

Maddy is a University of York graduate with a First Class Bachelors degree in English and Related Literature. She is a creative individual with an eye for detail and a passion for producing high-quality content.

After leaving university, Maddy spent two years producing a variety of written content and design assets for clients across multiple sectors, focusing largely on education, healthcare and social care. One of her proudest moments is reaching the national finals of the Roche Court Educational Trust’s ARTiculation competition, in which she was one of just ten finalists chosen to speak at Clare College, Cambridge.

Outside of work, Maddy enjoys reading gritty crime fiction, inventing new cocktail recipes and attending life drawing classes.

Rowena Astell: Managing Consultant

Rowena has been managing bids for over 15 years across sectors including justice, employment services, health, policing, skills and education.

She has worked on behalf of organisations ranging from small charities to local authorities to FTSE 100 companies. She is experienced at leading and coordinating large-scale bids, managing the end-to-end process, financial modelling, writing, dialogue, solution design and supply chains. 

Rowena has replaced travelling the world with spending more than the average time doing DIY.