Who we are

Marc Middleton-Heath

Managing Director

Before founding Catalyst, Marc held several key roles included Head of Marketing Planning at Oxfam, Head of Individual Giving at Help the Aged, Head of Fundraising at British Red Cross and Marketing Director at Amnesty International. Now he heads up the Catalyst family, with all its quirks and wonders. Outside of work, he is an international man of mystery.

Damion Jones

Account Director

Before joining Catalyst, Damion worked for the National Trust, WaterAid, Marie Curie Cancer Care, Medair and British Heart Foundation. He took a breather from the stress and strains of modern life by living and working in Portugal for years; ‘less Piccadilly Circus more Piri-Piri chicken’. His two biggest loves are running and biscuits, and he’s currently averaging two correct answers per episode of University Challenge.

Georgie Riley

Account Manager

Georgie was a producer of corporate live events BC (before children). She then retrained and worked in repro for print firm AC (after children) before joining Catalyst.

Loves: Family, good food and Italian white wine.

Hates: Bad manners and anything with more than four legs.

Katie Simpson

Account Manager

With a background in graphic design, Katie followed her passion for obsessive organisation and moved into managing internal development and print schedules. This soon took her into print side before she happily embraced account management in the charity sector. Her passion is her family, organisation and decorating cakes, in that order. She says seeing the looks on people’s faces when given the cake makes it all worth doing – we’re still waiting.

Claire Brown

Data Analyst

A southerner living in the North West, Claire’s still trying hard to hang onto her accent. She’s worked as an analyst for HMRC and British Airways before switching to database marketing. After a spell as a busy freelance analyst, she became Head of Analysis at Catalyst in 2012. Claire’s big passion is netball and any free time is spent coaching, running events for England Netball and playing in a Cheshire team as the world’s shortest Goal Shooter.

Stan Laidler

Production Director

An expert in military aircraft and all things print, Stan has worked in print and direct mail production for 27 years. He started out on newspaper presses, and then moved to heat set offset web presses and sales before joining Catalyst. If Stan could be anywhere, he’d be swimming, skiing or doing just about anything Spanish. A keen Spanish speaker, Stan says his fluency improves in direct correlation with consumption of tapas and sangria.

Heather Beresford

Associate Creative Director

Heather is deeply passionate about good health – just don’t get her started on wild swimming or reformer Pilates. With a background in health journalism, Heather’s written for a range of consumer titles and websites, including The Times, The Telegraph, The Mirror and Red, and was also editor of Healthy, a national glossy magazine. Fifteen years ago, she moved into the not-for-profit sector to have more of an impact. And she now channels her energies into making sure our clients’ campaigns get serious amounts of heart-felt support.

Trusted associates

Our core team also works closely with a small team of trusted freelances. These fantastic fundraising copy writers, art directors and film producers include Ruth Bateson, Jo Usherwood , Sophie Johnson, Debra Norris, Matt Kurton and Mark Bushnell.