Neil Meyer

Founder & CEO – Governance Intelligence, AI SaaS & Research

Beyond Countdown Limited

May 2025 – Present · 1 yr 6 mos

Conceived, designed, and launched a live governance-intelligence platform that assesses the gap between stated governance architecture and observable organisational behaviour using only public sources. Built from an original research thesis into a proprietary methodology, data model, software product, research operation, and commercial proposition.

The platform currently holds 1,000+ unique organisations across 21 sectors and 95 countries, with 40,000+ structured risk assessments covering 38 canonical governance risks – 18 external and systemic, 20 internal capacity and culture. Every organisation is assessed through the same framework, enabling structured comparison while retaining context for ownership, regulation, and organisational form.

Developed the Unified Countdown Framework as an end-to-end governance methodology comprising four integrated layers: Grey Horizon Scan (risk identification), Realisation of Legacy (diagnostic scoring), LegacyForge (remediation and action planning), and LegacyOps (continuing governance monitoring). CrunchTest provides high-pressure scenario testing across multiple converging risks.

Created the Realisation of Legacy diagnostic – a dual-axis scoring model that deliberately separates governance architecture from operational reality. The model measures the direction and severity of misalignment between what an organisation says and what the public record suggests it does.

Designed and operates a governed AI-enabled production model that decomposes work into explicit phases, preserves decisions and evidence as inspectable artefacts, applies quality gates at defined points, and retains human ownership of scoring, interpretation, and publication. Demonstrates how an experienced executive can use AI to operate across research, engineering, content, data-product development, and commercial design while maintaining full accountability.

Published Countdown to 2100: A Time of Grey Rhinos (2025), examining the convergence of systemic risks and the implications for governance, organisational resilience, and long-term decision-making. Published The State of Governance as the inaugural flagship research report drawing cross-organisational patterns from the corpus.

Board Advisor & Fractional VP Engineering

MediaVision

September 2025 – Present · 1 yr 2 mos

Acts as an independent strategic and delivery adviser to the CEO and leadership team of a founder-led digital business. Focus areas include SaaS productisation, AI-enabled delivery, commercial positioning, operating-model maturity, and board decision quality.

Reviews strategy papers, board packs, and material claims – identifying where evidence is strong, where narrative exceeds support, and where risks, owners, decisions, and timelines need to be made explicit. Provides independent challenge across product strategy, pricing, client value, architecture, delivery risk, and leadership capacity.

Introduced practical operating disciplines including quality gates, environment and repository strategy, feature flags, staged enablement, release controls, testing expectations, security requirements, and production-readiness checks. Supports team structure design and senior engineering roles to ensure appropriate accountability between internal leadership and external suppliers.

Led executive coordination during a serious cyber-security incident – bridging company leadership, insurers, forensic investigators, and legal advisers. Directed evidence preservation, containment actions, privileged-access review, and Microsoft 365 activity examination while maintaining an auditable record of decisions and actions. Shaped client communications that balanced transparency with appropriate commercial and legal caution.

Reviewed and evolved commercial and contractual position to support scaling into FTSE100-level engagements. Supports the design of the Metis platform proposition around measurable client outcomes rather than technology features.

Head of Delivery, Digital EMEA · Senior Director, Programme Management · Head of Delivery, Retail UK

EPAM Systems

January 2019 – December 2024 · 6 yrs

Progressed from leading a major global client account to responsibility for a $75M UK retail portfolio and then a digital-delivery portfolio exceeding $250M across EMEA. Experience included P&L leadership, programme recovery, commercial negotiation, product and platform transformation, operating-model design, and C-suite client relationships.

Head of Delivery, Digital EMEA

April 2021 – December 2024 · 3 yrs 9 mos

Led digital delivery across EMEA, supporting sector and country accounts. The digital-delivery portfolio exceeded $250M, with matrix leadership across organisations of more than 3,000 people.

Senior Director, Programme Management

January 2019 – November 2024 · 5 yrs 11 mos

Led EPAM's delivery team at Burberry across business and technology delivery. Direct account leadership covered 330+ professionals across 14 delivery locations. The work included moving from an Oracle ATG monolith to a headless microservices architecture using SaaS partners, a React front end, Node.js services, and migration from Apigee to AWS Lambda with DataStax.

Defined and implemented an engagement model to support the offshore delivery partnership, with regular involvement in architectural and commercial discussions. Chaired weekly and monthly programme, delivery and account boards, bringing client executives, commercial leaders, delivery teams and technology specialists together to make decisions, resolve risks and maintain accountability.

Head of Delivery, Retail UK

November 2019 – April 2021 · 1 yr 6 mos

Held delivery responsibility for more than 20 accounts valued at over $75M, with more than 1,000 FTEs across eight countries. The remit covered the full engagement lifecycle, from pre-sales through to in-life delivery.

Digital Programme Director

BMI Group

September 2017 – September 2018 · 1 yr 1 mo

Post-merger digital transformation across eight European countries. Led RFI/RFP, procurement, and implementation of a multinational Sitecore platform, PIM capability, partner portal, and group intranet. Consolidated 100+ local websites and 15+ local brands into a shared multilingual estate.

Interim CTO

Independent Audit Limited

November 2015 – January 2017 · 1 yr 3 mos

Redesigned a governance survey product as a configurable multi-tenant SaaS platform on Microsoft Azure. Led product strategy, architecture, commercial modelling, and nearshore delivery. Worked directly with the Managing Director, Chair, and non-executive directors.

Interim CIO / Global Programme Director

Kaplan International

August 2013 – March 2015 · 1 yr 8 mos

Led technology delivery and operations supporting 110,000+ students annually across the UK, Europe, North America, Australia, and New Zealand. Served as Interim CIO for nine months of the engagement. Managed 80 internal FTE and 30 suppliers. Built multinational commerce and content platform; implemented Salesforce CRM and Moodle learning systems.

Operations Director, Digital Delivery Unit · Digital Engagement Director · Head of Web Platforms

Capgemini

November 2010 – July 2013 · 2 yrs 9 mos

Helped establish Capgemini UK Digital across commerce, Drupal, Salesforce, and integration capabilities. Led digital programmes at Burberry before the later EPAM engagement.

Operations Director, Digital Delivery Unit

September 2012 – July 2013 · 11 mos

Helped define and develop the digital business unit as part of the senior management team, working with capability and delivery owners across multi-channel, responsive design, commerce, Drupal, Salesforce, and open-source integration.

Digital Engagement Director

November 2010 – February 2013 · 2 yrs 4 mos

Led digital programmes at Burberry within Capgemini's eBusiness unit, with responsibilities spanning project management, solution architecture and integration.

Head of Web Platforms

October 2011 – October 2012 · 1 yr 1 mo

Managed a team of more than 35 professionals, from graduate developers to senior technical and solution architects, focused on Drupal, web integration, automated testing and web-enabling legacy systems.

Bid Manager / Project Manager

NEC Europe

September 2008 – April 2009 · 8 mos

Led NEC's local bid and project activity for its fingerprint-biometric offer for the National ID Card programme, covering the bid process, pricing discussions, solution architecture and benchmark delivery.

European Solutions Manager · Programme Manager

NEC Europe

August 2005 – February 2008 · 2 yrs 7 mos

European Solutions Manager

August 2007 – February 2008 · 7 mos

Supported large programmes, process improvement, communications and the development of reusable European propositions, reporting to the European General Manager for Enterprise Solutions.

Programme Manager

August 2005 – January 2008 · 2 yrs 6 mos

Led NEC's technology-partner delivery to The O2, coordinating multiple divisions and subcontractors as senior client contact, from the early partnership negotiations through delivery and ongoing account management.

Business Development Manager

LogicaCMG

August 2000 – August 2005 · 5 yrs 1 mo

Worked across biometric consultancy, proposition development, pre-sales, business development and project management. Led a divisional support-services unit providing 24/7 services to transport, travel, retail and manufacturing clients.