Donal Carville, CEO

Donal has nearly twenty years’ experience in corporate and investment banking. From 2005 Donal was in Mizuho’s proprietary area, where he helped establish, build and run a business focused on longevity.

Throughout his banking career, Donal fostered his love of data using it to design oblique data harvesting methods, which, when coupled with pattern-matching research, led to many non-typical strategies, extending from origination, to risk, active management & systems design. That dataphilia was the genesis of Circadian.

Prior to Mizuho, Donal spent more than a decade at Citigroup. At the time of his leaving he was an MD and member of the Senior Management Team within its Capital Structuring group.

Donal holds a master’s degree in Engineering, Economics & Management from Oxford University. Amongst other outside interests Donal also holds a directorship in a medical research company.

Keith MacDonald, Chairman

Keith has over 25 years of international experience in banking, accountancy and corporate finance. He started his career with one of the major accounting firms and subsequently held senior roles with Citigroup and Lloyds Banking Group up to 2013. Since then he has been engaged in a diverse range of consulting and directorship activities ranging across a broad spectrum of industries including public companies listed in NY, London and Dublin.

Having successfully led businesses through periods of complexity, change and challenge, Keith's interests don't rest solely with large corporates. Recently he has been an investor and CFO of ActivateClients (medium-sized Fintech) which he helped to grow and develop prior to being sold to a trade buyer in 2015. His other angel investing interests have (so far) tended toward technical & science-based projects (Ziylo, NS Science).

In the public sphere, for more than 10 years Keith was chairperson of a high profile Irish Government-sponsored financial services sector grouping encompassing multiple (private and public) stakeholders.

Advisory Team

Matt Sheridan, Brains

Matt joined Mizuho International in May 2005 where he also helped establish, build and run the life settlements and longevity business. His role was primarily to design and build policy pricing models, help design the infrastructure that enabled life settlements to be booked and managed as a tradable security within the bank, and to actively manage the risks of the book. At its peak, that business managed well in excess of a billion dollars of risk.

Prior to joining Mizuho, Matt worked at the Royal Bank of Scotland (formerly Natwest Markets / Greenwich Natwest) for over ten years, largely in Proprietary Credit Trading but also in Structured Solutions, Capital Structure Trading and Risk Management. He is FSA registered and has a degree in Business Information Technology from Kingston University.

Aiden Flynn, Brawn

Aiden Flynn is a co-founder of Exploristics and has more than 18 years experience in drug discovery and clinical development. After seven years as a Lecturer at University College London, he spent ten years at GlaxoSmithKline as a Director of statistical support for biomarker studies across R&D. He was responsible for developing and implementing the Pharmacogenetics strategy that enabled the use of genetics data in clinical studies, involving the integration of new analysis tools and methods, bioinformatics, data standards, processes and training. In recent years, he has worked with Regulatory Authorities (e.g. FDA, EMEA) to develop tools and guidelines that support the use of biomarkers in clinical studies. Aiden has a PhD in Biophysics, MSc in Medical Physics and BSc in Applied Mathematics and Physics. He has more than 40 publications in peer reviewed journals and is an invited speaker at international conferences.

Sam Berwick, Business

Sam worked in the City of London for almost thirty years and is the former Chief Executive Officer of Mizuho International plc, the securities arm of Mizuho Financial Group.

More recently, he has dedicated much of his time towards assisting third sector organisations in becoming more effective in alleviating disadvantage through encouraging and implementing sustainable change in communities throughout England.

Currently, he is a Trustee Director of the Inspiration Trust MAT, a Trustee of the Kensington and Chelsea based Campden Charities, and a Trustee Director of The Power to Change. He has a wife and four children.

Barry Brennan, Funds

Barry is a corporate financier with over 20 years' international experience at Citigroup in London and Rabobank International. Starting life as a derivative lawyer at Citibank, Barry moved into the Corporate Finance arena first at Citibank, then as Head of Structured Finance at Rabobank in Ireland and finally as Head of a Financial Innovation Team of 15 professionals across 5 countries as European Head of Client Solutions at Rabobank. Providing new solutions based on a client-focused approach across complex legal, tax, accounting, regulatory and credit situations, Barry and his team executed notable transactions across most of Europe with corporate as well as financial clients.

Barry is a Graduate of Law from Trinity College, Dublin and was admitted to the bar of England and Wales as well as the New York State Bar.

Jerry Staple, Style

Jerry Staple is a founding partner and Technical Director of Origin Partners Limited. Origin Partners is an award-winning creative digital agency specialising in the design and development of web, social and mobile applications along with the creation of digital strategies and experiences.

Origin Partners works closely with businesses to formulate strategies in order to attract new customers or enhance existing customer engagement through the use of online strategies, tools and applications. Jerry is a highly-experienced software engineer with over 15 years’ experience and has been involved in web, interactive and mobile applications with clients such as BP, Alfa Romeo, Carphone Warehouse and the BBC.

Contact Us

If you would like to contact us in connection with any of the work we do or with a query, please send an email and we will be happy to help. If you would like to arrange a visit, our offices are located at:

53 Frith Street
London
United Kingdom W1D 4SN