Team

Mathew Norris

Co-Founder and CEO

Mat is the technical founder of Vortalis, having designed and built the platform end-to-end, from the governance architecture and policy engine through to the individual service adapters and MCP tools. He leads product and engineering, sets the company's day-to-day direction, and founded MTE Software, Vortalis's UK development partner.

• 25+ years in fintech, commodities, and digital platform leadership, including multiple CTO roles in trading, payments, and compliance-heavy environments.
• Defined and delivered a global payments infrastructure programme, transitioning £300m of turnover onto Stripe Connect with full compliance across every market it touched.
• Extensive sector experience spanning commodities trading, banking (Barclays, Deutsche Bank), and high-frequency trading and marketplace platforms.

Jeremy Braben

Co-Founder and Chairman

Jeremy leads Vortalis's commercial and strategic direction, drawing on an established investor network and three decades of experience taking companies from early stage through to scale. He chairs the board, works closely with Mat on company strategy, and leads the relationships that turn design partners into paying customers.

• 30+ years of commercial leadership, founding and managing companies across the Film, Automotive, and Aviation sectors.
• CEO-level executive experience with a proven ability to scale operations, build commercial teams, and navigate complex, often heavily regulated industry environments.
• Holds multiple non-executive and advisory board roles across growth-stage and established companies, offering strategic oversight beyond Vortalis.

Les Male

Non-Executive Director

• 30+ years of leadership in global commodities markets, with deep expertise in trading systems, exchange operations, and risk infrastructure.
• Former CEO of the Dubai Gold & Commodities Exchange (DGCX) and the Dubai Commodities Clearing Corporation (DCCC), with direct experience running regulated market infrastructure in the UAE.
• Award-winning and globally networked industry leader, with strong ties across trading houses, institutional investors, and regulators.

Ben Pielow

Non-Executive Director

• Experienced strategic sales leader with a strong track record scaling fintech organisations from startup to growth stage.
• Expert in analysing market trends, crafting go-to-market strategies, and leading complex deal negotiations across enterprise and institutional buyers.
• Proven ability to build high-performing sales teams and develop new revenue through long-term strategic client relationships.

Ian Speller MCIIS CISM MBCS

Non-Executive Director

• CISO for Smart DCC, the licensed network provider for Great Britain's smart meter roll-out, responsible for security across critical infrastructure that currently serves over 23 million premises and 39 million smart meters.
• Joined Smart DCC's security team in 2018 and was appointed Director of Security in 2019, having spent the two decades before that in IT security management.
• Extensive experience working across large organisations in service, insurance, manufacturing, and telecommunications, and holds the MCIIS, CISM, and MBCS accreditations.

Lindsey Jagger

Non-Executive Director

• 15 years putting enterprise platforms into live commercial use. Head of Portfolio in the Strategy and Transformation Management Office at KKCG Group, running governance and value realisation across an £800m+ global digital and AI transformation portfolio.
• Previously directed CRM transformation at IWG Plc across 170 countries, and has led portfolio governance at Kingfisher plc, a customer platform rebuild at Which?, and a Microsoft Dynamics programme at the RSPB.
• Advisory engagements with Uber, Michael Kors, and the AI visual search company Syte.ai, and holds an executive qualification in AI for Business Innovation from Imperial College Business School. On the Vortalis board she focuses on enterprise adoption: how regulated organisations evaluate, fund, govern, and actually deploy a new control layer.