Who We Are
Only Connect Solutions is a marketing communications consultancy specializing in Corporate Responsibility. We are experts in our field and are committed to ensuring that our Clients are provided with effective and strategic programmes, tailored specifically to their business challenges.
Only Connect Solutions was born in 2006. Partners, Lisa ter Haar and Fiona Gale are committed to delivering best practice. We love what we do and the Clients for whom we do it.
Core Team
Lisa ter Haar - Managing Partner
Founder, Lisa ter Haar, has a career that spans journalism, TV presenting and PR. She worked for 10 years with international PR consultancy, Hill & Knowlton, winning and directing full service client accounts that included Kodak, Barclaycard, Royal Mail, Texas Instruments, Astra Pharmaceutical and Ciba Geigy. From 1984-1998 she was invited to set up and ran Drum Venture Communications, a creative communications hot shop and part of the WPP Group. In 1998 she left to concentrate on the area of social marketing and joined Burnett Associates, the UK's leading social marketing specialist. Subsequently she ran her own successful agency, servicing a wide range of clients.
Fiona Gale - Senior Partner
Fiona has an eclectic background that started with event and promotion management for Britain's equivalent of Studio 54. She went on to assist with the launch of Europe's biggest gay club, Heaven and then progressed to operating a successful interior design service for clients in the residential and commercial fields. Subsequently she set up and ran a catering and event management business, which was voted "Best of the Year" by the Evening Standard. She has created recipes and overseen the production of food for high street retail outlets and specified all tableware and accessories for 4 restaurants at the Grove Hotel in Hertfordshire, which was voted in the top 10 by Conde Nast. Fiona joined Only Connect Solutions to provide her wealth of expertise in top-level event and project management.
John Preston - Partner
John has 20 years of experience in public relations focusing on healthcare, crisis management, corporate, environment, consumer and public affairs, not for profit organisations, CR and media training. This experience has been at National, European and Global levels.
Environmental and corporate responsibility experience has included: Nuclear and conventional power, European packaging and recycling, counterfeiting and security packaging, schemes to improve water availability and quality, pollution of the atmosphere and its consequences, Fair trading and environmental marketing.
Naomi Byrne - Partner
Naomi has worked in PR for over 10 years and has successfully planned and implemented communications campaigns from concept to delivery at national and international levels for blue chip, technology and a range of FMCG clients. Her strength is developing long-term client relationships where her broad skills in a number of different disciplines come into play.
Aside from her general PR skills, Naomi is proficient in providing strategic counsel, running messaging workshops, managing large-scale international events, undertaking global PR co-ordination, trade shows and when called upon, crisis management.
Naomi has a BA Hons. Humanities and the Chartered Institute of Marketing, Advanced Certificate. She is a member of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations and an affiliate of the Chartered Institute of Marketing.
Advisors and Consultants
Ken Hames
Ken Hames served in the British Forces for 25 years and is one of the few elite British Officers to have worn the maroon beret of the Parachute Regiment, the green beret of the Royal Marines and the sand beret of the Special Air Service. He was at the liberation of Port Stanley in the Falklands and served in the SAS in the first Gulf War after commanding Britain's anti-terrorist team for one year.
He now designs and implements team leadership challenges for Television. ‘Beyond Boundaries’ and ‘Mission Africa’ were recently broadcast by BBC 1 and BBC 2.
Corporately, he offers a powerful comparison between leading hardened SAS soldiers and the pressures of modern business practice. Ken focuses on the formulation and operation of high performance teams in difficult circumstances to help senior managers maintain a cutting edge, develop best practice and compete to win in competitive markets.
Richard Balfour-Lynn
Richard is CEO and one of the founding shareholders of Marylebone Warwick Balfour Group Plc. Apart from major mixed use urban developments, MWB Group is noted for its ownership of 3 independent companies of which Richard is the Chairman of each.
- Liberty Plc - Internationally renowned Liberty store in central London and acclaimed luxury goods brand “Liberty of London”
- Malmaison and Hotel du Vin, the UK's leading boutique lifestyle hotel group with 27 hotels
- The UK's second largest serviced office provider - MWB Business Exchange with 55 centres across Britain
Richard is also Chairman and major shareholder of Alternative Hotel Group. This company is the UK's largest owner and operator of residential conference and training centres, comprising 30 venues.
T Bramwell
T believes that given a good product or service, the right market conditions and, critically, the right input from the owner, every business can succeed.
The problem is that many business owners find themselves sucked into the day-to-day operations. Many never achieve the success they dreamed of because, despite having good products and services, they are working on the wrong things in their business.
T helps business owners stand back and focus on the core elements that will make their business successful. Her strategizing skills are proving an essential element in OCS operations.
Cliff Findlay
Cliff has worked in the advertising and marketing industry for over 20 years and has strong verticals in IT, telecommunication and finance.
Andy Lopata
Andy Lopata is one of the UK's leading business networking strategists and the co-author of two books on the subject. Andy is a director of Word of Mouse, a new online business network and the former managing director of Business Referral Exchange, one of the UK's largest referral-generation networks.
