Workbooks is founded by a team of entrepreneurs with a track record in creating and building successful companies. 

John Cheney – Chief Executive Officer

As a successful entrepreneur John brings over eighteen years experience in the IT industry; ten of which have been running IT companies in Europe and North America.  John has founded two previous start-ups both of which have been successfully sold.

Most recently John founded BlackSpider Technologies in 2002 and successfully grew the company to become an award winning provider of On-Demand e-mail and web security services to over 2,500 organizations world-wide. He led the company through angel and venture capital financing, the launch of award winning services: MailControl and WebDefense and international expansion.  John successfully sold the company in July 2006 to SurfControl for $40m.   Following the successful sale John joined the Executive Management Team at SurfControl to run Marketing and Product Management.  John was a key member of the senior management team which led the Company through a successful sale to Websense for $400m in October 2007.

Prior to BlackSpider, John was the Founder and CEO of Activis, a managed security services company which was acquired by Articon-Integralis in 1999. Activis was a leading provider of managed Firewall and VPN services with offices in North America and Europe, winning awards from SC Magazine for it services and Frost and Sullivan for its business strategy. Along with his leadership role at Activis, John was part of the executive management team within Articon-Integralis helping to grow the business to $200m in revenues and 600 employees.

 

James Kay – Chief Technical Officer

With twenty years' IT industry experience, James is responsible for architecting our solutions and for creating and directing the Workbooks technical team.

James took on similar roles prior to co-founding Workbooks; as a co-founder of BlackSpider Technologies and Activis he led the building of world-class infrastructures supporting millions of users with extremely high levels of service delivery and customer satisfaction. Following BlackSpider's acquisition by SurfControl, James remained responsible for the design and delivery of BlackSpider's on-demand services - MailControl and WebDefense.

James' technical interests are the creation of very scalable and robust on-demand systems which are easy for customers to put to use.

Previously James has held development and architecture roles for IBM and Hewlett Packard and he holds a degree in Computer Science from Manchester University.

Jenny Robb – Chief Financial Officer

Jenny is a successful accountant with a track record in operational management and extensive experience in corporate finance.

Prior to joining Workbooks, Jenny was co-founder and CFO of BlackSpider Technologies a leading provider of Software and a Service security solutions.   Jenny was responsible for the financial health of the business, capital raising and investor relations.

Prior to BlackSpider Jenny was Corporate Development Director for the Articon-Integralis group. She was a key member of the management team which completed a Secondary Public Offering for the company in April 2000 and subsequently was responsible for implementing the M&A strategy for the group including the completion of 5 acquisitions and 2 strategic investments. In addition Jenny was a key member of the Investor Relations team and undertook the group's company secretarial and risk management functions.

Between 1995 and 2000 Jenny worked for KPMG Corporate Finance as a key member of the Software and Computer Services team. During this period she was involved in over 25 transactions including capital raising, disposals, acquisitions and management buy-outs for both public and private companies.

Jenny earned a first class honours degree from the University of Durham and is a member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of England & Wales.