Xynteo beefs up London team with four new associate partners

Sustainability advisory Xynteo has appointed a quartet of new associate partners in its London wing. Emily Barrett and Ellie Besley-Gould arrive from other consultancies, while Alexa Rees-Jones and Lara Tyrrell are promoted internally.

With offices in London, Oslo, Mumbai and New Delhi, Xynteo, is a global organisational consulting firm, specialising in helping large organisations improve their environmental and social impact. The business has recently enhanced its global mission with new a series of associate partner promotions in the UK.

Emily Barrett joins Xynteo’s London office as an associate partner from Accenture. At the IT services and consulting firm, she was most recently chief of staff for its global leadership and culture practice. During her time at Accenture, she developed innovative leadership development experiences and multi-stakeholder impact measurement approaches for executive leaders of global organisations – experience which she will use to help Xynteo’s partners as they build the tools, capabilities and structures to perform business sustainably.

Barrett commented, “Xynteo’s focus on developing the regenerative leaders we need to deliver a people and planet-positive world is inspirational. I’m thrilled to be part of a company that celebrates the positive role that global leaders and organisations must play in reinventing growth. I’m looking forward to supporting our clients to accelerate progress against their sustainability agendas, whilst co-creating new ways to drive impact.”

Ellie Besley-Gould meanwhile arrives at Xynteo as an associate partner from Hawksmoor, where she led the hospitality group’s ‘purpose’ efforts in the US and the UK. In that role, she launched and led their award-winning sustainability programme working across the value chain. At the same time, Besley-Gould ran her own ESG consultancy, The Greenish, which supported clients including The Pig, JKS and Lucky Voice to introduce sustainability strategies and look at supply chain transformation, introduce third party accreditation and combine purpose with profit. Looking ahead at Xynteo, this will prime her for more work with global brands looking to bring commerciality and sustainability together.

She added “Having spent much of my career in NGOs where we focussed on building the change we’d like to see, it was exciting to find an organisation like Xynteo which has a heritage of engaging senior business leaders in accelerating the path to a sustainable and inclusive future on the commercial end of the spectrum and work on scale. I look forward to shaping the conversations, action, and impact we can create together.”

Lara Tyrrell has also been promoted from within the firm. Having been with the firm as an associate partner since 2022, she has been promoted to a programme director, and will now lead Europe Delivers, the firm’s flagship programme that brings together senior executives from diverse sectors to co-create and scale solutions for the most pressing social and environmental challenges in Europe.

Alexa Rees-Jones meanwhile has been at Xynteo since 2019. She becomes an associate partner, who will take global ownership of the firm’s leadership vanguard programme.

Rees-Jones noted on LinkedIn, “I'm thrilled to be continuing my journey with Xynteo as an associate partner. Working with a multidisciplinary, committed and positive team is a real joy and privilege. I'll be continuing to build our flagship programme, Leadership Vanguard, whilst building an exciting new project that's in the works. If you're keen to know more, please drop me a line!”