About Kingsford Consulting

Founded in 1997, a management consulting firm that has worked with hundreds of organizations across Canada.
We are trusted advisors to business, not-for-profit, and public sector.

Business development experts helping organizations grow and prosper. We offer:

•  Fixed-fee services
•  Proven process
•  Experienced team of former marketing and sales executives
•  Satisfaction guarantee
•  Hundreds of satisfied clients across Canada

But don’t just take our word for it, check our references.

Meet the Team

Andrew Penny, President

Andrew is a leading market strategist and a Certified Management Consultant. He has worked with hundreds of small and medium-sized organizations, in just about every vertical market, helping them to expand or improve their businesses. Based on effective market positioning and cost effective go-to-market activities, Andrew uses a proven methodology to guide clients and has first-hand knowledge and experience of what works and what doesn’t.

He holds a BA from Concordia University in Montreal and an MBA from the University of Ottawa. He is a frequent advisor to the Business Development Bank of Canada and to the National Research Council’s Technology Network. He is a mentor to the University of Ottawa’s Telfer School of Management’s EMBA and MBA programs. He is President of the Networked Vehicle Association and active with the Networked Highway Testbed project. Andrew holds Scouts Canada’s Order of the Caribou and is fluent in English and French.



Inger Jacobs

Inger brings international experience to the table and focuses on project management, market research and market strategy development. Her strong organization and communication skills ensure excellent customer care.

At the beginning of 2009 Inger re-located to Ottawa from Brussels where she worked for an international marketing and communications firm specializing in market entry strategy. Inger originally hails from the Netherlands where she earned a Master’s degree in International Business from Maastricht University. She speaks English, Dutch, German, French, basic Spanish and some Korean too.



Virginia Merritt

Virginia is marketing and administration manager with over thirty years experience in marketing, media and public relations, and print and broadcast advertising, combined with significant experience in the service and hospitality industries. She has a track record of successfully engaging stakeholders and forging partnerships with local Chambers of Commerce, economic development offices, culinary initiatives, municipal and provincial governments, and businesses, along with other organizations and associations.

Prior to joining Kingsford Consulting, Virginia served for eight years as a member of the Board of Directors of Taste the County, Prince Edward County’s award winning Destination Marketing Organization, an association of approximately 250 businesses with a mandate to drive growth and promote “the County’ experience”. As a hands-on and active board member who served several years as Chair or Co-Chair, she is proud to have played a key role in helping steer this exciting region through a period of remarkable growth and recognition.



Zoey Top

Zoey has over 10 years of client service and management experience, skills in media relations and public relations strategy, publications, and web development. With KCL, she has worked with clients on their communications, web development, and social media needs.

Born in Istanbul, Turkey and raised near Detroit, Michigan, in 1995 she moved to Canada where she studied honours mathematics at the University of Toronto. She then relocated to Ottawa and graduated, with honours, from the public relations program at Algonquin College. She is fluent in English and Turkish, and is furthering her French language training.



Andrew Miller

Andrew has over 30 years experience in successfully combining business experience and technology expertise with an unwavering customer-focus.Formally educated in business (B. Econ), he also holds the Certified Advanced Technology Manager designation and has completed the academic portion of the Certified Management Accountant accreditation.He has held positions in Consulting, Development, Customer Support , Sales, Product Management, Project Management, Product Marketing, Education & Training in both individual contributor and management roles across technology and public sector organizations.

He speaks both business and technology fluently.An engaging speaker, he has spoken on business process management, enterprise technology and business applications across North America and Europe and frequently acts as a trusted advisor to public and private sector organizations.His passion is education. He has designed, developed and delivered webinars, workshops and full-fledged courses on a variety of subjects.



Asif Rehman

Asif is a strategic and product marketing professional with over 20 years professional experience. He has defined, evangelized, marketed and launched diverse products to markets worldwide. He has a deep knowledge of technology products and is equally comfortable in services and manufacturing. Asif is an experienced leader who’s experience and advice has inspired, influenced, and cajoled teams to deliver results in a wide variety of situations. A polished communicator, he is known for distilling complex market situations and ideas into clear revenue generating action plans.

Asif has a B.Eng. (Computer) from Concordia University in Montreal. A free thinker by nature, he has twice independently traveled around the world expanding his personal understanding of the interconnectedness of all people. A father of two young boys, Asif can be found coaching hockey in the winter and enjoying the outdoors in summer.



Lucas Ladurantaye

Lucas is an experienced market researcher with experience in helping clients understand how internal and external perceptions, opinions, behaviours, and attitudes affect an organization’s strategic direction. He is an experienced quantitative researcher who has designed dozens of multistage research projects, and a formally trained moderator who has conducted focus groups and round tables across Canada.

Notably, Lucas has worked with clients such as the Certified General Accountants of Alberta to measure internal members’ perceptions and to position the chapter to compete with organizations like the Chartered Accountants of Canada (CA’S), Certified Public Accountants (CPA’s), and Certified Management Accountants (CMA’s.) His research and strategy for CGA Alberta helped to strengthen membership through increased recruitment and retention, while contributing to a communications strategy that increased the relative ‘prestige’ of the designation amongst its members.

Prior to joining the Kingsford team Lucas developed communications strategy and shaped investor brands for clients ranging from local technology firm to international bio-pharmaceuticals and industrial firms. Lucas graduated with high honours from Carleton University with a degree in Public Affairs and Policy Management. He is an avid world traveler and soccer fanatic, and hopes to combine his passions when Brazil hosts the next FIFA World Cup.



Peter Lloyd

Peter is a strategic marketing professional who excels at helping to create new businesses, organizations and ventures. Peter’s skills range from strategic marketing to product management and development sales and marketing channels. Peter has worked with a variety of different organizations and industries. In his most recent position, Peter worked with a national telecom company to develop marketing programs and strategies to penetrate the Public Sector and Government markets taking them from start-up to over $250M in annual sales.

Peter has won many awards throughout his career and has made presentations on marketing and business development to industry and associations. Peter has an MBA from Concordia University. Is past President of Sierra Club of Canada. In his free time, Peter volunteers as a coach at the Nakkertok Ski Club working with athletes to compete at the national level in cross country skiing.



Francis Moran

Francis is an insightful marketing and public relations strategist, an expert writer and a seasoned veteran of the specific challenges of helping B2B technology companies engage with their marketplace and those who influence it. Francis specializes in working with new and established technology ventures that want to accelerate revenues, improve their market presence, establish thought leadership and succeed in a fast-moving and competitive environment and he does so in a global context.

Francis graduated in 1981 from the public relations degree program at Mount Saint Vincent University in Halifax. Francis has extensive work experience, such as being manager of the National Capital office of PIR Communications Inc. He also had a position vice-president of what is now Weber Shandwick Worldwide in. Prior to that, Francis operated a consultancy in Halifax where he also worked as a journalist and editor.



Dr. James E. Bowen

At age 21, while still an undergraduate, James co-founded a software company and built an international client base over the next 20 years. As an author, James has written two books on the creation and growth of high-tech product companies; published his third book “The Entrepreneurial Effect” that focused on lessons learned from entrepreneurs and investors (the second in the series is expected to be published in the fall of 2011); and, for three years, he wrote a monthly article discussing the technology industry for Ottawa’s technology industry newspaper National Capital Scan.

He is associated with nine universities, including three in Europe where he teaches MBAs technology, entrepreneurship, and strategy. He is a member of the Canadian Advanced Technology Alliance’s (CATA) governing council; the leader of CATA’s Action Committee on Entrepreneurship; and OCRI's (Ottawa's tech-industry development agency) Innovation Leadership Team.

James regularly provides advice to technology companies, and is a mentor for a local incubator. He is the inventor of an underwater localization system using passive sonar, a task management system and an archaeological object localization system that uses ultrasonic and infrared.



Graham Birkenhead

Graham brings an eclectic mix of management and consultancy skills built from over 25 years experience. Having started his career as a military engineer, he developed considerable expertise on the softer side focusing on leadership of change, organizational culture and knowledge, and improving business processes making innovative use of lean thinking. His ability to solve a problem creatively is surpassed only by his ability to find the problem.

Originally hailing from the UK where he gained Master’s Degrees in IT from Glasgow and Engineering Business Management from Warwick, Graham came to Canada in 2006, and has since been building his consulting practice and delivering workshops. During his career, he has lectured at master’s level and taught underwater using hand signals.

What our clients think:

We have worked with hundreds of organizations: