Mark Byford started his career as a research fellow at New College, Oxford, researching and teaching sixteenth-century English history.

From there he went to the Boston Consulting Group, where he spent more than a decade working in a variety of industries advising on business strategy in North America, Europe, the Middle East and Asia.  He focused particularly on innovative pharmaceuticals and on post-merger integration.

Convinced of the pivotal role of business leadership in performance, in 2000 he moved to the London office of Egon Zehnder.  At EZ, Mark pioneered the integration of executive search and development, co-leading the firm’s global innovation and IP development for a number of years.  He developed a specific expertise in CEO search and development, combining CEO succession support for boards with extensive individual coaching and development work.

He also helped pioneer the firm’s collaborative work with Mobius Executive Leadership, working for more than a decade as core faculty on their joint CEO offsites and development programmes.  By the time he left the EZ partnership late in 2023, Mark was the most experienced CEO coach in the firm, with a reputation for deep personal work to help executives transform their impact.

Mark has a first-class undergraduate degree and a doctorate in history from New College, Oxford, where he is an honorary fellow.  He is an associate member of the Oxford History Faculty, teaching early modern history and bibliography in the History and English faculties.  He also has an MBA from INSEAD in Fontainebleau, France.  He lives with his wife in a sixteenth-century manor house they are restoring just outside Oxford, where he enjoys the garden, long walks and reading early printed books from his library.