Meet The Team
The Leading Mobile Network Operator
Stour’s team brings deep telecom expertise, combining industry experience with an agile approach to delivering reliable and innovative solutions.
Leo Bartle
Chairman
Leo acquired Stour in 2012 and has led its transformation into a trusted telecoms provider with customers including Google, Salesforce, and Twilio. He is also the co-founder of Devyce, a B2B SaaS company backed by Y Combinator, and YourBusinessNumber. With a background in finance, he began his career at Goldman Sachs before moving into entrepreneurship, focusing on telecoms and SaaS innovation.
Robert Jones
Chief Commercial Officer
Robert leads Stour’s commercial strategy, driving growth and innovation. With over ten years in the messaging industry, he has extensive experience in business development, partnerships, and revenue generation. Previously, he was Head of Messaging at BT, responsible for Wholesale and Enterprise Messaging. His career also includes senior roles at EE, where he managed key partnerships and delivered strong growth in messaging and charge-to-mobile solutions.
Tim Biddle
Chief Operating Officer
Tim brings over 15 years of leadership experience in telecoms, spanning operator relations, commercial strategy, and anti-fraud initiatives. Prior to joining Stour, he held senior roles at Sinch, BT, and EE, where he led regional partnerships, optimised supplier networks, and played a key role in cross-industry security initiatives. With a background in operational strategy and commercial delivery, Tim oversees Stour’s day-to-day operations, ensuring efficient execution, regulatory alignment, and scalable growth across the business.
Mihai Radulescu
Network Operations Lead
Mihai is responsible for daily network operations, escalations, and implementation projects. He joined Stour in 2017, bringing extensive telecoms experience. Mihai holds an MA in Advanced Signal Processing from the Polytechnic University of Bucharest and plays a key role in maintaining service reliability and developing network solutions.
Catalin Pirnog
Senior Technical Account Manager
Catalin manages key customer relationships at Stour, combining deep operational knowledge built over nearly seven years with the company with a background in relationship management at Raiffeisen Bank and Banca Transilvania. He bridges the gap between technical delivery and customer experience, ensuring partners receive consistent, reliable service.
Claire Jacques
Operations Lead
Claire brings over 15 years of experience in telecoms operations, partner enablement, and systems improvement across leading organisations including BT, EE, and Virgin Media. With a strong background in process design, service delivery, and cross-functional coordination, she plays a key role in ensuring operational excellence at Stour.
Aidan Lee
Software Engineer for Messaging,
Voice & AI Systems
Aidan is a software engineer with a strong foundation in machine learning, Python development, and data-driven problem solving. Prior to joining Stour, he led technical projects at Ricardo. At Stour, Aidan focuses on building and refining the systems behind our risk scoring, validation workflows, and AI-driven insights - helping telcos and CPaaS providers make faster, smarter trust decisions.
Ian MacIver
Founder
Ian co-founded Stour with Steve Hobbs, growing it into a fully operational Mobile Network Operator. With over 20 years in telecoms, he has worked on major projects for BT, Cable & Wireless, and Airwave. Now retired from active management, he remains a Non-Executive Director, advising on strategy and growth.
Ruxandra Bojiță
NOC Support Engineer
Ruxandra provides first-line technical support across Stour's voice, messaging and porting services. She has worked in enterprise IT support and systems implementation at IBM and Computacenter, operating across Romania, Germany, Italy and Spain. Fluent in four languages, she strengthens the team's ability to operate effectively across borders and time zones.
Steve Hobbs
Founder and Chief Information Officer
Steve co-founded Stour and has over 14 years of director-level experience in telecoms. As the first CTO of Cable & Wireless Global Mobile, he played a key role in driving a $12.2 billion valuation increase. He holds multiple patents in small-cell design and intelligent network routing and has co-authored research on cellular and wireless systems. Beyond Stour, he advises global telecoms operators on technology, development, and strategy, leveraging his expertise to drive innovation and network optimisation.
Nicholas Browne
Investor
Nick has been an investor in Stour since 2012 and co-founded Devyce, a B2B SaaS company backed by Y Combinator, Garage Capital, and FoundersX Ventures. From 2017 to 2020, he played a key role in Stour’s business development, contributing to its growth and market positioning.
David Clark
Advisor
David advises Stour on new business and product development. Platform Partner at Tera VC, he brings experience from the private and public sector including commercial and strategy roles at the Cabinet Office and BT. At BT, he launched new businesses in A2P SMS/RCS and drove product innovation in BT’s Data and AI division. He holds an MEng from Cambridge and is based in Tallinn, Estonia.
Irina Radulescu
Billing & Finance Specialist
Irina manages billing operations and financial processes at Stour. She brings experience from Oracle, Genpact and Edenred, where she worked across Oracle Fusion Financials and E-Business Suite supporting AP, AR, GL and reconciliation for multinational organisations. Her background in financial systems and process improvement supports Stour's continued growth.
Sven Grube
Advisor
Sven advises Stour on international expansion and business development. Currently Chief Revenue Officer at Noumena Digital AG, he previously led international business development for Twilio. His career spans senior roles at Upptalk, Amazon, and Telefónica. Sven holds an MBA from EDHEC Business School and is based in Munich, Germany.
Filip Milković
Senior DevOps Engineer
Filip builds and maintains the infrastructure behind Stour's services. He brings over a decade of experience in telecoms and messaging platforms, including nearly six years at Infobip and a CTO role at TeleSystems, where he ran a high-volume SMS platform . His expertise in Elixir, Go and infrastructure automation directly supports Stour's growth.