Our Team at the Top
Meet our leadership team. Each with their own area of expertise, they’ve got bags of experience in the commercial interiors and transportation industries, plus they’re textile experts and sustainability advocates. So all in all they're a great bunch to take us forward with vision into an exciting future in global markets.
Paul Barnard
Chairman
Paul joined Camira as Chairman in 2017, bringing with him a proven track of business leadership and strategic business development in global markets. A key player in supporting our team at the top, he works with the Board in ongoing strategic development and implementation across wider Group operations and commercial activities.
Starting out at Westland Helicopters, Paul progressed through a number of commercial roles before moving into general management. From here, he went on to hold leadership roles at Loctite Corporation and ITW – a Fortune 500 company – before moving to advisor and investor roles in the corporate world. Never one to stand still, Paul gained an MBA from the International Management Centres Association in 2001.
Equally driven in his personal life, Paul is actively involved in rugby, golf, shooting, skiing – as well as being a keen drum player. Spending three years as Chairman of Harrogate RUFC, he’s just as knowledgeable on the state of rugby union as he is on business development.
Alan Williams
Chief Executive Officer
Leading our organisation into a new era, Alan is responsible for the leadership, strategic direction and executive management of Camira Group. Having been part of the Camira team for nearly twenty years, he's the perfect person to take us forward into the next decade.
Beginning his career with a Masters degree in Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering at Newcastle University, Alan went on to work as a Process Engineer at the global electronic company Philips. Following this, he moved to Owens Corning to become Operations Leader, before joining Camira’s predecessor Interface Fabrics in 2004. Quickly promoted to the position of Operations Director, Alan joined the board in 2005 and was part of the team which completed the management buyout from Interface to set up Camira in 2006.
For the past seventeen years, he has been responsible for establishing Camira as a centre of manufacturing excellence; from integrating transportation fabric capabilities into our manufacturing facilities to setting up our manufacturing operation in Lithuania, Alan has played an invaluable role in making our company everything it is today.
Lucy Bolton
Finance Director
Completing a degree in Biomedicine in 2001 at the University of Sheffield, Lucy had a slight change of passion in the following years - going on to qualify as a Chartered Accountant in 2007 at Leeds firm Sagars (funnily enough, our Commercial Director Anthony Croall also worked here). In 2010 Lucy joined Communisis Plc, a £400m listed Group, where she was consistently promoted, becoming Divisional Finance Director for a £200m division of the Group in 2016. In 2018, Lucy joined Camira, helping direct us towards the next phase of our ambitious growth plan, alongside overseeing our ICT and Digital Solutions.
In something that seems to be a little bit of a theme amongst our team at the top (we’re not saying they’re a competitive bunch but the evidence seems to speak for itself), Lucy is a keen sportswoman. Never one to do things by half measures, she’s represented England in not one but three sports - netball, hockey and athletics – so is probably a sure bet for the company Sports Day.
Anthony Croall
Commercial Director
We’re struggling to think of an area of the business that our highly versatile Commercial Director Anthony hasn’t been involved in since he joined us in 1998 – but it’s this wide range of experience and expertise that enables him to blend strategic thinking with practical application. He now takes Group Board accountability for corporate governance, acquisition due diligence, strategic purchasing, technical knitting, alongside looking after innovation, design and quality, customer service and marketing.
Beginning his career by completing a business diploma, Anthony was unsure of exactly what he wanted to do upon graduating. However, a happy accident led to him attending an interview for Leeds-based auditors Sagars, where he became an accountant and discovered his longstanding love of numbers. In fact, we’ve rarely seen him without his trusty Texas Instruments TI-508 calculator in the 20+ years we’ve known him, and his commercial talents are truly unparalleled.
Married to Deborah, Anthony has two boys, rarely seen, as you'd expect from one who is a teenager and one acts like a teenager!
