Suzanne Costa

I build and run the operating models that let distributed teams deliver consistently for enterprise clients, at scale and under pressure. Over two decades I have owned global operations across remote and hybrid organisations, turning fragmented delivery into governed, measurable systems: clear KPIs, defined decision rights, and risk frameworks that hold up in complex, multi-region environments. I work best where the gap between leadership's intent and what the team is delivering has been left unaddressed.

I close that gap, then build the rhythm, reporting, and accountability structures that keep performance, profitability, and client outcomes moving together.

Managing Partner at Twenty44 (UK) (2025-01 – Present)

AI Enablement & Operations Consulting

• Advised the Museum of Brands on AI-backed digital asset management, conducting market research and building a full business case including investor interest. Identified an existing solution that better served the client's needs and redirected; accordingly, the client is now raising funding on that basis.
• Leading due diligence and vendor selection for a National Lottery-funded heritage organisation implementing AI-assisted digital asset management to make archaeological findings publicly accessible.
• Delivering AI readiness assessments for SME leadership teams, identifying practical implementation opportunities and supporting adoption with measurable ROI.
• Operating as a fully remote, distributed practice, managing multiple concurrent client engagements and stakeholder relationships without a fixed office base.

SVP Strategic Operations & IT at Sago (parent company following acquisition of Asking Canadians and Methodify from Delvinia) (2022-03 – 2025-02)

• Joined post-acquisition as SVP Program Leadership with an expanding remit over three years reflecting growing organisational trust, culminating in SVP Strategic Operations & IT with oversight of 9 international product lines and IT, delivered across a fully remote leadership structure.
• Owned the end-to-end operating model for enterprise client delivery, inheriting a function where forecasting depended on developer estimates without a reliable methodology. Implemented a story-based agile framework that replaced subjective story points with countable, discrete stories tracked against team velocity and historical error rates. On-time delivery improved from ~50% to 94%.
• Introduced user acceptance criteria across all stories, giving QA clarity and materially improving pass rates while reducing fixes per sprint.
• Maintained a groomed backlog with stories written and ready ahead of sprint planning, removing the bottleneck that was causing delivery delays for enterprise accounts.
• Aligned product, engineering and commercial teams remotely across regions, improving IT productivity by 20% and establishing the governance and decision rights that kept distributed delivery predictable.
• Maintained ISO 27001 certification and halved delivery errors and security incidents across the period, embedding risk management into the core delivery cycle rather than treating it as a compliance afterthought.

Chief Operations Officer at Delvinia (products acquired by Sago) (2017-11 – 2022-03)

• Joined a business with high attrition and low morale. Ran structured interviews across the organisation to diagnose the root cause and found that people did not know what was expected of them or how to progress.
• Built a full role clarity framework covering accountabilities, skills and behaviours at every level with a transparent promotion path from entry level to VP. Attrition dropped from 34% to 12% within a year.
• Introduced mandatory weekly 121s and a manager training programme covering change management using DISC profiling, feedback and performance conversations, in a hybrid operating environment.
• Upgraded the project management infrastructure twice: introducing dashboards for workload visibility and then automating fieldwork through new sampling software, enabling the team to manage over 3,000 client projects annually for enterprise research clients.
• Built the KPI and metrics framework and documented all internal processes from scratch, where previously only revenue was tracked. This operational transparency was a material factor in making the business acquisition ready.
• Delivered CA$16M annual revenue while growing operational profit by 20%.

Senior Vice President, Operations — North America at Verve NA Inc. (2014-09 – 2017-07)

• First hire in a blank slate North American operation. Built the team, the processes and the operational infrastructure from the ground up, establishing the operating model for a new region.
• Part of the presenting team that won a major US retail chain as a flagship enterprise client shortly after joining, leveraging an existing relationship with their UK partner.
• Built and led the delivery team across pharmacy and front of store data collection while simultaneously implementing full HIPAA compliance across all relevant processes.
• Became HIPAA certified and designed the compliance and risk framework personally rather than outsourcing it, delivering $4M in first year revenue within a fully compliant operation.

Vice President, Operations at Research Now (now Dynata) (2005-09 – 2014-01)

• Progressed from Service Delivery Manager through multiple Director and VP level roles as the business scaled from a small UK operation into a global group.
• Joined during a period of near chaotic growth, with some months showing revenue increases of 35% on the prior month and built the operational infrastructure that allowed the business to scale without breaking.
• Diagnosed fragmented, siloed processes across the delivery organisation and rebuilt them into a documented end-to-end operating model with clear ownership at every stage, supporting large enterprise research programmes.
• Designed onboarding that got new hires contributing quickly, critical when headcount was growing as fast as revenue.
• Scaled the delivery organisation from a core team of 20 to a global network of over 200 people across regional offices, embedding a repeatable operating model across every new location.
• Part of the leadership team that grew annual revenue from ~$11M to ~$285M.

Accelerated Development Program in Organisational Leadership – London Business School

Bachelor of Science (BSc) Hons in Sociology & Criminology – Buckinghamshire New University