Vertical Aerospace hires three new directors with financial expertise to drive company’s commercial strategy

Ver­ti­cal Aero­space has appoint­ed three high­ly-accom­plished exec­u­tives to its Board, all of whom will sup­port dri­ving the com­pa­ny’s finan­cial and com­mer­cial strat­e­gy as it tar­gets cash break-even in 2030.

In a press release announced today (Tues­day), James Kei­th (JK) Brown and Carsten Sten­de­vad will start their new role on May 14th, while Kris Haber begin work­ing from April 30th.

Mr Brown is a sea­soned invest­ment exec­u­tive with a proven track record of sup­port­ing growth-stage firms scale and reach mar­ket readi­ness. He cur­rent­ly serves as a Senior Advi­sor at Thrive Cap­i­tal.

He was a found­ing part­ner at Och-Ziff Cap­i­tal Man­age­ment, where he played a cen­tral role in tak­ing the firm pub­lic in 2007, expand­ing assets under man­age­ment from $32bn at the time of the IPO to a peak of $50 bil­lion, and over­see­ing glob­al investor rela­tions and fund strat­e­gy.

Mr Brown was also Senior Man­ag­ing Part­ner and Head of Oper­at­ing Com­mit­tee at Coat­ue Man­age­ment, grow­ing assets there from $10 bil­lion to more than $50 bil­lion and pre­vi­ous­ly Man­ag­ing Direc­tor and Head of U.S. Insti­tu­tion­al Sales and Rela­tion­ship Man­age­ment at Gold­man Sachs.

He serves as Pres­i­dent of the Board of Trustees at the New Muse­um of Con­tem­po­rary Art and holds lead­er­ship roles across sev­er­al cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al insti­tu­tions, includ­ing the Lin­coln Cen­ter The­ater and the Uni­ver­si­ty of North Car­oli­na.

Where­as, Mr Haber has more than 33 years’ expe­ri­ence in cor­po­rate finance, busi­ness devel­op­ment and strate­gic buildups. He is cur­rent­ly Chief Exec­u­tive Offi­cer and Founder of Vega Part­ners, an invest­ment firm that’s led in excess of $3 bil­lion in trans­ac­tion val­ue for a vari­ety of ear­ly and growth stage invest­ments and mer­chant bank­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties. 

He holds mul­ti­ple board seats across the clean ener­gy land­scape, includ­ing at Stan­dard Car­bon, Ener­gyX, MAG IA and EV Match. Mr. Haber has pre­vi­ous­ly held exec­u­tive posi­tions at lead­ing invest­ment firms, includ­ing as Part­ner and COO of Invest­corp Strate­gic Cap­i­tal Group, a divi­sion of Invest­corp, a $50 bil­lion AUM alter­na­tive asset man­age­ment firm and COO of Advent Cap­i­tal.

While Mr Sten­de­vad is an expe­ri­enced glob­al finance leader who brings exper­tise in devel­op­ing and exe­cut­ing on cor­po­rate and finan­cial strate­gies.

He cur­rent­ly serves as Part­ner and Co-Chief Invest­ment Offi­cer for Sus­tain­able Invest­ing at Bridge­wa­ter Asso­ciates, as a board advi­sor to GIC, Singapore’s sov­er­eign wealth fund and chairs the Board of Direc­tors of the Dan­ish Refugee Com­mit­tee.

He was pre­vi­ous­ly CEO of ATP, Denmark’s nation­al pen­sion plan with five mil­lion mem­bers and more than $110 bil­lion in assets, where he over­saw all invest­ment and oper­a­tional func­tions and chaired the invest­ment com­mit­tee.

Ear­li­er in his career, he held lead­er­ship roles at Citi, McK­in­sey, and the Cen­tral Bank of Den­mark and has served on the boards of Novo Hold­ings, NOW Pen­sions, and UNICEF Den­mark. 

Com­ment­ing on these appoint­ments, Domh­nal Slat­tery, Chair­man at Ver­ti­cal Aero­space, said: “I am delight­ed to wel­come JK, Kris, and Carsten to Vertical’s Board.

“Com­bined, they bring decades of deep cap­i­tal mar­kets exper­tise, busi­ness devel­op­ment expe­ri­ence and proven track records scal­ing growth-stage com­pa­nies. 2025 is on track to be a piv­otal year for Ver­ti­cal as we com­plete our pilot­ed test flight pro­gram and move clos­er to cer­ti­fy­ing and pro­duc­ing the safest, most com­fort­able eVTOL on the mar­ket.” 

These Board appoint­ments fol­low the announce­ment of Eamonn Bren­nan, for­mer Direc­tor Gen­er­al of Euro­con­trol, has joined Ver­ti­cal as an advis­er to its Board.

In con­nec­tion with these appoint­ments, Gur Kim­chi stepped down from the Board on 30th April, and Kathy Cas­sidy will be step­ping down from the Board on May 14th and Vertical’s Board will expand to sev­en direc­tors.

Mr Slat­tery added: “I’d also like to thank Gur and Kathy for their ser­vice and con­tri­bu­tions to Ver­ti­cal since our 2021 list­ing. Their lead­er­ship, insights, and exper­tise have played an essen­tial role in help­ing us build a strong plat­form for growth and inno­va­tion.”