PRESS RELEASE
London, 30 June 2026
Leonid Group, the global talent advisory and search firm focused on corporate governance and professional services, is pleased to announce the appointment of Ty Francis MBE, CCEP to its Advisory Board.
Ty is an award-winning British-American executive with 20 years of experience in governance, risk and compliance (GRC). He most recently served as Chief Advisory Officer and Head of Advisory Services at LRN, where he spent over six years leading the company's global ethics and compliance thought leadership and consultancy business, building a suite of SaaS solutions to help organisations measure culture and assess compliance programme maturity.
Prior to LRN, Ty held senior leadership roles at two of the most influential organisations in the corporate governance space: as Executive Vice President, Global Programs at Ethisphere - where he launched the Gender Diversity Initiative at the NASDAQ and expanded the firm's executive forums across London, Paris, the Middle East, and Tokyo - and as Vice President of NYSE Governance Services, where he helped listed companies build effective GRC programmes aligned with US Department of Justice guidance and developed pioneering board education and director evaluation frameworks.
Ty holds a Certified Compliance and Ethics Professional (CCEP) designation, has completed executive programmes in corporate governance at Stanford, leadership at Yale and Oxford, and advanced study in AI ethics and agentic AI at LSE, MIT, and Cornell. He was appointed a Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (MBE) by Queen Elizabeth II for services to business, and awarded an honorary Doctorate of Business by Solent University, where he also serves as Chair of the Business and Law School Advisory Board. His work has been featured in Forbes, Harvard Business Review, Law360 and C-Suite Magazine.
Ty's appointment comes at a pivotal moment for Leonid. The firm's corporate governance practice - spanning ethics and compliance, legal, data privacy, risk, audit, ESG, corporate finance and forensic accounting -operates in markets experiencing rapid growth, driven by increasing regulatory complexity, the rise of AI governance and heightened scrutiny of corporate culture. Ty's global network of Corporate Governance and Compliance Professionals, Chief Risk Officers, and General Counsels across the globe directly mirrors the talent ecosystem Leonid serves, and his strategic insight into where the profession is heading will be instrumental as Leonid continues to scale internationally.
James Mitchell, Founder & CEO of Leonid Group, said:
"We are delighted to welcome Ty to the Leonid Advisory Board. He has operated at the highest levels of the compliance profession and built deep and lasting relationships with the leaders we work with every day. He is also very tuned in to the future of governance and ethics, and his insights will be particularly valuable as we grow our advisory arm of the business, helping to build future-ready governance teams.”
Ty Francis MBE, CCEP, said:
"Leonid has built a genuinely differentiated business in a market I know very well. When I saw what they were doing, I really wanted to be a part of it. Not only do they deliver a gold standard service to their clients and candidates, they are also building something which I know will be of immense value to the compliance world with their advisory arm – Talent Intelligence. I'm really excited about helping the team accelerate their growth and deepen their relationships within the ethics & compliance community.”
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About Leonid Group
Leonid Group is an international specialist search and consultancy firm focused on corporate governance and professional services. With offices in London, Barcelona, and Cape Town, Leonid recruits at all levels within the corporate governance (ethics and compliance, legal, risk, audit, ESG, data privacy and corporate finance) and professional services markets. The firm's proprietary Magic Month methodology delivers completed search mandates in 30 days – that’s three times faster than the industry average. Leonid has also established an advisory arm – Talent Intelligence – which harnesses the firm’s proprietary data and decades of insight and helps teams to benchmark their structure, compensation and skill gaps.