Dr. Barnabás Tomka
Founder
Barnabás has been successfully active in the international defence&aerospace industry for more than 20 years. From 2001 over almost a decade he was working for CEC Group, the leading independent public affairs agency and network in Central Europe, and successfully supporting the activity of many global and local defence OEMs.
Between 2010 and 2016 he was heading the procurement entities of the Ministry of Defence of Hungary and managing the procurement needs supporting the developments of the Hungarian Armed Forces with the highest level of his legal and professional expertise. In 2017 he returned to the business sector and his core competence: defence consulting.
He has been working for several global OEMs and supporting the business development activity of companies from the CEE region. In 2021, understanding that the massive growing of the global military expenditure will soon require the development of the defence supply chains, he founded DANS CEE with Iván Gyurácz Németh in order to support both suppliers and OEMs in their activities in Central and Eastern Europe.
Late 2023, in recognition of his special knowledge and experience, he was addressed and selected by the European Commission to provide business coaching to SME beneficiaries of the European Defence Fund through EUDIS Coaching Services.
He studied Law, Economics, EU Policies, History and English. During his university studies he got scholarships to the US, and while working for the Ministry of Defence he attended military leadership courses organised by the German Army, Bundeswehr.
Iván Gyurácz Németh
Co-founder - Director of Business Development
Ivan is a seasoned go-to-market professional with over 15 years of experience dedicated to supporting Central and Eastern European companies in their internationalization efforts. His expertise lies in B2B sales and marketing. As a strategic consultant, he not only offers daily guidance to founders and C-level executives of scaleups in shaping their go-to-market strategies, but also actively participates in implementing these strategies in a hands-on capacity. He especially enjoys building structures and processes around sales and marketing organisations of high growth companies, a role he has taken multiple times as an interim sales and commercial director across various CEE-based firms. His strategic thinking and sales acumen has also proven invaluable in M&A projects, an arena where he has increasingly become more involved in recent times.
Since 2019, Ivan has placed a special focus on the defense and aerospace sector, establishing a personal network among major OEMs and gaining profound insights into the nuances and trends of this industry. In 2021, he co-founded DANS CEE with Dr. Barnabás Tomka, aiming to assist mid-sized CEE-based companies in either becoming suppliers to the defense, aerospace, naval and space industries or in growing further through strategic acquisitions.
Recognized for his expertise, Ivan served as a board member of the Hungarian Foreign Trade Association from 2013 until 2021. Furthermore, he is an adept trainer and university lecturer, regularly delivering presentations in both Hungarian and English on topics such as international marketing, sales, business development and the internationalization of SMEs.
Seasoned Professionals
Andreas von Büren
Andreas has a long background (1974-2014) in the German Armed Forces (Luftwaffe). He attained a wide range of leadership positions in the flying arena as well as in national and international staff positions, politico-military positions in the German Ministry of Defence and as a Defence Attaché.
The past 10 years he was the Director of the BDSV, the Federation of German Security and Defence Industry, as well as Director of BDSV EXHIBITIONS, the Federation’s Trade Fair Organisation. In these capacities he lobbied for the benefit of the 450 member companies of BDSV and BDSV EXH in the national, European and international arena.
Mark Stevens
Mark has already enjoyed a long career in the Aerospace and Defence sector, with nearly 50 years’ experience, starting with a career with Rolls-Royce in the 1970’s, followed by periods at British Aerospace, Alenia Marconi, BAE Systems and Thales. After periods working in the UK, Europe and Asia, in 2001 Mark was appointed as the head of BAE Systems business based in Sofia, and then in 2011 moved to Thales where he then moved to Prague to lead the defence key account activities for the group in the region.
Mark’s career has seen him move through an engineering background, into supply chain management, business winning, business strategy, and into senior management roles. Through his career he has gained a wide range of knowledge in defence capabilities, especially in the air and land domains.
Following retirement from Thales in 2023, Mark has worked as a consultant and advisor to a number of companies in the Aerospace and Defence sector, advising both large and SME’s on strategy and business winning. His expertise centres around the markets in Central and Eastern Europe, focusing on Political and Industrial relationships, fostering partnerships and collaboration.
Regarding the support of suppliers and OEM’s Mark comments: “Key to any successful relationship is the ability to clearly understand requirements and critical success factors, then building concise and compelling value propositions”, “to do so not only takes investment in time, but also skill, patience and agility”
Mark is currently based in Prague, Czech Republic.
Viggo Westbye
He is educated as Master of Science in Applied Physics. He started his career in defence Communications as a software and systems engineer for 12 years. Then he spent four years in as a scientist in NATO. The last thirty years he has spent as a Business Development Manager in Kongsberg Defence and Aerospace.
During this time, he has had the responsibility for marketing and sales of defence communication products and services in numerous countries in both Europe and the rest of the world. This work involved contacts with customers, both the end users (Government) and cooperation partners (primes and cooperation companies). During this time he had the responsibility to develop offers and lead negotiations, as well as performing generic marketing.
His personal skills include good presentation capabilities, building relationship when working with people from different cultures and backgrounds, and the capability to see the essence in a situation. He has experience in developing and executing marketing and sales plans for large sales projects. His view is to make sure to understand the customer´s needs, both real and unspoken.
He considers it vital to ensure any bid reflects these elements in addition to answering the requirements. He considers team work essential to achieve goals, and enjoys this working methodology.
Our Consultants
One of the strengths of our boutique consulting firm is that both our senior and junior consultants have such professional backgrounds and expertise as military, defence industry, ministerial, administrative, aviation, engineering and even economics and law. Relying on them we can confidently and effectively support our clients in achieving their goals regardless of any challenge or issue.