Meet the Team
Russell Watmore
Our Meet the Team series continues, this time with Crescar co-founder Russell Watmore. As Director of Business Operations and Performance, Russell brings a long and varied career spanning multiple industries and companies. Crescar represents a culmination of years of insight, experience and, in some ways, the right meeting at the right time.
Interviewer: Let’s start with your role, what do you get up to on a daily basis?
Russell: To expand Mark’s Titanic analogy,
if Mark is at the front of the ship looking out for obstacles, I’m the one making sure the mechanics and services are doing what they need to in order to make sure it continues to sail!
With a background in business establishment, development and management, my focus is on building teams and businesses, putting the right structures and systems in place to support both current delivery and future growth. Although I’m based in Dubai, we operate as a fully global team, so the ideas and actions developed here are embedded across projects, regardless of geography or time zone.
Interviewer: Have you always worked in transport?
Russell: No, I’m the only one in the team of Directors that has had a slightly more varied career, and honestly, it’s an asset that really pays its dividends. I started my career in project management in the telecoms industry, and in time this grew to business development and senior commercial roles encompassing strategy and growth.
Crescar is the largest SME I’ve established; before this, I spent a lot of time growing teams and departments in large corporates. Having started in telecoms and IT consulting, when I first came to the Middle East, my work involved integrating telecoms systems into transport, and that’s how I found myself more involved with the industry.
It’s interesting because the challenges are the same but also wildly different. The core principles of growth, structures and systems remain largely the same, but nuances come with industry demands or geographical needs, which is the exciting path that I get to navigate.
Interviewer: We’ve heard from Mark and Neil on the formation of Crescar, but what about the semantics of how the business would be built – how was that led?
Russell: It’s fair to say that Crescar was formed with the right meeting happening at the right time (when Mark Kipling and I met to discuss a regional project in 2019), and one thing we were very clear on from the get-go was that we didn’t want to be a resource body-shop company. We wanted to be an active delivery partner, able to provide both advice and execution and also be prepared to take some risk or ‘skin in the game’ to show value to our clients. For us, expertise should never be separate from genuine industry operational experience, and that principle has been in place from day 1 and shaped how we’ve built the team and the business.
In terms of expansion, we’ve always brought people into the business who we’ve either worked with us directly or are closely connected through operational experience. It’s been a key part of our approach and something that’s served us well, particularly as we launched just before COVID-19, and so, having a team that we knew and could trust, particularly with the global nature of our operations, was critical to our success.
Interviewer: Have there been any key learnings from other industries that you’ve applied to Crescar?
Russell: The speed of decision-making. We’ve been conscious not to get caught up in layers of bureaucracy that can often stifle innovation.
My time in IT taught me the value of being able to take the seed of an idea and develop it quickly into reality. This approach means that we’re able to respond with speed, work on instinct and evolve quicker, based on our learnings.
Interviewer: And what are your future growth ambitions for Crescar?
Russell: For 2026, my focus is on ensuring we deliver on the strategy and that our targets are not just met but exceeded. I’m very proud that we’ve built a business with a strong reputation; we do what we say we’ll do, and we do it well.
Beyond this, it’s about continuing to strengthen our position in the market and expanding our global reach. There’s a lot of opportunity, not just in the UK and the Middle East, but in other regions where we’re starting to build momentum.
Interviewer: And finally, to finish on a lighter note, is there a film of TV recommendation you would make? Something not enough people have watched?
Russell: Probably Land Man with Billy Bob Thornton. It’s a wicked and gritty story of a man navigating the trials and tribulations of the oil industry and balancing them with an interesting family life! It’s from the same team as Yellowstone, full of sharp one-liners, dark humour and strong drama. Definitely one to add to the watchlist.
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