James Espey, OBE, is the Co-founding Chairman of Uberbinder — and, in the truest sense, the person who made its inception possible. He began mentoring founder Jett Yang after the two met in 2021, serving together on the advisory board of a leading Mongolian beverage conglomerate. When Jett set out to build Uberbinder, James was the first to back it — co-founding the company, providing its earliest seed capital, and supporting its formation as a Public Benefit Corporation to help ensure it serves the public good.

That conviction is the product of a sixty-year career building brands and companies that endure. In premium drinks he created or built several of the industry's most iconic global brands and founded a celebrated super-premium spirits house, later acquired by Sazerac. Beyond drinks, as founding Chairman and first angel investor in Mimecast, he helped build the cybersecurity company from an unknown start-up into a global leader that ultimately sold to the private-equity firm Permira for $5.8 billion — one of British-founded technology's landmark exits.

He has chaired or served on the boards of numerous companies and created the Scotch whisky industry's Keepers of the Quaich, and was awarded an OBE for services to the whisky industry in 2013. An author, philanthropist and tireless mentor, he has devoted much of his life to helping the next generation of entrepreneurs think bigger and build for impact.

At Uberbinder, that lifetime of brand-building, governance and belief converges on a single mission: to help decarbonise the world's roads. As co-founder and non-executive Chairman, James remains committed to guiding the venture from a bold idea to a global business — to help, in his own words, heal, transform, and repair the world.