Meet our team!

As Chief Executive Officer at accesso, Steve Brown leads the day-to-day operations of the company.

Like many attractions industry veterans, Brown’s early theme park career began during college as an hourly employee at the Walt Disney World Resort in Orlando. After a break to pursue his MBA, he returned to Disney where he held a variety of roles with increasing responsibility in financial planning and pricing strategy including development of revised multi-day admission offerings to incorporate the opening of Disney’s Animal Kingdom. In 1999, Brown was named Director, Walt Disney World Ticketing where he led all aspects of the Resort’s ticketing process across its nine gated attractions including pricing strategy, fulfillment operations, training and financial management.

In 2002 he was named Vice President, Revenue Management for the Disneyland Resort in Anaheim, California. Brown successfully drove dramatic growth in park admissions and hotel revenues through significant changes to strategic and promotional pricing, the introduction of new ticket options and by leveraging technology to expand sales distribution channels. In this broad based executive role, he held primary financial accountability for the Resort’s hotel and ticket revenues, led all promotional and strategic pricing efforts, and managed the attendance forecasting and visitation research functions. In 2005 his role was expanded to encompass line-of-business responsibility for the Disneyland Annual Passholder program including acquisition and renewal marketing, passholder experience optimization, CRM and pricing strategy. Brown’s contributions were key to the Disneyland Resort’s 2005 – 2006 record financial performance during the celebration of the landmark attraction’s 50^th anniversary.

Prior to joining accesso, Brown served as the corporate Vice President of Ticket Strategy and Sales for Six Flags. While at Six Flags, he led a 220 person sales force responsible for driving nearly 35% of the company’s admissions revenue. Brown championed an overhaul of the company’s eCommerce process, which doubled the already significant online sales and established Six Flags’ national partnerships with major distributors including Expedia, Travelocity, Best Buy Reward Zone and Costco. He led a comprehensive, research based review of the company’s ticket pricing and developed the strategic plan for 2007 price adjustments across the company’s North American theme parks and water parks. The implementation of this plan contributed significantly to 2007 attendance growth and the company’s positive cash flow results for the first time in its history.

Brown received his MBA from the Goizueta Business School at Emory University in Atlanta and graduated with a BS in Marketing from the University of South Florida in Tampa.

Lee Cowie is the Chief Operating Officer at accesso, bringing over 15 years of senior executive experience in digital transformation, operational excellence, and technology-enabled business strategy. With a deep background in both B2B and B2C environments, Lee is passionate about leveraging technology to enhance customer experiences.

Before joining accesso, Lee served as group head of technology at Nando’s an international restaurant chain and before that he was Chief Technology Officer at Merlin Entertainments, the world’s 2^nd largest attraction operator by visitation, where he provided technology leadership to more than 125 visitor attractions across 28 countries.

Prior to Merlin, Lee held senior global leadership roles at Ericsson and Red Bee Media, leading large-scale technology functions and global transformation initiatives. He has a proven track record of driving agile methodologies, enhancing business alignment, and building high-performance teams that deliver measurable results.

Lee holds an MBA from Henley Business School and a BSc from Imperial College London.

‎Appointed to the Board on 26 September 2024, Matthew Boyle is an experienced practitioner who joined the Group in 2019. His expertise in financial reporting, commercial analysis, and business leadership support the Group in making informed strategic decisions, driving growth, and ensuring financial stability. Prior to accesso, he was with BDO UK LLP for 8 years, serving large international groups and AIM listed businesses in both the audit and transaction services functions.

Matt graduated with First-Class degree in Accounting and Finance from the University of Southampton and is a member of Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW).

Hernandez joined accesso in January 2012 with over 12 years of technology and theme park operations experience. He has held several leadership positions within the company, including Vice President of accesso LoQueue, Vice President of Global Implementation for the accesso Passport Product suite, and Director of Business Optimization. 

Pri­or to join­ing acces­so, Hernandez held several roles while working at IBM in New York. In 2007, Hernandez moved to Orlando, Florida to join the Labor Operations Team at the Walt Disney World Theme Parks and Resorts as Manager, Operations Staffing. He earned an Industrial Engineering degree from the University of Puerto Rico and completed his MBA at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York.

In his role as Senior Vice President, Engineering, Jones is responsible for accesso’s software development, deployment, security and IT infrastructure across the company.

In her role as Senior Vice President, People, Maura Schiefelbein is focused on attracting, engaging and developing accesso​’s most important asset- our people. This includes developing organization wide talent-related solutions, as well as partnering with business leaders to plan and implement organizational change while continuing to foster accesso​’s unique culture reflective of our core values.

Schiefelbein has 25 years of experience as a Human Resources practitioner working for Fortune 500 companies such as Fed Ex, Accenture, and ADP prior to joining accesso. She also serves on the Board of Directors for The Devo Center, a 501c3 dedicated to empowering female leaders to have fulfilling careers in community service.

Schiefelbein holds an MBA from Point Park University, a BA from the University of Pittsburgh, and has her Senior Professional in Human Resources (SPHR) certification.