Practical support for innovators

Career

I started my career as a civil servant in the Prime Minister's Strategy Unit which gave me an early education in the rigorous use of analysis for creating strategic, deliverable change at a national level. From there I spent the better part of two decades across organisations in the private, public and social enterprise sectors, usually in roles that involved building something that didn't quite exist yet.

Over the years I've led organisations as CEO, built commercial functions from scratch, and designed strategy across sectors. The title matters less to me than the problem, what I'm interested in is the work of turning an ambitious idea into something that actually delivers.

Founder

My most formative experience was co-founding and being CEO of Thiscovery Ltd, a spin-out from the University of Cambridge. Starting with a three-person team and a research platform we built a business from the ground up - securing investment, hiring the team, building the governance and compliance infrastructure, winning contracts from health tech businesses, the NHS and national charities, and navigating the full complexity of being a Cambridge spinout in a public sector market. It taught me more about what it actually takes to build an organisation than anything else in my career.

Governance

Outside my professional roles I've served as a trustee and board member in the voluntary sector, including as trustee and chair of Cambridgeshire Hearing Help for four years and seven years as a trustee of Centre 33, a Cambridgeshire young people's charity. That experience of governance from the inside, accountability, the relationship between a board and an executive team, shapes how I think about organisational design and leadership.

Education

I'm Cambridge-based, with deep roots in the local tech and social enterprise ecosystem. I hold an MBA from Cranfield, an MA from Queen Mary, University of London and completed my undergraduate degree at Cambridge (Part I Engineering and Part II Social & Political Sciences). Between them these educational experiences capture a lot about how I think: systems and people, structure and communication, rigour and judgement.

I work best with founders who are ambitious but honest about what they don't yet know and who want an operator alongside them, not a consultant at arm's length.