About me

The majority of my career to date has been community focused. I have over 10 years of experience in CEO, Founder, Chair, non-executive and consulting/mentoring roles giving strategic direction and leadership to non-profit organisations and initiatives in the areas of young people, education, arts, and disability inclusion.

Most recently, between 2017 and 2022 I led the growth of a local disability-focused charity into a national youth-led movmement for disability inclusion. Alongside this, in 2020 I spent 6 months building, developing, and leading award-winning cross-sector infrastructure in response to the coronavirus pandemic. In 2022 I took a break from full time employment to complete an EMBA - graduating with honours - and an intensive three month software development programme.

My current working life roughly divides into two areas. I offer a wide range of consulting, advisory, and mentoring services to community focused and non-profit organisations. My skill set now includes technical facility in test-driven-development, covering full stack web-development, data engineering, cloud engineering, and machine learning.

At the same time, I have recently begun actively pursuing my passion for the arts: specifically illustration, writing, design, and fashion. I am currently working on a collection of illustrated stories, and a Sheffield based photography project 'We're Playing Basketball'.

Creative roots, and a drive to make positive things happen

Life for me has always involved being creative. The automatic potato peeler (aka plant pot and sandpaper combo!) that launched my career as a 6 year old. The community focused initiatives and projects that I am lucky enough to work on today. This is what I love: to seek out problems, learn, invent, develop, iterate, and then do it all over again.

In 2017 – off the back of a few years creating, learning, teaching, and coaching/playing field hockey in Paris and Barcelona – I became a very much accidental CEO, taking over the reins at local Oxford charity KEEN. I had little idea then that I’d look back 5 years later on a journey that included developing KEEN into the UK's leading youth led movement for disability inclusion. I’ve also developed a strong desire to support and promote change in the voluntary sector. Show me a status quo today that is stale and in need of a shake up, and I’ll be determined to get in on the shaking.

Along the way and since, I’ve had enough failures to understand how to succeed, and how to value what we can learn from both. I’ve learnt how important a coherent vision and genuine values are when you are required to put these into action as a leader yourself. I’ve seen first-hand that the most difficult things – inspirational leadership, creating genuine innovation, and addressing the causes rather than symptoms of social issues – are also the most important, and the most satisfying. My eyes have been opened to the further horizons and challenges ahead, and I can’t wait to get stuck into them.

When I’m not working, I still like to coach, adventure, and create in other ways. I’m trying my best to live every day to the full. Learning to dance and being particularly aware to instances of cute animals in ‘real life’ is helping me to respond productively to my TikTok addiction.