About
I've spent much of my career building new things, making sense of complexity and aligning people around ambitious ideas.
That has taken me across startups, venture studios, family investment groups, large organisations and communities I've helped build from scratch, in fields including finance, insurance, healthcare, hospitality, sport and media.
The sectors have changed. The underlying work often hasn't: learning quickly, reading people and situations, simplifying tangled situations, building trust and helping promising directions gain traction.
In practice, this has included scaling an early crowdfunding platform, working with a South African family investment group on innovation and venture initiatives, building healthcare ventures with NEOM in Egypt and Saudi Arabia, creating a global sports business community and founding Chorus around the commercial value of participation.
I later completed an MBA at London Business School, which reinforced my curiosity about entrepreneurship, innovation and organisational change, and further strengthened my appetite for operating across different industries and contexts.
I've been drawn repeatedly to industries and possibilities that sit at the edge of change, and have learned to become useful quickly in environments that initially felt entirely new.
Alongside operating roles, I've also made a small number of angel investments in early-stage businesses. Investing has become another way of staying close to founders, new directions and emerging sectors, and to the people building them in varied settings. My investments have included companies spanning location technology, insurance, mobility and consumer products, including what3words, Laka, Yassir and Fernway.
Outside work, my time is with family: my wife and three daughters. Beyond that, my interests are fairly eclectic.
I'm fluent in French and German, have completed the New York City Marathon, taken courses in behavioural science and previously served as a trustee of the Royal London Society, a charity supporting people leaving prison and rebuilding their lives.
Things I'm curious about
Questions that keep me interested.
Human behaviour and decision-making
Why people do what they do, especially when the explanation is less rational than we like to think.
Communities and participation
Why some groups create belonging, momentum and value while others become passive audiences.
Leadership under pressure
What happens to judgment, identity and relationships when the stakes are high.
Why some directions catch on and others don't
The strange mix of timing, story, incentives, emotion and luck behind traction.
Creativity and original thinking
How people and organisations create the conditions for better possibilities to emerge.
What exceptional performers are really like away from the spotlight
Not just what they achieved, but what the experience did to them.
Books that have stayed with me
A short shelf of books I return to.
Rory Sutherland
Alchemy: The Magic of Original Thinking in a World of Mind-Numbing Conformity
A reminder that humans are wonderfully irrational and that many of the best possibilities come from challenging conventional wisdom and looking sideways.
Reed Hastings & Erin Meyer
No Rules Rules: Netflix and the Culture of Reinvention
I love its emphasis on talent density, candour and building organisations that move quickly and trust adults to behave like adults.
Michael Ovitz
Who Is Michael Ovitz?: The Rise and Fall (and Rise) of the Most Powerful Man in Hollywood
A fascinating story about relationships, hustle, pattern recognition and the force of will sometimes required to make ambitious things happen.
Jason Fried & David Heinemeier Hansson
It Doesn't Have to Be Crazy at Work
A useful challenge to the assumption that intensity, stress and exhaustion are prerequisites for doing great work.
Ed Catmull with Amy Wallace
Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration
One of the best books I've read on creativity, psychological safety and creating environments where better work can emerge and improve.