Executive Experience

Chief Digital Development and Disruption Officer

Colart, London, UK | June 2017 - present

Responsible for the driving disruptive business strategy and the leadership, architecture of digital transformation, business development, technology and data analytics within Colart, a fine art materials manufacturer. As part of the C-suite leadership team I am a key contributor to and driver of business strategy and help to provide the disruptive thinking that constructively challenges the status quo.
Key achievements:
  • Undertook a strategic analysis of Colart’s product portfolio of 15,000 distinct SKUs and identified approaches to optimize our COGS model and manufacturing strategies and processes. Setup and running program that will deliver double digit margin improvements to key product ranges providing opportunities to drive EBIT improvements and revenue growth.
  • Delivered a 33% / £2M reduction in IT costs across the group as a result of increased efficiency and simplification of technology estate.
  • Reshaped the global digital and technology teams into collaborative, cross border business partners by creating blended cross-functional and self-sufficient teams with complementary skills to remove any siloed thinking.
  • Designed and led the implementation of an enterprise strategy and architecture to guide the businesses digital transformation journey so creating an environment to embrace increased automation of manufacturing, distribution, and consumer engagement.
  • Created a culture of democratisation of digital and technology ensuring that employees from across the business were empowered to self-serve and execute at a local level supported by small central teams of experts.
  • Accelerated migration away from on premise infrastructure and into the cloud to reduce cost, increase reliability, and deliver scalable infrastructure that can grow and contract with business demand.
  • Embedded the use of OpenAI/ChatGPT into the technology teams in order to drive efficiency. As a result we have seen a 30% improvement in developer output and gains in code reliability. I have now extended this program to educating and onboarding other functions within the business.
  • Put in place cyber security programs within technology team supported by an education program for rest of business.

Senior Director of Technology

Reed Elsevier (RELX), London, UK | May 2014 - May 2017

Responsible for the technology leadership, architecture and governance within the property, agriculture, and science business units at RELX running teams.
Key achievements:
  • Lead a team of 30 software developers, test engineers, designers, project managers and architects in the development of data analytics and collections systems for agricultural data covering around 50% of all UK agricultural activity.
  • Delivered a global website platform to all Reed Elsevier business units to replace multiple different solutions, delivering efficiency improvements and shared benefit through commonality and cost savings of circa £500K per annum.
  • Prepared business and supported the divestment of New Scientist magazine out of the Reed Elsevier business resulting in a successful transfer of knowledge, platforms and team to the new owner.
  • Designed and delivered the enterprise architecture and technology strategy for ProperyLink a nationwide commercial property data product within the RELX Estates Gazette business.

Founder and Managing Director

Coreware, Guildford, UK | Februrary 2002 - March 2014

Founded a software development agency specialising in website and application development. Grew the company to 17 staff servicing 30 customers including Thomson Reuters, Reed Business Information, Sky, and HSBC. Lead the management and strategy together with architecture and application design of customers products.
Key achievements:
  • Built and supported Thomson Reuters opinion/blogging news platform serving over 1,500 journalists and 1 million unique visitors per month.
  • Designed and delivered the official mobile results application for the International Olympic Committee for the 2010 Winter Olympics that provided live results and medals tables to around 500K users.
  • Build live wallboards displaying live financial pricing information, news and currency pricing for HSBCs docklands headquarters.
  • Built, hosted and maintained high traffic sports results web applications for numerous large media organisations including MSN, Sky, Thomson Reuters providing realtime sports results and live matchcentres to their customers.

Founder and Director of Technology

Opta Sports Data / SportingStatz, London, UK | 2001 - 2006

Sports data collection business founded with Business Development director from previous role at Sports.com. Responsible for the technical strategy, architecture and product development of a sports data collection and distribution platform that allowed Opta to collect real-time sports data across multiple sports and deliver it to customers.
Key achievements:
  • Successfully navigated the business through the difficult seed and startup phase progressing from an operation in a shed in my garden through to a fully financed 100+ staff operation serving a rich portfolio of media clients.
  • Architected, built, and delivered a sports data collection system capable of handling hundreds of live sports events and delivering a rich array of realtime data feeds, websites, mobile applications and print ready content to customers.
  • Acquisition of Opta business from BSkyB and successful merger it into SportingStatz to form Opta Sports Data.
  • Growing Opta to stage of being a global leader in sports data covering all major sports leagues culminating in the sale to Perform Group for £40M

Director of Technology

Sports.com, London, UK | 1999 - 2002

Responsible for the roll out of technology leadership, architecture, and delivery of infrastructure, tech support, application development for Sports.com, a startup business targeting sports fans. Lead a team of around 50 infrastructure and development engineers reporting into the COO.
Key achievements:
  • Created a high performing technology team that was able to quickly scale to meet the needs of the fast-growing business.
  • Built a full CMS and sports data collection platform within 3 months of the business starting, allowing the rapid establishment of operations and revenue streams.
  • Built a high traffic sports news and results website that was able to handle 5 million unique visitors per day.
  • Integrated in a sports betting platform into Sports.com enabling a multimillion pound revenue stream to be established and rapidly scaled.