With a career spanning local government, the UK Civil Service, and the technology sector, I am focussed on creating positive change through collaboration and innovation-enabled renewal in the UK and further afield.

Early in my career, I developed the ‘Barnet Graph of Doom’ (2011), an infamous report that forecast the looming crisis facing local government from falling revenue and rising demand. This analysis was a wake-up call about the challenging future facing our public services and the impact that would have on communities.

Since then, I've focused on roles which allowed me to steer us towards a brighter future through accelerating innovation adoption and building collaborative movements.

As a Senior Advisor in the Prime Minister’s Implementation Unit (Cabinet Office), I set up the What Works Network to promote evidence-based policy making and steered delivery of the Better Care Fund, a £5.3 billion health and social care integration programme, to encourage equitable and effective partnership working between local organisations. I also helped set up a new ‘Special Projects’ team focussed on unlocking barriers to the application of emerging technologies (including offsite / digital construction and drones) to accelerate the delivery of priority policy goals.

In 2016 I left central government for the technology sector, holding a range of strategic leadership roles at the Connected Places (formerly Future Cities) Catapult. During this time, I played a key role in supporting the CEO to steer the organisation through several major transformations, including a merger, financial recovery, and the pandemic. Over the last three years I led the development and delivery of a £4.5m ‘place leadership’ program, fostering collaborative networks and empowering public authorities to become confident customers of innovation, and effective stewards of the innovation ecosystems in their regions. This included establishing strategic initiatives like:

• the Innovation Procurement Empowerment Centre (IPEC) to transform everyday public spending into fuel for public service innovation,

• the Innovation Places Leadership Academy to equip UK regions to rise to the opportunity of devolution, and

• the UK Innovation Districts Group to seed, scale and sustain more ‘hubs of innovation’ across the UK, delivering economic growth and inclusive prosperity.

I'm passionate about building high-performing organisations, fostering impactful collaborations, and turning ambitious ideas into reality. I believe in empathetic leadership, empowering individuals, and creating an inclusive environment for everyone to excel.

Let's connect and explore how we can work together to deliver improvements to public sector productivity, user outcomes and national prosperity.