I bring world-stage ops — Olympics, FTSE, fintech — to companies that need to move without the drama.
I'm a strategy and operations leader who's spent a decade jumping between worlds that don't usually share a vocabulary — McKinsey engagement rooms, BA's Heathrow control room, Olympic football venues in Rio, and the CEO office of a unicorn fintech.
My job, broadly, is to make ambitious things ship. M&A and value creation when there's a deal on the table. Operating-model design when an org is outgrowing itself. Transformation when the wheels are quietly coming off. A 100-day plan when there's no time for anything longer.
Former internationally-ranked athlete (top-10 karate, Scottish team). Same performance mindset applied to companies — clear standards, small reps, honest feedback, and a deadline that doesn't move.
Owned the operating model end-to-end for "Run & Grow" — a new department spanning product and engineering. Structure, governance, and full implementation, from blank page to live launch in under three weeks.
Led ~200 onshore and offshore staff planning resourcing across Heathrow and BA-managed airports globally. Overhauled budgeting, drove Heathrow to its best-ever months, and ran the operational response to the March 2025 Heathrow fire.
Led two cost-takeout engagements as Junior Engagement Manager. Designed the program, ran delivery across the operator's full infrastructure spend, and built a digital banking platform from scratch with three squads (60+ people) for a Middle Eastern client.
Promoted from Chief of Staff to Senior Director within 8 months. Led group-wide M&A — sourcing, diligence, term sheets, models, integration. Built the growth strategy for two early-stage portfolio brands. Negotiated 8× valuation vs. a requested 18×.
Joined as one of the first 8 ops hires. Grew weekly shipment volumes from 10 to ~5,000 in six months. Built reporting tools in SQL and Python that cut reporting time from 2 hours to 5 minutes, and ran process automation that lifted new business won 10×.
Project Manager owning end-to-end tech delivery across five venues — fibre, connectivity, broadcast, ceremonies cue systems. Navigated federal police, government bureaucracy, and immovable deadlines. Among the few Games-wide PMs to deliver on time and on budget.
A few of the AI tools and agents I'm working on — some live in production, some still in build, some that started as side experiments and turned into real things.
A multi-agent system handling sourcing match-quality, voice screening calls, scheduling, and pipeline hygiene across the talent function. Lifted hiring efficiency from 1.3 to a target of 2–3 hires per recruiter per month.
Tooling for radio spectrum and frequency allocation across multi-venue major events — Olympics, World Cups, large-scale ceremonies. Cuts ~80% of manual planning time and improves accuracy across complex environments.
Companion tool to the spectrum work — tracks fleet-radio assignments, signal coverage, and crew comms across distributed venues. Replaces a lot of spreadsheet pain and reduces day-of-event uncertainty.
Takes a strategy doc or operating-model brief and produces a coherent, hierarchical KPI tree — top-level outcomes through to functional metrics. Born out of the SumUp work and being generalised for other ops contexts.
Since 2014 · alongsideThey're not magic, but they're already taking 60% of the manual work out of hiring pipelines. Building a few in production now. The question is who learns to manage them well, not whether to use them.
Read more →Quietly the most interesting tech project on Earth. Operations, broadcast, security, fan experience — every layer being rebuilt with agents in the loop. Not a deck-friendly story yet, but it's coming.
Read more →In sport it's measurable, time-bound, and unambiguous. In business it's a slide-deck word that means whatever the room needs it to. Working on a sharper definition.
Read more →AI tooling for fleet and radio mapping at major events. Cuts ~80% of manual planning time, improves accuracy across multi-venue environments. Niche, but useful — and the patterns generalise.
Read more →Most COS roles are admin in disguise. The good ones are leverage — the difference between "running the room" and "running the diary". Drafting the version I wish I'd been handed.
Read more →Same patterns: clear standards, small reps, honest feedback, a high bar held kindly. Whether it's karate, cycling, or a 350-person dept — the unit of work is identical.
Read more →Best route in is a one-paragraph note about what's broken (or what feels off) — I'll come back within two working days.
