C.V.

I am a leader in innovation and delivery for Public Service and Charity Sector digital products and services. I have an extensive creative and technical background with over 20 years industry experience. During my time at GDS (Government Digital Service) senior civil servants described me as a “purple person”, somebody who combines organisational design with technology transformation, and at the BBC I was considered to be a bridge between editorial/audience needs and online solution delivery. I balance portfolios with suitable ratios of BAU and R&D to ensure business continuity whilst driving progress in an increasingly uncertain world. I use and train others in lean and agile principals along with building and leading “user first” focused multidisciplinary teams inclusive of user research, user experience, technical and data architecture. I have a holistic approach, bringing vision and direction to realisation in collaboration with internal stakeholders, external partnerships and extended networks. I believe real change comes from people and that the health of an organisation largely depends on the cultures and norms within it. I am Autistic and have developed an acute awareness of neuro-divergent needs, seeking opportunities to use my privilege to champion diversity, inclusion and social justice whenever I can.

Competencies & Achievements

Digital Leadership

  • Owned and advised on development strategies for digital products and services for UK Government, BBC and National Charities such as National Trust, Power to Change and The Dog’s Trust;
  • Advised the Minister for Cabinet Office and HM Treasury on effective strategies for various public services across Government with above £5M spend on technology or digital delivery;
  • Led on defining the tools and approaches for digital transformation at scale and built support teams to work with Govt. departments to support their
  • Contributed significantly to Digital Service Standards and UK Government Transformation Strategy;
  • Led the discovery and alpha of standards and assurance GDS/Cabinet Office internal tooling ensuring design decisions were rapidly made through user research and weekly design sprints.
  • Designed and managed legacy transformation of DevOps teams within the Ministry of Justice’s digital studio, owning roadmaps for legacy system migration and new infrastructure deployment.
  • BBC Technical Architect and discipline lead for technical architecture governance, design principles and standards setting up working groups and technical design forums across BBC online;
  • Member of BBC’s North Leadership group successfully transitioning BBC Homepage, Search and Navigation development from London to Salford;

Digital Innovation

  • Reviewed opportunities for innovation across UK Civil Service including AI and Robotic Process Automation (RPA) in public service operations;
  • Mentored staff, partners and students in approaches to innovation including using the Cynefin framework and Wardley mapping.
  • Architect of BBC Homepage on AWS - the first public facing BBC product to be designed and delivered into cloud technologies leveraging automatic scaling to cope with highly variable load profiles reaching peaks of up to 1,000 unique users per second.
  • Hands on expertise in prototyping and development using Node JS, PHP MySQL, GraphQL, React, message queues and many cloud PaaS and SaaS technologies.
  • Maker-Educator in physical computing and internet of things.
  • Advocate of Open Source, Open Data and open standards, assisting in their adoption into the Digital Service Standards for the UK government.
  • Regular attender of conferences and events for emerging technologies and innovation practices with wide reaching personal network.

Digital Delivery

  • Agile practitioner and coach, certified Scrum Master since 2008. Introduced agile practices across a number of organisations at enterprise level - both within delivery teams and senior management.
  • Led multidisciplinary teams in design and delivery of many complex, distributed digital products and services specialising in content production, media publishing and audience participation.
  • Built teams to support transformation across Government focusing on user research, service design, technical architecture, data driven decisions.
  • Recruited and managed teams in London, Salford and Cardiff with three direct reports and overall team of 30 people to deliver and support the Homepage, Search and Navigation for BBC Online.
  • Introduced and championed emerging roles and practices into multidisciplinary including “developer in test” and “devops”.

Career

Aerian Studios - Solution Architect: July 2020 - Present

As Solution Architect I work closely with clients to understand their requirements and I translate those into technical design and requirements for our engineers to deliver. I am very hands on and will build out code, prototype new technologies and objectively assess the best solutions inline with our cutting edge principles and approaches. This is a part time position alongside Polydigital and personal studies in Counselling Skills.

Polydigital - Director: Jan 2018 - Present

I set up Polydigital to work across numerous organisations' digital transformation strategies who’s focus is on the public benefit and social good. I have been commissioned to review digital product and service strategy and organisational design by Power to Change, The National Trust and the BBC. I have worked on research and development projects including a Catalyst funded investigation into issues with Universal Credit and development of software for remote environmental spectrometers. I also develop and run a scheme of work called Adventure Labs for schools and youth groups teaching children about innovation and teamwork in real world outdoor adventure settings.

Government Digital Service - Senior Technology Advisor: Oct 2015 - Oct 2019

Focused on digital, data and technology transformation across Government. Advisor on effective digital transformation strategy and implementation. Leading on innovation strategy for GDS, developed transformation support team and government transformation strategy. Have assisted Treasury in Spending Review 2015 and Cabinet Office in reviewing DWP’s technology, digital and data plans incorporating effective transformation detail into their Single Department Plan. Coached and supported upskilling of staff in agile project delivery.

BBC - Senior Technical Architect: June 2008 - Sept 2015

Owner of the technical designs and roadmaps of multiple BBC Online products including the BBC Homepage, Search, Navigation, Travel News and location-based services. Combined, these provide key content discovery mechanisms across all BBC products including News, Sport and iPlayer on desktop, mobile and TV devices. I introduced personalised audience discovery of content by targeting users with recommendations and marketing campaigns via bespoke tools for Editorial and Marketing teams. Prior to this I was responsible for the Technology across the BBC Knowledge and Learning portfolio including BBC Food, Nature, Science and History, Bitesize, Languages and Class Clips.​ I managed multidisciplinary teams in UX and development and rolled out agile delivery practices across BBC vision teams, coaching technical and non-technical people in Scrum.

Previous positions (1999 - 2008)

  • Design Tab (various websites) - Director: 2007/08
  • Popart UK (e-commerce system) - Lead Engineer: 20
  • ZZY Media (mobile WAP and SMS) - Technical Lead: 2004/06
  • Common Sense Solutions (EPOS) - Development Engineer: 2003/04
  • Amersham Medical Systems (Radiology software) - Support Engineer: 2001/03
  • Microsoft (MSN chat, messenger and hotmail) - Internship: 1999/2000

DONE Qualifications

  • Level 3 Counselling Skills (ongoing)
  • Level 2 Counselling Skills (2019/20)
  • BBC Leadership Training (2011/12)
  • HND Computing Mathematics (1999)
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