How I got here

I spent 17 years across agencies in Manchester, London and Sydney, including Leo Burnett and M&C Saatchi, on brands like McDonald's, AXA, TfL and Betfair. Somewhere between McDonald's weather-reactive posters and a lot of half-finished decks, it became obvious most brand problems aren't creative problems. They're assumption problems.

So I went back to university for an MA in Cultural Studies (USYD, High Distinction), then took that thinking in-house. Assumptions creep in when process is disjointed and departments don't work together. Strategy and making shouldn't sit in silos, they should be one coherent process. I have the experience and skill set to set the architecture and then oversee it built out across the system.

What interests me

I'm particularly interested in moments where the old systems stop working:

• Brands still selling empowerment when the ground has clearly shifted

• Organisations holding onto customer archetypes that no longer exist

• Women's sport outgrowing tired sponsorship models

In practice that's shown up as:

• Building brand architecture in-house from the ground up, from stakeholder research through to a board-approved brand strategy and identity rollout

• Partnering with TAL to build authentic platforms for women's sport participation

• Diagnosing a strategic gap behind underperforming charity campaign results, not just optimising the media

• Shaping Betfair and McDonald's creative strategies around actual behaviour, not category clichés

How I work

I'm comfortable across the whole span: close enough to execution to know what's realistic, close enough to theory to spot patterns the brief doesn't name, and experienced enough to see it through to delivery, not just brief it and walk away.

I like working with people who are as curious about challenging the status quo as they are about the competition.