About me
The personal stuff…
I’m an Aussie a long way from home. I live in Brighton with my partner and two wonderful daughters (3 and 6).
I’m a music obsessive, I live for the perfect gif and I like tiny cups.
I used to dress up as a giraffe for charity as a favour to my mum (not joking).
One of my first (and favourite) jobs was fixing go-karts with my best mate.
I doodle on post-its a lot. It helps me think.
I’m a natural introvert trapped in the role of an extrovert.
And I feel incredibly uncomfortable writing about myself.
The professional stuff…
For the last 2 years, I’ve been building out a Transformation practice for Anomaly across Europe
Helping them to deliver on their mission to be a change agent for their clients.
Mission / Ambition
I’m at my best when I’m stretching strategy across lots of different areas to bring coherence to complex situations. Using my broad set of skills and tools to help lead diverse teams of equally stretchy people to places we didn’t think possible. I love connecting the dots and finding clarity in complexity, changing where our creativity can take us. This is why I prefer sandpits over ivory towers. It’s why I’m not interested in being the hero - I’m more about winning together better. And it’s why I know that being a generalist thinker isn’t enough. You have to be able to DO as well. It’s important to understand the whole, and then be able to go deep on a part of it and follow it through.
I want to do work that expands the scope of business by serving people’s needs - Bringing humanity to digital experiences, telling stories that travel in culture and helping the best brands to their futures, faster. And I want to do that with people that share my view that optimising for creativity and putting people first is the best business strategy.
Let’s go back to the beginning…
19 years ago…
2004 - 2009
I cut my teeth in the media agency, MEC (now called Wavemaker after a merger with Maxus), as a Connections Planner over 5 years. Exploring how culture is formed and transferred and learning the power of context for creativity. Helping build relevance for brands like Canon, Colgate Palmolive, Arnott’s Campbells, Schick Energizer, Activision and Red Bull.
2009 - 2013
I then moved into a wonderful little full-service agency called JOY. Where I spent a little over 4 years building a bridge between the creative and media arm of the business to make work for local broadcaster SBS, NIKE and TRESemmé.
2007 - 2013
I also spent over 6 years teaching advertising at the University of Technology Sydney. Applying the practical knowledge from my day-job to the training of the next generation of marketers and creatives. I loved this so much and it was an incredibly formative experience for how I worked with teams and clients during the day.
2013 - 2014
Before heading to the UK, I did a short contract at News Ltd helping bring strategic rigour to their products and sales functions. I worked closely with the head of data to create new products and services for brands and ran a company-wide make-day to accelerate their Christmas strategy to drive new revenue streams.
2014 - July 2020
Then, in 2014, I packed up and headed to LDN to join R/GA where I was allowed to run around the business for the last 6-and-bit years doing everything on the bingo card and helping to make R/GA Campaign’s Digital Agency of the decade.
2018
While still at R/GA, I also served as the Global CSO of Rufus, the agency set up by Initiative to service the global Amazon media account. For the whole of 2018, I consulted senior leaders of the global Amazon marketing team on brand strategy, creative integration and process to help to shape the global approach for a bunch of verticals including Home, Softlines and Alexa, including writing the brief for the 2019 Super Bowl spot.
2020 - 2021
At the very start of the pandemic I made the heartbreaking decision to take a voluntary redundancy at R/GA to try and protect the team we’d built. I used the time to really think about the sort of work I wanted to do next and helped founders, CEOs and people thrown into the turbulent waters of the pandemic find a path forwards. By using a brand POV to expand the scope of businesses I managed to help Get Licensed increase both its revenue and value, help Tuune secure a 4.5M round of funding to get them to market. And founded, designed and launched Adcademy, an online course for previously excluded talent with Brixton Finishing School. I’d reignited my passion for showing what creativity can do and how people-centric thinking can unleash the full potential of a brand and business.
2021 - present
With my new found ambition - to change how a business grows through brand, I found a new home with Anomaly, as their head of Transformation across Europe. Here I’ve worked with brands like Expedia Group, LVMH and Diegeo to build new success models to open new growth. Developing propositions around content, membership, band experience and employee experience.