I believe governance is an enabler, not a blocker. Done well, it gives leaders the clarity to say yes with confidence rather than defaulting to no out of fear.

I believe no leader should have to figure out AI, security, or technology strategy alone — especially when the pace of change makes it impossible to stay current while running the day job.

I believe smaller businesses deserve the same quality of support that enterprises get — just right-sized for their reality. No 200-page frameworks. No six-month programmes. Practical, proportional, and built to evolve.

Leading client engagements, managing expectations across customers and delivery teams, and heading up security assessments and incident response.

• Customer engagement and liaison — primary point of contact for client senior executives, leading technical engagements, translating complex security topics, and building trusted relationships

• Expectation management — ensured customers had clear, realistic expectations of service delivery, then worked with the internal team to make sure they understood the deliverables and standards required

• ISO 27001 management — owned and maintained the Information Security Management System end-to-end, including internal audits, risk and change management, policy development, and documentation. This hands-on experience with ISO management systems directly informs the ISO 42001 AI management system work Underfold delivers today.

• Led security assessments — ransomware readiness, malware assessments, and cloud security reviews

• Led incident response — analysing attacks, recommending containment strategies, and providing technical advisory to help organisations recover post-breach

• SOC management team — part of the leadership team running the Nightingale managed security operations centre

• Maintained and developed the SOC platform — automated onboarding, integrated new data feeds, managed vulnerability reporting

• Started as a Technology Consultant (part-time) reviewing department operations, then led a stack upgrade that reduced costs by 30% before moving into the full director role

Delivered a technology transformation that changed how the business operated day to day — satisfaction jumped from 45% to 85% in twelve months. When the pandemic hit, pivoted the entire workforce to remote working within a month.

• Led the gen:TECH programme — a complete overhaul of the technology platform covering infrastructure, end-user tools, security, and support

• Removed 90% of in-house infrastructure, migrating to modern cloud and collaboration platforms

• Reduced support tickets from >10 to <5 per user per month

• Simplified user authentication from 10+ accounts per person to an average of 2

• Delivered estimated £1m/year savings through new technology, support model, and training

• Pandemic response — pivoted the entire workforce to remote working within one month

• Stakeholder engagement — regular Town Hall presentations, stakeholder meetings, cross-functional collaboration, and a transparency strategy that rebuilt trust in the technology function

• Collaborated with the CISO working group on a new information security platform across Risk, Operations, and Technology

• Championed bespoke technology training for all employees, including on-demand learning

Managed a 60-person global department, extensive compliance collaboration with the FCA, and led infrastructure across virtualisation, communications, and front-line support.

Head of End User Technology (2018–2019)

• 60-person global department, 6 direct reports, ~$10m combined budget

• Developed a three-pillar strategy: Enterprise Consumer, Service Improvement, Stabilisation & Simplification

• Delivered Windows 10 to 50% of employees within 9 months

• Reduced video conferencing complaints from 10–20/day to 1–2/month

• Secured a $1m budget increase for additional headcount

• Lead compliance contact for technology — oversaw departments building monitoring systems for insider trading detection, covering logins, messaging, websites visited, and documents opened

• FCA engagement — participated in compliance investigations and defended Man Group's systems directly in front of the FCA

• Worked closely with compliance on message capture and analysis to meet regulatory requirements

Wintel Infrastructure Manager (2014–2018)

• Joined to resolve major performance and stability issues

• Delivered a $5m+ 3-year programme to stabilise and upgrade legacy systems

• Consolidated disparate teams into a unified department

• Led Core Infrastructure, Messaging, and Security teams

• Reduced yearly operational spend by $500k through infrastructure overhaul

• Invested in new mail gateway technology to counter email-borne attacks

• Implemented data access security and permissioning controls to protect critical dataxt goes here

• Senior Systems Administrator — Orbis Investment Management

• System Administrator — Global Asset Management

• Desktop and Infrastructure Administrator — IAM Ltd

• Linux Administrator — Travel Options Limited

Before any of this, I was the neighbourhood IT engineer — building PCs, compiling Linux kernels, and spending far too much time on IRC and the earliest social networks.