Hello.

My biology teacher was taught at university by David Bellamy, a famous TV botanist in the UK, so he was a brilliant teacher.

At school I got into music, played football a lot and did well at sciences and maths and went to London to keep doing music and study biology at University. My brother came up to London and we carried on the band. We won the London Students’ Band Contest and got a recording contract and we both hoped for a big future in music.

I qualified as a Science and P.E. teacher whilst waiting for the rest of the band to graduate, and when they did, we got going on being musicians.

My brother became a model and I got involved in the fashion industry too in a fashion design company and in doing music for fashion shows. I went back into teaching and became a Head of Science and music technology teacher at a special needs school in London where I taught children with a visual impairment.

I did an MBA, became a management consultant and joined the Tom Peters group in the UK.

Wanting to return to the creative industries, I joined Brand Experience specialists Imagination, in London and became a Planner. There I worked on some world-class, world first projects such as, ‘The Guinness Storehouse’ in Dublin, and ‘Eden Project’ in the UK. I worked in design, brand identity, media and brand strategy, and content development in that role, and later as Planning Director at design company Attik, and Media Strategist and Head of TV at media strategy pioneers Michaelides & Bednash, all in London.

In 2001, I opened the first non-US office of the US based brand design company Duffy, as MD. To round out my communications and marketing experience I decided to go into advertising.

I joined Wieden + Kennedy in Portland, Oregon, as Nike Planning Director for US and Latin America. The first ad I worked on was ‘Angry Chicken’ for Nike Presto which won a Gold at Cannes. 

I was lucky to be involved in a number of great projects for Nike working with some great people - personal highlights were the positioning of ‘More Go’ for Nike Shox, which did a good job for Nike’s US running business, writing and directing a short film for the Nike board called, ‘It’s a blur out there’, being strategic lead on Nike’s first global campaign, ‘Made to Move’ for its Nike Sphere apparel, and having a ‘ball in a building’ idea I had for putting a fifty foot football crashed into a building, get done in Mexico City as part of Nike’s Latin American ‘Magia’ football campaign.

From the US, I returned to the UK to join Bray Leino, firstly as CEO of Turquoise, a research company within the Bray Leino group, and then as Head of Planning at Bray Leino, leading a planning team and heading the communications strategy for the agency’s biggest client, Wrigley, and their UK number one brand Wrigley’s Extra.

In 2006, I was just about to start as a new role as European Planning Director for Burger King at Crispin, Porter and Bogusky, when I was offered the opportunity to fulfil a long held family ambition to come to live and work in Australia. 

As Head of Planning at Euro RSCG in Sydney, my first work in Australia was the highly successful Nurofen ‘Wedding’ and Nurofen Plus ‘Burglar’ ad campaigns. I have since been Head of Strategy at Ogilvy Interactive, Strategy and Innovation Director at sister STW design and brand agency, Yello, and a Brand Strategy and Innovation specialist at strategy and insights company, The Leading Edge.

I think a wide range of experiences helps me always have the consumer in mind in my work in marketing, and in the lecturing that I enjoy doing for the Communication Council’s Adschool courses in Sydney. I have been a lecturer at AdSchool for three years, lecturing in Brand Strategy and Development, Strategic Planning Principles and Digital Strategy. I have also written and delivered a course on Brand Experience Strategy.

I have spoken at conferences internationally throughout my career on subjects ranging from ‘creativity in the world’ at the Marketing congress of Chile, and ‘the convergence of media’ at Promax BDA in Singapore, to ‘What’s Green? Things I learned teaching kids with a visual impairment.’, at the inaugural Interesting South event in Sydney, in 2007.

I am the founder of Brand Day, a company specialising in brand workshop experiences that create strategy and brand behaviour.