Personal statement:

I work with, and create environments for, organisations so they may do good better.  I do this by taking my 20 years of experience across civil society and placing it into a psychologically informed organisational consultancy framework, a discipline I am trained and qualified in.

Through this approach, also called Systems Psychodynamics[1], I assist people to improve their understanding of organisational dynamics in order to effect change and instigate new behaviours and innovations.

I am an experienced and effective strategic thinker and prolific entrepreneur, adept in managing rapid growth.  A commitment to addressing social and environmental problems systemically, plus an optimistic forward thinking attitude, means I am passionate about what I do, in work and in life.

Current and Recent Work:

Independent (October 2009 – present). 

I work internationally with innovative leaders of world-class organisations to realise and scale their visions for change, examples of which include but are not limited to:

• Working with The Ideas Factory, Bulgaria, assisting them in a process of organisational development as well as to develop a social innovation ecosystem for the region;
• Assisting the Small Business Association of Jamaica to develop a social innovation strategy for the island;
• Leading the delivery of the Artha Venture Challenge, an investment competition for social ventures in India;
• Recently completing Systems Psychodynamics consultancy contracts for a global investment bank, a major London housing association, a charity working in the homelessness sector and a small retail social enterprise;
• Working to replicate Future of Fish, a U.S. project focused on developing sustainable marine supply chains, in the U.K.;
• During 2012 being the Creative Director for Social Capital Markets, the world’s foremost impact investing conference based in San Francisco;
• Throughout 2011 and 2012 leading the R&D efforts of ImpactAssets (the U.S.’s only 100% impact investment focused donor advised fund), to replicate in the U.K. and Europe;
• In 2011 co-founding Shared Assets, a new organisation championing social enterprise delivery of urban and rural regeneration through the management of environmental assets;
• In 2010 instigating OxfordJam, the fringe to the Skoll World Forum to provide the U.K. with greater access to world-class actors in the social enterprise sector.

 

Previous Employment:

Ashoka’s Director for the UK (May 2006 – September 2009).

I was responsible for all aspects of Ashoka’s work in the UK, raising in excess of $5 million from the UK’s business and finance community and providing support to more than 150 international social entrepreneurs resulting in numerous substantial financial and capacity building outcomes.

Founder and Chief Executive of London Community Recycling Network (November 2000 – April 2006)

I founded and grew London CRN to 16 staff members and a turnover of £750,000; I was a founding member of the Big Lottery’s Community Recycling Programme, securing, managing and distributing £37.5 million of funding to community waste projects across the UK and was a board member of the London Recycling Fund acting as advisor to a government fund distributing over £50 million; I supported social enterprises to secure nine large-scale public sector contracts totalling more than £35 million t/o; I led the start-up of six large-scale new Community Recycling providers, each with year one turnovers of between £600,000 and £1million; and I developed consultancy services delivering 25% of the organisation’s turnover.

Independent (1991 – 2000).

Clients included New Economics Foundation, Royal National Theatre, the East Midlands Development Agency, Greenwich CDA and a myriad of third sector organisations.

Education:

I have an M.A from the Tavistock Centre in “Consulting and leading in organisations: psychodynamic and systemic approaches” and am an Associate Member of APPCIOS, The Association for Psychodynamic Practice and Counselling in Organisational Settings, a membership institution of the British Psychoanalytic Council.