ABOUT ME

You didn't want the short version did you?

My own path in this life began in 1972, when I was born to two rebellious dreamers on the edge of Richmond Park in London, as flares swayed and Simon & Garfunkel sung. My father was a gifted teacher and musician. My mother was just gifted, like very few people I've ever met. 

But our little family broke apart, and my sister, father and I moved in with another broken family. Overnight I found myself with a new step-mother, who gathered me up in her arms and held me there for many years to come, and four more brothers and sisters. We soon headed for the Black Mountains on the border between England and Wales, where we lived among sheep and cattle on a Herefordshire farm. Eventually, amid the hills and the hay and the tumbling streams of the beautiful valley, that family fragmented too. I returned to South-West London and life in the company a new step-father; a brilliant and kind man in the early stages of what would be an extraordinary business career.  

Then I moved on again, back to my father and step-mother in Sussex, and spent several years in a Rudolph Steiner school, where every class had its own orchestra, most had their own offspring of a faded rock star, and everyone and everything was beautiful. That worked well until it didn't any more, and then I went to the local comprehensive school, a blessed plot of provincial England where children from all walks of life gathered in prefab huts with condemnable heaters to be taught by commendable teachers. I adored it.

​

Next, a year of teacher-training in a school in a deprived part of inner-city Birmingham, then to Leicester to read English and drink alcohol.

And then work. In fact I'd always worked - in newspaper shops, supermarket bakeries, hotels, bars and even mushroom farms - but never before in an office. So I did a stint working in the mail room at a small engineering company in Godalming - a job I loved with all my heart and would surely return to if only it still existed and paid enough - and then tipped up at Sony's UK headquarters in Weybridge on my 26th birthday to provide a day of temporary administrative support stuffing envelopes with letters of farewell from the outgoing Managing Director. I liked it so much that I stayed for seven years, becoming deeply involved in some of the most interesting projects the company had ever embarked on. We launched an internet service provider, a mobile network reseller business, a social media platform (years before anyone had even heard of Facebook), a music download platform and a music streaming service (years before anyone had even heard of Spotify). I had desks in London, Salzburg and Berlin and a bunch of team-mates that I call friends to this day. I left Sony at a pizza restaurant a stone's throw from the Brandenburg Gate on my 33rd birthday, awash with love and tears.

Somewhere among all that I met Emma, so she left her job too, and we went walking in the Himalayas together. And then we went to India. And then New Zealand, and Australia.  

​

By the time Emma and I got married I'd met a farmer, who'd done an MBA and decided to map the local food scene in the UK so that people could find alternatives to supermarkets more easily, and become the marketing director of his fledgling company, Big Barn. We fought hard together for every inch of ground we made, and won some famous victories including a deal with BBC Good Food. But we were fighting giants and it was his fight more than mine, so I decided to leave the trenches and move on. He's still there, fighting. 

​

Then a friend told me she was starting a business connecting consulting firms and their clients more intelligently and asked me if I'd come and help. I said I would, but warned her that I wouldn't stay more than a month because I had no interest whatsoever in management consulting. You know how the next bit goes...

Fourteen years later we'd built Source Global Research from nothing to the point where it employed about 50 people and was widely considered to be the pre-eminent provider of data, research and strategy services to the world's leading management consulting firms. A consultant's consultant, basically. In fact we counted every single one of the world's 20 leading consulting firms as our clients. And those are some clients.

I led the business, alongside my friend and the other, absurdly talented and prodigiously industrious, co-founder. I put most of my energy into shaping our growth strategy and building the team and culture of the organisation. HR reported into me, as did finance, marketing technology and all sorts of other bits and bobs. I spent a lot of time out in the market, presenting our research to leadership teams around the world, delivering keynote speeches and lecturing on the management consulting industry at places like Columbia University in New York, Imperial College in London and Vreije Universiteit in Amsterdam. 

But I always loved my time with our own people; figuring out how to grow our own business together, building the team, coaching people and creating a working environment in which they could flourish. Creating the conditions for truly sustainable growth. Among the many achievements and people I'm proud of from that time, it's the journey of Laura, who joined as our PA, became our HR manager and left five years later to take up a position on the board of a high-growth company in France, that makes me smile the most. Why? Because the foundations on which her success is built are as strong as anything ever can be: They're about Laura being nothing more, and nothing less, than Laura.  

​

Eventually, on a rooftop between the city and the river, surrounded by people with whom I shared so many stories, I left. It was time for something new and I needed a bit of time to breathe after the most intense 14 years of my professional life. So, that's what I did. I walked, surfed a little, rode my bike a lot, caught up with people and spent some time volunteering in an arts charity and a sourdough bakery. And now I'm doing this. 

​

This is what I have; this life, this experience. I give it all to you, wholeheartedly.