About

Born and now based in Toronto, I have lived, worked, and studied in Canada, the UK, and France, with extended stays elsewhere in Europe, the US, and Latin America, including time on the road with clients and on the conference circuit.

I bring 20 years of cross-sector experience including: strategy, operations, research, partnership development, analytics, data management, and enterprise architecture. I work with governments, new and established companies, and third-sector partners to help them improve their decision-making, modernize and transform their organizations, and negotiate systems change.

Early Career

I began working life with stints in startups, a public company, and social enterprises. I returned to university for a doctorate, then spent three years as Associate Faculty at the University of Oxford and four years as Research Fellow at the University of Bristol.

As a PhD working in academia, I specialized and published on scientific methodology, focusing on the foundations of modern physics, and touching on related issues in the foundations of mathematics, computation, and cognition. I lectured on things methodological and, by twists and turns, came to work in a preeminent training ground for young leaders, many bound for careers in law, government, and finance. I bring that commitment to methodological rigour and analytical precision to my consulting work and my capacity for coaching to talent management. Subsequent professional development includes coursework in public and business administration and a certificate in cloud strategy.

My experience conducting and communicating research is a natural bridge to my current work on using data strategy to improve business strategy. This background enables me to synthesize and translate the most recent findings in several areas, including data strategy, to produce recommendations for senior decision-makers. I help companies achieve their objectives and key results, modernize and transform their organizations, and improve client experience. I study systems and the data patterns that reveal their effectiveness or limitations. I assess the relation of this evidential basis to implementations of theory, strategy, and policy.

Work in Strategy

An accumulation of influences, including my time lecturing in Oxford’s program in Philosophy, Politics and Economics, led to my work at the intersection of corporate strategy, data strategy, and technology strategy.

Currently I advise a group of tech executives within the Government of Canada. In this capacity, I give advice on developing data and analytics strategy to support strategic planning and program management in matters of income security, the labour market, workforce development, and socio-economic development in the broadest sense. In essence, my team and I play a form of Moneyball with social services data. It worked for Major League Baseball and we think it can work for the social contract.