1What's different about Berkeley for you?

That the sole focus at Berkeley is on doing a brilliant job for our clients and equally as importantly doing so in a really positive, authentic, and genuinely thoughtful/highly professional way. This is a core ingredient in our business, the ‘special sauce’ in our culture and builds a genuinely warm, respectful, trusted relationships with both our clients and all our colleagues in our firm.

We place our core Berkeley values in all that we do and establish deep, highly respectful relationships with very senior clients that endure over time. Not only do we invest our time, effort, and energy in our client relationships, we also do this (possibly even more so) with each other. This has allowed us to create an environment at Berkeley that is genuinely open, positive, highly engaging, and inclusive. It’s a genuinely brilliant place to work.

2What’s been your favourite piece of work and why?

It would be our first ‘breakthrough’ engagement in the US, at the same time we opened our New York office. The client was 21^st Century Fox and National Geographic Partners. Not only was this our first major engagement we won directly from the US with a US-based Berkeley consultant team, it also had many of the characteristics of how Berkeley make a huge difference with just one or two consultants.

• A challenging, politically intense environment where the client sponsor trusted Berkeley to navigate the politics and big personalities and give a straightforward, independent evaluation of the issues and a comprehensive set of recommendations
• Built credibility early on and went on to be asked to mobilise a program of work and establish the right team to deliver, building trusted and effective working relationships with other suppliers and the client teams
• Running a complex program of work successfully and without ‘surprises’ and with constant engagement and support of senior executives over one and a half years
• Established long-term, warm and highly (mutually) respectful relationships with senior executives who have both recommended Berkeley and come back themselves, resulting in multiple other engagements at new clients in both Europe and the US.  

3Why did you choose your career?

I get bored easily and tend to enjoy trying new things. Also I never really knew what I wanted to be when I ‘grew up’, so becoming a consultant seemed ideal! It is a job that 25 years later I still struggle to explain to either my Mum, my wife, or my kids!

Being a consultant has meant I never really felt bored or hemmed into a specific role or organisation, I very much enjoy the variety that comes with the different types of roles and assignments themselves and the various people and teams I work with along the way. I even enjoy the fact neither my commutes or office environments are the same for too long! I find these changes give me the energy and challenge I need both personally and professionally to be the best that I can be.