1 What do you like most about Berkeley?

I like the purist approach of finding and recruiting really good, diverse people, and then liberating and supporting them to do great, value-adding client work that is genuinely and only in their clients’ best interests. I like the low-bureaucracy approach at Berkeley, where we aim to keep internal processes to the bare minimum needed to run a professional firm, wherever possible favouring encouraging people to use their judgement based on values and integrity rather than trying to encode policies and rules. I like the opportunity to build really long-term, trusted client relationships – I’ve worked with some of my talented clients for well over a decade, sometimes as they have moved jobs across four different client organisations, and we’ve definitely learned from each other along the way.  

I really like working with the team we have at Berkeley – a group of positive people who are genuinely a pleasure (and a lot of fun) to both work and socialise with. And finally, I like the autonomy and flexibility to manage my work – home balance effectively, given a busy family life. I prefer “work – home balance” to the term “work – life balance”, as I see fulfilling and enjoyable work as a key part of my life, not aside from it.  
 

2 What types of engagements excite you the most?

I love working across several different industry sectors that really interest me: consumer goods, retail, supply chain / logistics, and media and entertainment. I feel lucky to have worked with clients across all these sectors, including organisations like Unilever, Associated British Foods (Primark, Twinings, British Sugar, etc.),  News Corporation (Dow Jones, News UK), Dentsu, WPP, and Brambles (CHEP).

Across these sectors, I also get involved in a wide variety of interesting work - generally in the space of significant technology-, data- or digitally-enabled business transformations that drive growth and/or efficiency. But I’ve also done quite a lot of strategy work in the areas of finance transformation, technology strategy and operating model, and data / analytics strategy and operating model. There’s no one type of engagement that excites me the most, I like the variety at Berkeley. Overall, I just enjoy getting to really learn and understand my clients’ businesses, and doing meaningful work that drives their future success.  
 

3 Why did you become a management consultant?

I was sponsored through university by a multinational engineering company, left with two first class degrees in engineering, and have always taken an interest in engineering of many sorts (as different as automotive, aeronautical, and software engineering) – so a career in the engineering sector would have been the much more obvious choice! But the sheer variety of consulting (moving from project to project across different clients, industry sectors and types of work) really appealed to me.  

I also enjoy the buzz of working with energetic, bright, can-do people – the sort of folks who can “can get a lot done in remarkably little time” – and the consulting industry in general tends to employ a lot of those sort of people. Consulting also allowed me to combine my love of all-things technology with a fundamentally business-focused career. Most of all, though, what’s always attracted me to consulting is seeing the results of a good project make a really tangible difference to the client’s success.