Operating model for a unicorn defence scale-up

Year: 2025–2026

Achievements: Restored strategic focus and execution speed by introducing a scalable product operating model, enabling clearer prioritisation, stronger leadership alignment, and controlled team growth in a regulated defence environment.

Description: Designed a product-domain operating model for a hyper-growth, regulated defence scale-up (~900+ employees) that had begun to lose speed due to portfolio chaos and business–product misalignment. The model clarified business-to-product interactions, decision rights, portfolio governance, and team topology, embedding data-driven prioritisation while safeguarding the company’s unique value proposition.

My achievements: Acted as advisor and co-designer working directly with C-level and senior product leaders. Co-created the operating model, defined decision-making and governance mechanisms, stress-tested the model through real-world experimentation, and supported rollout across the organisation over a 7-month full-time engagement.

Software product lifecycle process for global medical hardware

Year: 2024–2025

Achievements: Stabilised a highly regulated, global software organisation by redesigning the product lifecycle, restoring leadership confidence, improving release predictability, and accelerating delivery with 20% faster releases and a 15% reduction in time-to-market.

Description: Co-designed and rolled out a new software product lifecycle for a 400-person medical-software organisation operating under strict regulatory standards. The initiative addressed unpredictable releases, late-stage validation rework, manual testing bottlenecks, and recurring hardware–software integration issues by introducing clear lifecycle stages, governance and decision rights, shared metrics, and earlier experimentation and validation across 30 teams in the US, Europe, and India.

My achievements: Acted as co-designer of the lifecycle framework and led the global rollout through influence rather than formal authority. Worked closely with Product, Development, and QA to define the target lifecycle, decision forums, and success metrics, align teams across three regions, and embed earlier validation and experimentation, resulting in more predictable delivery and renewed leadership trust in execution.

Internal AI-powered knowledge engine

Year: 2024

Achievements: Reduced decision-cycle times by 15% and improved consistency of advice by deploying a production-ready AI knowledge engine that surfaced trusted best practices on demand for consultants.

Description: Defined and led the development of a production-ready internal AI-powered knowledge engine to address consultant frustration with fragmented SharePoint content and inconsistent reuse of best practices. The solution leveraged a retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) approach to ingest curated internal documents and provide context-aware recommendations, improving speed and consistency of decision-making.

My achievements: Acted as initiative lead and product owner, defining success metrics, shaping the high-level solution, and coordinating delivery with a five-person cross-functional team over a three-month sprint. Established quality guardrails by curating and prioritising trusted best-practice sources, ensuring reliable outputs and strong internal adoption.

Strategic portfolio prioritisation for a global FMCG organisation

Year: 2021-2022

Achievements: Restored strategic focus and execution momentum by consolidating and reprioritising a fragmented global initiative portfolio, enabling faster execution and improved delivery confidence across a €1B+ business.

Description: Led a global portfolio prioritisation initiative for a €1B+ FMCG organisation (~10,000 employees) facing initiative overload, unclear ownership, and leadership misalignment. Using a single OGSM as the strategic anchor, consolidated over 20 competing product and marketing initiatives, translating strategy into a coherent, prioritised execution roadmap with clear ownership and review cadence.

My achievements: Acted as lead facilitator working directly with C-level executives, BU heads, and product leaders. Designed and implemented the OGSM-based prioritisation approach, drove hard trade-off decisions including killing initiatives, introduced a regular review cadence, and established single-leader ownership, resulting in sharper focus, faster execution, and renewed confidence in delivery.

Executive OKR governance implementation

Year: 2019-2020

Achievements: Increased initiative-completion rates by 16% within 12 months by introducing a disciplined OKR and QBR governance model that sharpened leadership focus and reduced initiative overload.

Description: Designed and implemented an executive-level OKR governance system for a 130-person scale-up in the vaping industry. The leadership team struggled with low initiative completion, delayed execution, and limited visibility into progress. The solution introduced a clear OKR structure, quarterly business reviews, and transparent metrics to translate strategy into focused, executable priorities.

My achievements: Acted as Chief of Staff and governance owner, working directly with the CEO and executive team. Designed the OKR system end-to-end, established QBR cadence and tracking, and embedded coaching and leadership rituals with strong CEO sponsorship, resulting in fewer initiatives in flight, clearer accountability, and sustained leadership focus as the model became business as usual.

New market entry management (EMEA & Asia)

Year: 2019

Achievements: Brought two new markets (Slovenia and China) to launch-ready status within six months, securing investment approval and positioning the business for a forecasted €350M revenue opportunity by 2025.

Description: Directed strategy and execution for two international market entries at a global vaping scale-up, targeting Slovenia as a regulatory-led opportunity and China as a core growth market. Coordinated a 10-person cross-functional team across legal, product, supply chain, marketing, finance, and HR to meet regulatory requirements, establish local operations, and define go-to-market and pricing strategies under significant time pressure.

My achievements: Acted as program lead reporting to the Head of New Markets. Led end-to-end execution from market assessment through launch readiness, personally driving supply-chain setup and go-to-market design while aligning stakeholders across functions. Navigated regulatory complexity and tight timelines to secure investment approval and successfully hand over execution to local general managers.

Global operating model for sales & marketing

Year: 2016–2018

Achievements: Improved profitability by approximately £21M by redesigning the global sales and marketing operating model, accelerating decision-making and shifting authority closer to consumers and frontline teams.

Description: Managed the design of a new global sales and marketing operating model for a publicly listed tobacco company with ~25,000 employees and worldwide presence. The organisation faced slow decision-making, fragmented processes, and margin pressure following an M&A-driven expansion. The operating model addressed these challenges by redefining roles, processes, and decision rights across global, regional, and local levels.

My achievements: Served as project manager within the central transformation team, working closely with regional and functional leaders. Led the design of the target operating model, rebalanced decision authority toward local markets, and supported implementation across regions, contributing to a mix of cost reduction and revenue uplift over an 18-month full-time engagement.