Welwyn, England, United Kingdom
An Insight and Data professional, my passion is for making sense of complex problems using data, and using those insights to make a difference to businesses.
Data Insights and Digital Value Creation
- Advice and support of teams and manager in establishing and nurturing data and insight teams - Hands-on data science research and analysis, with particular depth of expertise in data visualisation and psychometrics - Talks and Training on the subject of Neurodiversity (especially ADHD and Autism)
Established the Data Insights Unit as an entirely new Alternative Data and Data Science capability for Schroders, to support the existing discretionary asset management in Schroders. This included teams supporting: - Client Insights – supporting Distribution and Marketing, including customer segmentation and predicting client churn - Investment Insights – supporting investment analysts and fund managers, in Equities, Fixed Income, Multi-Asset. - Portfolio Construction – blending human judgements with quant models - Private Assets – including strong focus on geospatial analytics - Culture, Community and Skills – inc. ‘Data Academy’ for people across the whole business as well as common Tech tooling for data scientists in all departments During the Covid-19 pandemic I personally led a Research Taskforce providing tools, reports and webinars routinely receiving >200 investment professional attendees. CEO specifically attributed part of Schroders’ strong performance through the pandemic to the contribution from data science, i.e. of this work. Responsible for the Alternative Data purchasing budget since inception. Won Eagle Alpha’s 2019 award for ‘Best Buy-side Firm to Work With’ (link). Recognised expert on the application of machine learning and data science to discretionary investment. This reflects technical understanding (contributor to CFA Level 2 Machine Learning curriculum) and attention to the human factors (noted as role model example in CFA’s AI Pioneers in Investment Management paper)
A member of the Leadership Team, I initially acted as product owner for our offerings to retailers, and latterly was responsible for defining global best practice and creating new analytical solutions within Smart Steps such as in the areas of catchment analysis, customer profiling and web/app analytics. Smart Steps is the 'big data' business within Telefónica Digital, creating insights for retailers and transportation companies using anonymised data from Telefónica's global phone businesses (e.g. O2 in the UK).
Providing retail insight, location planning and analysis consultancy to Telefonica Dynamic Insights. TDI is a new start-up that is taking the massive amounts of data the O2 accumulates in the process of running the phone network, and turning it into fantastic products that deliver unique insights for all sorts of organisations.