Lymm, England, United Kingdom
I hold over two decades’ experience in integrating cutting edge technology, primarily in the banking sector, which I combine with an ability to articulate complex information to stakeholders at all levels of seniority in order to create opportunities for greater efficiencies, higher service quality and increased business growth. Throughout my career, I’ve worked directly alongside board members at one of the world’s leading banks and with entrepreneurs at the helm of ground-breaking start-up organisations. As such, I’ve developed an aptitude for identifying the potential benefits and risks technology can bring. I then forge successful relationships with and between business leaders to enable them to respond to these. I’m currently seeking to advise companies in a non-executive capacity in order to support their growth through the implementation of effective business plans and strategic technologies. Please do connect for a conversation about how I can support your company achieve its aims.
I was promoted to become a member of the specialist Technology Partnership Development team, through which I identify technological trends and forge business relationships between the bank and relevant start-up companies to capitalise on these. Key Achievements: • I utilise strong communications skills to clearly articulate technical information to senior executives and illustrate technological opportunities that will enable the bank to maintain its market leading position. • I build relationships between both start-up entrepreneurs and bank board members to facilitate effective communication and ultimately beneficial relationships. • As an active member of the AFME Fintech Subcommittee, I focus on emerging technology and areas of potential disruption, including regtech, GDPR, AI and the associated ethics. • Consequently, I am seen as the bank’s thought leader on blockchain, AI, machine learning and robotic process automation (RPA), and I have spoken at events on fintech developments, including at the London School of Economics and on numerous panels.
In this role, I held responsibility for all infrastructure design within the GWB business. I managed a highly effective team to analyse business requirements and produce infrastructure designs to provide cost effective risk profiles. Key Achievements: • I ensured cross-team understanding of business strategies so that opportunities for improving these through technology could be identified while minimising risk. • I developed a multi-year roadmap in partnership with the application architecture team to replace the core international banking platform, which processed $1.2 billion per day, with a modernised platform. • I also ran a cross-functional innovation special interest group to forecast medium and long-term technologies and anticipate how these could improve or disrupt the bank.
I was appointed to a permanent position following successful completion of a number of contracted projects, which included: • COMPASS CRM: a sales and research system. I took a global programme role to manage five project streams internationally, fixing performance issues and improving connectivity and resiliency. • Treasury Statement Printing Project: I migrated the printing of accounting and billing statements from BAML to MBNA facilities, introducing automation to generate more efficiency in sorting and posting statements. • Countrywide Transition Project: This project required the migration of an office of Countrywide employees to BAML and the installation of two network circuits to connect to the Merrill Lynch Cloud. • Strategic International Card Processing: I onboarded LaSalle commercial cards from a US to a Chester-based platform, creating new business opportunities within Europe for the small business lending group.
Following the success of the previous project, I was appointed to deliver 1,000 virtual desktops using cutting edge virtualisation technology, performance monitoring and comprehensive metrics and reporting. Key Achievements: • I delivered the infrastructure capacity on time and on budget, creating significant ownership and support costs from desktops and improving problem resolution times. • The virtual desktops were recognised as highly successful by the CTO, who subsequently embedded the project into JP Morgan’s corporate strategy. • Additionally, I led the expansion of the project to manage the build out of a further 5,000 instances for the firm.
I was responsible for the Trader Blade project in the EMEA region, a business continuity risk mitigation to address the threat of an Avian Flu on the Investment Bank division by enabling traders to work from home. Key Achievements: • Partnering with architects and managing the engineering team, I led procurement, change management and installation of the entire server infrastructure into the various data centres. • I presented the proposed solution to each business group in collaboration with business continuity managers and oversaw the successful rollout. • In addition, I managed the build out of enhanced infrastructure in NA, EMEA and Tokyo as part of the overall solution to ensure adequate network latency and bandwidth.
I was appointed to project manage the new firm-wide application integration strategic tool to provide consistent workflow in the integration and deployment of organisations. Key Achievements: • I quickly identified and clarified the scope of the project to meet the stakeholders’ and sponsor’s acceptance criteria and ensured there was a clear communication plan. • As part of this work, I handled all change control management, status reports and financials, and I had a key role in driving the development design process, in addition to creating online training material. • The system replaced more than ten legacy systems with over 1000 users worldwide and was completed on schedule over two development phases.
In this period, I spent a sabbatical year in New Zealand providing consultancy services to the Manukau City Council, supporting them through a complex network repair process and deploying cutting edge Wi-Fi technology.
In this role, I worked as the lead technical project person on a CRM system for JPMorgan.
I joined Logica as a graduate, providing IT support at Ford Motor Company.