Cardiff, Wales, United Kingdom
Strategic leader with a love of people and sport. Passionate about equality, diversity and inclusion. Working hard to become more knowledgeable and more impactful. Complexity aware - resisting the urge to design the future and concentrating on creating the conditions for brilliant things to emerge. Believe in the power of sport for good. Success on the world stage should be ONE of the consequences of athlete development, not the driver of it.
Working collaboratively across Sport Wales to lead and oversee the strategic aspects of a single system for sport ensuring it operates in a coordinated and holistic way. Driving and co-ordinating Sport Wales's approach to sourcing and utilising the latest insight and intelligence, ensuring that Wales is promoted to the World through excellence on the global stage, showcasing the positive and wide-ranging impact of sport. Leading a business wide approach to developing the unified sport system with and through our partners, providing everyone with the knowledge, skills and opportunities to participate, to reach their potential and achieve their goals. The overall aim is that sport is used to bind communities together; that athletes achieve their desired goals and that Wales is promoted to the World. Directly responsible for aligning the directorates resource and approach, including the delivery of science and medicine services, to the strategic investment priorities of Performance and Success. • A member of the Senior Leadership Team with business wide responsibility • Leading the organisation’s strategic approach to developing the unified, holistic Sport System that delivers against the vision for sport in Wales through the strategic intent of the Sport Wales strategy • Leading the approach to partnership and delivery of impactful and valued services • Ensuring alignment of Sport Wales's performance sport ambitions with its wider ambitions • Developing partnerships with other key national and international agencies in high performance sport • Design and develop the holistic approach to developing athletes and creating environments where young people can thrive, ensuring that relevant parties are suitably informed and engaged • Instilling a culture of cross-organisational learning and innovation in all aspects of our work, promoting an appetite to try new and different things • Extended period deputising for the Sport System Director who is acting as interim CEO
Providing the strategic and operational leadership to ensure the development and delivery of the Sport Wales’ Elite Sport Strategy. Responsible for the elite and performance sport pathway of the Directorate’s work, developing new partnerships, initiatives and approaches that will help in creating a stronger, more sustainable and aligned high performance system. Cultivating a culture of high performance capability, continuous improvement and integrated service delivery within the Elite Sport team. 1. Provided effective leadership and management of the Sport Science and Medicine team, ensuring resources were targeted at key business objectives. 2. Led the Directorate’s work with the CEOs and performance directors of National Governing Bodies that were key to the delivery and implementation of the Elite Sport Strategy. 3. Supported and advocated the Directorate’s work with key partners such as UK Sport, Welsh Government, EIS and other home nation sports institutes. 4. Managed Sport Wales’ Elite Sport sub-group, including the reporting of progress against the vision, mission and objectives of the Elite Sport Strategy. 5. Led the Directorate’s work on the enhancement and development of performance foundations and talent pathways from an athlete and coaching perspective 6. Developed and improved the connectivity between the Elite Sport Strategy, the Community Sport Strategy and other Sport Wales’ strategies. 6. Developed the relationships with the HE sector in Wales, allowing collaboration on research and delivery 7. Took responsibility for all quality assurance and continuous improvement initiatives across the Directorate. 8. Accountable for the investment, allocations and effective coordination and delivery of the Directorate’s work, including the management and deployment of resources.
Fixed term role with Swim Wales to develop a new performance strategy and recruit a successor for the role following the retirement of the previous performance director after the 2014 Commonwealth Games • Consulted with key stakeholders to develop a new performance strategy for Swim Wales focussing on clarity around the Welsh Performance Pathway and alignment with the British system • Designed and implemented structural changes to Swim Wales performance and staffing structures aligned to creating a better day to day training environment • Established a national coaching team to develop and promote the performance philosophies of Swim Wales, share good practice and provide critical peer challenge • Recruited a new senior performance lead into the governing body and agreed a development plan to support professional development and progression
Providing dedicated performance advice and support to National Governing Bodies in Wales in order to help deliver Sport Wales’s Elite Sport Strategy. Working closely with performance directors, coaches, support staff and athletes to support progression onto UK Sport’s Olympic Pathway programmes and medal winning performances at the Commonwealth Games • Managed and prioritised the sports science and medicine support provided to Swim Wales and Welsh Athletics to ensure an integrated service delivery, helping coaches to define specific performance problems as opposed to discipline specific interventions • Defined clear objectives to be measured within sports science and medicine interventions to begin to quantify the impact made by the intervention • Worked with Welsh Judo and Welsh Weightlifting to design competition and training programmes for squads and individual athletes, integrating sports science and medicine services into these • Used the Sport Wales Focus 14 tool to critically evaluate the high performance systems in Wales and their capacity to deliver systematic success. Identified key strengths and areas for improvement and supported the development of these • Challenged sports on the evidence base they use to identify athletes with the potential to succeed and provided ways of improving this to ensure better quantitative and qualitative data and better focus of resource • Advised and supported governing bodies in Wales on the recruitment of key performance staff and the on-going development of staff in their organisations • Regularly monitored and evaluated partners’ progress against clear and agreed objectives to ensure that goals are on target to be achieved • Reviewed and improved athlete development strategies, parallel coach development strategies and other means of improving the capability of the governing body to deliver high performance
Managed the partnership between several National Governing Bodies and Sport Wales supporting and challenging these organisations to set ambitious targets aligned to elite performance, talent pathways and growing participation • Led, advised and influenced governing bodies at board and senior executive level in the development, monitoring and implementation of long-term strategic plans and processes to deliver objectives • Promoted the importance of evidence based planning, both internally and with partners, and made a series of practical recommendations to improve data collection systems to better achieve this • Worked closely with our research and information teams to help make the wealth of data they collect user friendly and conducive to planning. Used the information to influence and inform the senior management team at Sport Wales • Facilitated discussions around culture change and developing a high performance culture at an internal staff conference and with partner organisations • Delivered practical training on performance management to key partners • Challenged the use of Sport Wales data internally to ensure a better alignment of resources against strategic aims, led discussion on departmental focus and direction aligned to organisational objectives and implications on time and resource allocations • Presented at the NGB Chief Executives forum on several topics including evidence based planning and data and information systems
The Members’ Research Service provides a high quality research function to members of the National Assembly for Wales, including critical analysis of government policies, scrutiny of questions posed by members and producing research papers on topical, complex matters. As the senior member of the finance and statistics team, I was responsible for ensuring that all financial and statistical information produced by the service was accurate and consistent • Provided information and analysis to assembly committees as directed by the committee chair and clerk and sat on committees to provide clarification of points where necessary • Line managed staff in the team to ensure departmental targets were achieved and an appropriate balance between reactive responses to members’ enquiries and proactive research work was achieved • Reviewed the way the department presented numerical, financial and statistical information and produced new guidelines and templates for doing so • Provided training and ongoing support and guidance to other teams across the members’ research service in implementing the above. Had regular, face to face contact with assembly members to explain and clarify complex issues • Designed and produced a series of “quickguides,” a tool used to give an understandable overview of complex topics to Assembly members and their staff. This format was subsequently adopted by other teams • Dealt with verbal and written enquiries from politicians and their staff on a daily basis, delegating work as appropriate and working to very challenging deadlines • Completed a secondment at the House of Commons library which provides services to Members of Parliament. Brought back good practice and ideas for new ways of working from the experience