Dubai, United Arab Emirates
I am a global B2C/B2B2C CEO with 25+ years of leadership, delivery and learning across e-commerce, financial services, energy, telco, consulting and FMCG, with leadership roles in the UK, Turkey and UAE. My career has been leadership and delivery: building strong fundamentals, then creating industry-challenging impact at product level, and ultimately building scalable businesses by combining people and culture, systems and processes, capital and technology, learnt and practiced at Amazon. After Oxford, I learnt my foundations: how to obsess over customers in FMCG; how to ask good questions and listen as a strategy consultant; and how to operate at pace in Telco. I applied my learning to financial services, not known for customer obsession, bringing fresh eyes and a customer-first perspective. The key frustration is that new customers get the best deals while existing customers get price increases. I developed and implemented propositions that rewarded loyalty and improved economics across Halifax Home Insurance, 1st in new business share and improved retention from 70% to 95%; Sainsburys Bank, doubling loan share and growing profits 250%; and Nationwide Savings achieving 1st in customer satisfaction, delivering +10Bn savings inflows and 300m+ profit growth. Amazon hired me for my customer obsession, dive deep, think big, and focus on developing people (I knew little about tech or e-commerce). Over 10 yrs I learnt how to combine people, technology and capital at scale. I built across Retail and Marketplace in the UK for 3.5 yrs, and was promoted to Country Manager Amazon Turkey. Over 6.5 yrs I learnt the culture and language (I gave PR speeches in Turkish), led through constant crises in a complex environment, built the team, shaped systems, processes and tech roadmaps, secured significant capital and created a billion-dollar Amazon Turkey business. I am recognised as a grounded, T-shaped leader managing breadth and operational depth, and who balances urgency with strategic progress. I "herd cats", aligning teams and stakeholders behind goals and bringing clarity to complex situations. I speak truth to power even when uncomfortable, and I invest heavily in building people, teams and cultures that are my legacy. My core beliefs are: work backwards from the customer and earn the right to their money; a lack of talent is the rate-limiting step for any business; and recognise that organizations ship their thinking and org design to customers, so aligning strategy, tactics and constraints is decisive - after that, success is the hard work of the team.
Leading Landmark’s Digital journey