Government Digital Service
Lead Product Manager

August 2024 - March 2025

Lead Product Manager for the GOV.UK website teams at the Government Digital Service. Product leadership responsibility for four teams (Navigation, Search, Application modernisation and Accessibility) providing direction via OKRs and roadmap in line with the wider strategic outcomes. Most recently this included working with the Prime Minister’s Office to deliver the Missions microsite on GOV.UK.

TPXimpact
Project Director/Senior Partner

September 2023 - July 2024

Providing advice and support to a programme for the Department of Levelling Up (via TPXimpact) on the development and adoption of open data standards and APIs in Local Government across housing, planning, social prescribing and adult social care. Most prominently I was the Project Director for a review of the Open Referral UK data standard work, the recommendations of which were fully endorsed by the Department and referenced in the UK’s Spring Budget.

Department for International Trade / Business and Trade
Head of Profession - Product Management

September 2022 - August 2023

At DIT/DBT my role was predominately that of leading the product management profession - this included recruitment (of Civil Servants and contractors), overseeing the community of practice, ensuring the product team were supported to be as successful as possible via learning and development and identifying opportunities for advancement.

Alongside this I led on DDaT wide planning and prioritisation, product strategy and cross portfolio and directorate coaching in product thinking and agile ways of working for leaders.

UK Health Security Agency
Interim Head of Product (Customer division)

March 2022 - May 2022

UKHSA was a new organisation formed from the merger of Public Health England, NHS Test and Trace and the Joint Biosecurity Agency. My role was to build a new product management and agile delivery function aligning with UK digital government standards as part of a wider human centred design team. This included recruitment, coaching, introducing agile ways of working and processes.

Notbinary/Foundry4
Product Director

February 2018 - February 2022

For Notbinary and Foundry4 (after a rebrand) I was the Principal Product Consultant on work which included a mix of leading squads and coaching for the DVLA, BBC, Food Standards Agency, UK Hydrographic Office, Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, Welsh Government, HM Land Registry, the Department for Education and Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government. This entailed oversight of all our projects, responsibility for our ways of working, strategic consultancy and product coaching.

Seconded to Essex County Council
Head of Product and Delivery Management (Interim)

April 2020 - September 2020

I joined Essex for a six month secondment as they dealt with the initial COVID-19 crisis. This was a mix of coaching and mentoring permanent staff, leading the recruitment of new team members and directly supporting the digital strategies of Adults and Children's Services amongst others.

Seconded to BBC
Executive Product Manager (interim)
May 2018 - October 2018

Interim Product Lead for the BBC Datalab team - working with a multi-disciplinary team consisting of software & data engineers, data architects, data scientists and SREs. The core product was a new machine learning recommendation engine aggregating metadata from across BBC silos. Worked closely with the BBC+ app and Voice teams.

mySociety
Head of Product 

January 2017 - January 2018 

Head of Product at mySociety with a particular focus on the 'democratic commons' with Facebook and Wikidata and the Better Cities portfolio (FixMyStreet, Mapumental and MapIt) for UK Local Government.

Office for National Statistics
Head of Digital Transformation / Product

April 2013 - September 2016 

Initially the role was essentially a digital managing editor position bringing together graphic design, social media and an online editorial team. I introduced a more consistent approach to infographics, supported a more open approach to the @ONS Twitter account and encouraged experimentation with new editorial formats. I successfully launched a new data storytelling blog - ONS Visual. 

For the bulk of my time I was Product Lead for the development of the new ONS website including the user experience, publishing application and infrastructure as well as ensuring the presence of a sustainable, multi-disciplinary agile team to continue to develop the product post launch. This included leading on all procurement, interviewing more than 50 candidates, producing the ongoing product roadmap and leading the team day to day. 

Medical Research Council
Digital Communications Manager 

October 2010 - April 2013 

I oversaw the MRC digital strategy including responsibility for the website(s), intranet and social media presence. I assisted with the RCUK Gateway to Research project and was part of the team that introduced the first MRC blog - Insight - including a rare example of doing the development myself. I was also an advisor for a major CMS project involving multiple Research Councils and also produced two major 'citizen science' web projects with Zooniverse that launched in the summer of 2013. 

JISC
JISC Technical Programme Manager [maternity cover] 

October 2009 - October 2010 

During my second spell at JISC I was Technical Programme Manager for the UK Open Education Resources programme including overseeing JorumOpen on behalf of JISC. I also represented JISC in a group liaising with publishers on the technical aspects of open access and acted as editor for my teams communications activity. During this time I also collaborated with colleagues at Creative Commons, Mozilla and P2PU running an event in London for the open education communication and supporting the Mozilla Drumbeat Festival in Barcelona. 

Jiva Technology
Product Manager 

July 2008 - July 2009 

At Jiva I acted as Product Owner and also oversaw product marketing activity for a Bristol based, angel backed education startup. I produced the initial wireframes and user stories that would develop into Tutorhub.com, launched an event for education technologists and also secured coverage in mainstream media for the company. 

JISC
Product Manager 

April 2003 - April 2008 

At JISC I primarily led on matters related to digital strategy for the organisation. This included website management, editorial policy, social media, usability and product development. During this period I also prototyped and then commissioned two new products - JISC Answers which went on to become a successful consultation platform for developers Delib and JISC Involve a blogging platform that remains used to this day. 

I was also seconded to parent organisation HEFCE to manage the migration of the Aimhigher portal to Directgov and to manage HEFCEs relationship with stakeholders regarding the Government web convergence policy.

Economic and Social Research Council
Website Manager 

June 2001 - April 2003 

At ESRC I introduced their first content management system driven website and commissioned the first usability testing of the site and the concept of iterative improvements. I also introduced the first editorial policy for the website and led ongoing staff training both in usage of the CMS and the style guide.