About Me
I have over thirty years’ experience as a top City lawyer, senior business Executive and, more recently, Chair.
After more than two decades spent at leading law firms, Clifford Chance and Herbert Smith Freehills, I had the opportunity to be part of the leadership team at two leading UK based international banking groups as they recovered from the Global Financial Crisis. Over the following dozen years, I helped them to undertake fundamental strategic, organisational, reputational and cultural transformations.
I joined Barclays as the Deputy Group General Counsel in 2009 for a tumultuous six years which saw vast change including four different CEOs and three Chairs at the helm, before joining RBS/NatWest as Global General Counsel in 2016. Having briefly been the largest bank in the world prior to its collapse and bail-out by the UK Government during the Global Financial Crisis, despite the hard work in the subsequent years, RBS/NatWest continued to face existential threats from that legacy. On top of that were heaped additional challenges from the digital upheaval of the banking industry, the decision of the UK to leave the EU and, most recently, the Covid pandemic. Until stepping down in February 2022, as leader of the bank’s Legal, Governance and Regulatory Affairs function, I was privileged to be a member of the CEO’s Executive Committee, as we achieved one of the most remarkable turnarounds in British corporate history.
These experiences, including periods of intense crisis, provided an invaluable education in leadership, both its virtues when done well and its dangers when not. This taught me that, for an organisation to thrive, it has to have great, authentic leadership at every level to remain valid and agile, despite a rapidly changing operating environment. In 2021, I therefore undertook the prestigious Mastered Programme at leading executive coaching institution, Meyler Campbell, to build on the coaching and mentoring experience I had gained during my time as a senior executive. Now, alongside a non-executive career of my own, I enjoy helping clients to achieve their own successes by drawing on that experience in my coaching and consulting practice.
