What is your role at Rise At Seven? 

Executive Director, Integrated Strategy. I head up the Client Solutions side of the business, which means our Strategy, SEO, Content, Digital PR and Social teams all line into me. My job is to stitch those teams together and help elevate the already amazing work we do for clients. Not by smoothing everything into some safe, blended middle ground, but by making sure we're delivering genuinely integrated work that's creative, commercially sharp, and impossible to ignore.

Where did it all start?

In a call centre, mostly. I was bored and completely lacking purpose. I'd studied TV & Video Production at college and always wanted to make music videos, but that hadn't exactly materialised.
What did happen was I got really into watching MMA. Like, properly obsessed. And somehow I managed to blag myself a position making videos for an MMA magazine, which snowballed into interviewing top UFC stars and even making a documentary. It was brilliant.

But the bit that changed everything wasn't the filming. It was the analytics. I became obsessed with seeing how people had found my videos and where they dropped off, and that curiosity became my way into the world of digital marketing.

I got a job in customer service at an agency called Latitude and from there was given loads of opportunities to learn and progress, including the chance to open the agency's first office in Dubai. I jumped at it. Arriving in Dubai for the first time (having never even visited) with all of my stuff in three suitcases was way out of my comfort zone. But that's exactly what I needed.

Shoutout to my old MD Richard Gregory for believing in me with that one. It was the springboard for the rest of my career.

Experience so far:

After Latitude I stayed in Dubai and led Paid Search for Emirates, which is still one of my favourite brands in the world. I moved back to the UK and consulted for a bit before working in B2B electronic components at Distrelec, then onto leading digital marketing teams at Thomas Cook Airlines, PrettyLittleThing, Chill Insurance, Card Factory and British Gas.
Across those roles I've been in charge of multi-discipline digital marketing teams, sometimes across global markets. 12 years on the brand side, covering everything from aviation to fast fashion to insurance to energy. It's been a ride.

What I’m best at:

Seeing the bigger picture and helping the people around me (and above me) see it too. I think that's where my brand-side experience really pays off. 12 years of sitting in the client's chair has given me a deep understanding of how high-growth and significant brands set themselves up for success; how they tick, how the politics play out, how agencies get hired and fired, and the role a great agency can play in taking brands beyond what they can achieve on their own.

What I’m known for:

Innovation and using technology as an enabler to do creative things. At PrettyLittleThing I pioneered their use of Machine Learning for marketing back in 2020, years before ChatGPT and other LLMs became part of our everyday lives. I've never been afraid to embrace what feels new and uncomfortable in marketing, and I've always been willing to challenge what's gone before or what an industry expects of a brand.

Strong opinion I have about my craft:

If your SEO team and your Brand team aren't best friends by now, you're doing it wrong. The two disciplines are more intertwined than they've ever been and true success will come from bringing both together. The days of SEO sitting in a silo and Brand pretending search doesn't exist are over. They need each other.

Fun fact:

I'm a qualified football coach, scout and opposition analyst and I volunteer as an Assistant Manager for my son's youth football team. The funny thing is I never seriously played the game as a kid. But I spent so many years playing Championship Manager and Football Manager that I genuinely thought, "how hard can it be to coach?" Turns out it's quite hard. But I love it.