An interest in the brain, the sea and superheroes

I was born in New Zealand but moved to England aged ten. We arrived in London on a very cold January day and it was something of a shock!  I had spent my childhood with a lot of freedom, building tree huts and clambering barefoot over rocks at the beach so it was very different. That connection to the land and sea and weather is still important to me. London quickly became home though and is still very much my home turf.

Absolutely not. I didn’t have a plan at the time, but I was interested in the brain, what we would now call behavioural economics, and how governments influence populations. It all equipped me wonderfully for later roles, in part because it taught me critical thinking which I think is a much-underrated skill that supports evidence-based innovation.  I also learnt the value of disagreeing constructively and celebrating differences of opinion, which appears to be a dying art.

I joined a top London Ad agency in a graduate role which was a structured two-year programme building negotiating, strategic planning and presentation skills etc. It was a very tough, commercial, and formative start to my career working across multiple sectors. I learnt a lot.

Seven years in, I’d had too many burglaries, bomb scares and too much time on crowded tubes so I took a three-month sabbatical to travel and remind myself there was a world beyond London and work.  The agreement was that my job and equity would be waiting for me providing I was sitting back at my desk in three months’ time, but on that appointed day I was climbing Franz Joseph glacier in NZ, wind in my hair and sun on my face. I had let my London boss know I wasn’t coming back which was a financially ludicrous decision but probably a very healthy one.

Back then we were called futurists and I suppose the demand was driven by the accelerating pace of change. Businesses needed to evolve at the right pace: move too fast and you alienate your client base, you are out in front with no market, move too slow and you lose relevance and market share. I spent time advising on where that sweet spot was.

Meanwhile, intergenerational blurring and other social changes meant demographics needed to be replaced by psychographics, the influence of age and gender was changing. I was increasingly aware that people often make irrational decisions, are driven by FOMO or fear of ageing, or a range of other fears, and have multiple personalities that come out in different situations. At the time, often traditional research and analytics couldn’t unpack that complex mix of drivers so I worked on delivering bespoke methodologies and insights that matched the challenge.

Partly because I had my daughter and just didn’t want to do the relentless travel anymore, but also, I had worked out that if you are going to make a change you need to do it from the inside. Over time my client base had become government and financial services, so I joined the Bank of New Zealand leading government and public affairs, sustainability, and complaints. Leading a complaints team for a business with over a million customers was an eye-opener, and gave me a far better understanding of people and money, and business clients going through economic cycles. I loved it. Alongside that, we underwent a wholesale once in a generation change in financial services legislation which was a great learning curve.

The role of Retirement Commissioner pulled together all my previous skills and experience in policy, communications, and behavioural economics and applied them to a thorny, complex problem: the ageing population. It will have a profound effect on many societies and economies, but it is fiercely political, not sexy, and not something anyone really wants to think about. It is a problem for tomorrow that needs attention today.

I spent six years on OECD Committees collaborating with forty other countries that are experiencing different rates of ageing and different policy responses. I used to describe it as the best job in the world with the worst title. (It is also one of the very few jobs where people regularly accuse you of being too young.)

Nearing the end of my second term I was wrestling with where home was, and that problem of having a foot in two countries. The family drove the decision in the end, and we came back to London, just in time to hit lockdown. I’m still passionate about the theme of financial resilience and I became a foundational Trustee of the Financial Times financial literacy campaign which we launched in 2021. I experienced the joy of being a consultant again, working across sectors and clients on emerging issues including ESG.

One of my consultancy clients was the JFSC. It took about 3 months to get the Jersey bug and work out I could do a challenging regulatory job I enjoyed with a great team of people, have the fresh air and the closeness to the ocean, but still be near London. A no-brainer really! Jersey is both local and global in quite a unique way. Extended family Christmas is only a one-hour flight away, Europe is on the doorstep, and my son gets to climb trees and clamber over rocks and run in and out of the surf for hours (as I did as a child).

Unwinding is all about the above (clearly with a strong sea theme). Time with family, cooking, eating and walking, and I love reading. If there’s any time left after that, and there usually isn’t, I paint very large canvases of superheroes.

My message to my younger self would be to stop buying useless stuff, it never satiates you in the way you think it will. I think the technical term is Affluenza. And spend your time wisely, it is a precious and finite resource.

Curious, measured, driven and hopeful.