Creative. Leader. Strategist. Designer. Teacher. Coder.
Transformational multi-channel thinking with a digital heart.
I work in deep partnership with businesses, from global brands to early-stage ventures, providing them with creative, innovative, and strategic leadership. My journey began in video, 3D animation, and visual effects – I specialized in creative direction, CX strategy, and design thinking – all the while being conversant in code. I'm a capable hands-on technologist and have built and experimented with AI.
During my time as Executive Creative Director at Razorfish, I brought together over 20 years of experience and a diverse creative, technological, and strategic skill set to lead businesses, teams, and projects with a broad and distinct perspective. My comprehensive body of work spans almost every media channel from digital to cinema – ranging from strategic business transformation initiatives to digital platform and mobile app development; and from consumer campaigns to online games. Throughout my agency career, I delivered multi-award winning work for some of the world’s largest and most distinctive brands including the Sydney Opera House, Qantas, P&O Cruises, Samsung, Holden, Pepsi, and Xbox.
I stepped away from agency life in 2017 to pursue my passion for driving innovation and creating better customer experiences in the realm of startups. I've worked on multiple early-stage ventures and later stage scale-ups as an independent consultant, including Carma (automotive), PetCulture (pet e-commerce), Prezzee (digital gift cards), Laava (authentication), and Humanforce (workforce management SaaS). I've also provided the same expertise and creativity to solving challenges for some of the world’s largest businesses, including Amazon AWS and the Adecco Group.
Over the second half of 2019 up to the present, I have been working on new projects providing consultative creative and strategic services to both global and startup scale businesses. I am always open to making new connections, exploring next opportunities and tackling interesting problem spaces. If you believe my skills are a good match for what your business needs, then please do get in touch.
Over a two year period I worked closely with Laava ID, an early startup business in the product authentication and serialisation space both as a consultant and a seed investor. My work establishing Laava focused on working across the Experience Design, Engineering and Commercial teams to architect a range of Laava’s core product systems, as well as providing leadership to the Experience Design team. I also supported brand development, marketing and customer experience strategy initiatives. Laava will move into a Series A stage in early 2020.
In early 2018, I worked as a consultant for Humanforce, a SaaS business in the workforce management sector. My services included strategy and implementation of a complete brand overhaul and relaunch and operationalisation of marketing as an in house business function. I also worked with the leadership team in developing the marketing strategy to support an investor pitch leading to the successful capital raise of A$22.5M through Accel-KKR.
I spent well over a decade of my career as part of the team at the global digital agency Razorfish. I joined in 2006, starting out as a Senior Designer and grew with the business to lead the Australian creative team as Executive Creative Director. Over these years, I worked with a vast array of global and local brands to create highly effective, unique and customer-focused communications and platforms. I’ve headed up design and UX for projects working with Qantas, Samsung and the NSW Government’s two environmental arms: the Office of Environment and Heritage, and Environment Protection Agency. My most significant body of work and proudest achievement there was to write Sydney Opera House’s digital strategy and lead the creative effort of a 15-month project to overhaul their website and online ticketing platform.
I was immensely fortunate to land a role at the Neo One advertising agency while still studying at university. I learned a tremendous amount thanks to the mentorship of CEO, Michael Blumberg and the team there and grew my skill set over my first years in the industry to help spearhead Neo One into new territory. I worked with the business to establish broadcast as an internal capability and start offering digital and web services to clients.
I taught students across several semesters at Miami Ad School across two key subjects: Visual Impact and Gaming Concepts. I have also assisted the school with the running of a Strategy Planning Bootcamp as well as providing advisement to the school board.
Over the past decade, I have had a close involvement with the video game industry, driven by my personal passion for game design. In 2009 I won a grant from Unity to develop the Terrain Toolkit, a set of terrain design tools that have been used by tens of thousands of Unity game creators. This spurred me on to found my own indie game studio, which started by producing a range of design tools for the Unity Asset Store, and then went on to commence the production of my own game title. This game, Dawn of the Tyrant, is a gothic fantasy RPG with a unique feature – a system that allows the player community to affect the progressive storyline of the game. Dawn of the Tyrant has been previously exhibited at PAX Australia and is currently available for Early Access.
Over the years I have also been a mentor, an IAB Creative Showcase judge, and have spoken at a number of events including the Australian launch of Optimizely and at the Sydney Opera House.
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