About

I’m a Cambridge-educated CFA charterholder. I’ve worked in asset-liability modelling for pension plans, and for nearly 20 years I served as a human resources consultant to emerging leaders inside one of the world’s largest and most admired sovereign wealth funds.

I’ve watched young professionals flourish, and I’ve watched them struggle under extreme expectations while helping steward decisions involving hundreds of billions of dollars. That experience gives you a long view, and it teaches a simple lesson: technical skill is necessary, but not sufficient. Judgment, steadiness, and the ability to stay human under pressure matter just as much.

I also taught the CFA Program across Europe, the Gulf, Asia, and Canada. Teaching thousands of serious people under pressure made patterns hard to ignore. The details change. The incentives don’t.

I didn’t only work inside institutions. I built my own training company, funded from my own life savings. I’ve hired, fired, managed cash flow, carried risk personally, and made the hard call to let something go when it wasn’t working. It stripped away theory and left real trade-offs.

At a certain point, I made deliberate changes for my own suitability. I stepped away from the global circuit and spent three years living aboard a classic sailboat on the west coast of Canada. Solitude removes performance and leaves a clean question: what holds when nobody is watching?

That question sits underneath most leadership and career decisions.

Why work with me

Most senior professionals don’t need more information. They need a place where the truth can be said without consequences.

That’s what I provide: a private advisory relationship where you can speak candidly, think clearly, and make decisions you can stand behind.

Three things tend to make this work different.

First, I speak your technical language. I understand standards, committees, risk, reputational gravity, and the way high-stakes environments compress time and narrow choices.

Second, I’m skilled at reading people, especially what isn’t being said. In serious rooms, the real information arrives indirectly: hesitation, over-precision, careful vagueness, sudden certainty. I notice those signals and ask the question that gets underneath the respectable story and into the real issue: incentives, fear, loyalty conflicts, pride, timing, identity, and the grey-zone realities people usually edit out.

Third, I’m independent. I’m not inside your firm’s politics or incentives. That distance makes candour possible.

Over time, people have trusted me with discreet matters that cross from professional into personal. I can hold secrets. I don’t flinch when the topic gets uncomfortable. I don’t judge the human complexity underneath difficult decisions.

What we do

I help you move from pressure to clarity.

Sometimes the work is leadership inside your current role: speaking with authority, holding people steady, making clean recommendations under scrutiny.

Sometimes it’s suitability: whether the role, the culture, the pace, or the expectations still fit.

Sometimes it leads to change, including a repositioning, a new ladder, or a sabbatical that finally makes room for clear thinking again.

The aim isn’t drama. It’s direction that holds.

How I work

We use plain language and real situations. We name what’s true, then identify what you can actually do. I listen for patterns, contradictions, incentives, and avoidance loops, and for the human underside: loyalty, shame, fear, pride, ambition, grief.

Then we choose a small number of next steps you can execute without needing a new personality. The pace is yours. Some seasons call for careful millimetres. Some call for bold moves. Either way, the movement is deliberate.

I also believe in experiment. Not reckless leaps, but honest movement: small tests, bolder steps when warranted, and decisions made in pursuit of roles and lives that actually fit. Deep down, most people know there’s something they long to do. The work is taking it seriously without turning it into theatre.

What changes when it’s working

What changes is immediate.

You get a loyal ally. A confidential place to unload the full, unedited situation without politics, HR risk, or peer consequences. You stop carrying everything alone.

Leaders can be lonely. This work gives you a steady human beside you, someone who understands the technical terrain and the private weight that comes with it. Over time, that trust can deepen. In some past assignments, it has even grown into a real friendship. Not the casual kind, but the earned kind that comes from truth told in confidence.

Then we sort it. We separate signal from noise, name the real constraints, and identify what actually needs to happen next. Some moves are small and stabilizing. Some are bold and decisive. Either way, you leave with a cleaner mind and a concrete next step.

Over time, decisions become simpler. “Not suitable” becomes a conclusion, not a private shame. And your authority strengthens, often before your title changes.