Describe your career to date
Pretty eclectic! Entrepreneurial, having set up my first business – a data and print management business in my mid-twenties – to running a dotcom focused on online PDF editing and e-commerce for print in 2000, and subsequently listing it on AIM, and becoming CEO of a public company. I reignited my passion for data at Lateral Group, and later buying Wood for Trees, a data and analytics business providing services to the charity sector, and now the last two years at The Salocin Group has recently acquired Wood for Trees to add to our existing brands: Edit and Join the Dots. I would say the common thread that has run throughout my career has been putting the customer first, listening to and innovating with data, and always building trust with people through decency and respect.
What challenges do you see for data in the year ahead that will have an impact on your clients and on the industry as a whole?
The meaning of artificial intelligence (AI); it is such an overused acronym and the one thing it is not is artificial! But AI helps you grow, so it will be about cutting through the noise and identifying what is good and what is bad, while also making sure the right governance and controls are in place to protect brand reputation as well as people.
How are you developing the data literacy of a) your own organisation and b) your clients?
For everyone joining our business, we have a data fundamentals programme to ensure the whole team have a baseline knowledge and can always talk in the right context about data. Then, depending on the role, we help them build on that baseline. It is great to work with so many talented data folks, often just listening is enough for me to continue to improve my data literacy.
How are you preparing your organisation and your clients for AI adoption and change management?
Learn, listen, and learn some more, which will be an ongoing process with the speed at which things are progressing. We have an AI sandbox, which is a safe place for people to try out new things and build confidence in what use cases they can address and support both our business and our clients with. Through our partnership with Microsoft, we have access to some fantastic tools, including Copilot which are quick to learn and easy to help clients generate rapid value.
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