Head of Risk at Surrey County Council (2023 – Present)
Leading, managing and improving risk management across an organization with 18,000 employees and annual expenditure of £1.3bn
- Building strong working relationships with the executive and senior management teams to capture the risk position at a Corporate, Directorate and Service level
- Creating a risk framework and strategy to encourage standardised ways of working that support organisations objectives
- Ensuring the approach to risk management remains up-to-date and in line with best practice
- Being a risk management subject matter expert
- Developing and maintaining the governance and reporting aspects (in particular to the Executive Leadership Team and to Audit and Risk Committee)
- Provide constructive challenge with Risk Owners when reviewing risks
- Having 1-2-1's with team members to further embed risk and give an opportunity to practically apply how risk management can be used to support their specific business areas
- Working with key stakeholders and external partners as required to identify areas of synergy and reflect robustness of risk management
- In 2025, a 'substantial assurance with no recommendations for improvement' rating was received from internal audit when reviewing risk management - the highest level achievable
Risk Consultant / Consultant at Soonamai Consultancy (Personal Services Company) (2020 – 2023)
Consultancy work for Surrey County Council and Catalyst Housing Group
- Surrey County Council - 2 years as a risk consultant prior to joining as an employee
- Catalyst Housing Group - Short-term assignment designed to refresh the current strategic risks along with the associated policies and procedures
Head of Risk at BT Enterprise (2006 – 2020)
Responsible for the risk management on 80 contracts with annual revenue of circa £500m
- Creating a risk management approach that was scalable, tailored to the specific market place and had the buy-in and engagement of senior management and wider BT Group
- Working closely with Group Risk and BT Risk Committee on policy development and rollout of risk management
- Chaired the Risk Resilience Group
- Supporting internal/external audit on all risk matters including any action plans
- Managing a risk management team as well as a small Programme Office providing administrative support and governance oversight for the largest contracts
- Promoting a transparent risk culture, acting as a trusted risk advisor and encouraging colleagues to address operational risks
Global Programme Manager at Vodafone (2004 – 2006)
Responsible for the end-to-end Programme Management for Vodafone and Partner Countries implementing 3G mobile technology – the largest project undertaken at the time by Vodafone
- Working closely with the senior management teams in 7 countries to decide on a 'go or no-go' launch predicated on the strength of the proposition and the associated risks
- By having a centralised PM launch function it ensured that lessons learned could be drawn upon from how well previous countries had applied risk mitigation strategies
European IT Programme Office Manager at Electrolux (1998 – 2004)
Responsible for setting-up and managing an IT Pan-European Programme Office (PMO) based in Brussels and Group PMO Headquartered in Stockholm
- The primary focus was engaging with the Heads of IT within each country to pull together their projects and associated risks to build a consolidated position to improve IT standardisation
