1What’s different about Berkeley for our clients?
In a traditional consultancy there are inevitably pressures and conflicting objectives that can frequently result in clients' interests not being put first. The business model at Berkeley, however, is built on removing these and ensuring the right thing for the client is done at all times.
Just a few examples of factors driving this include the removal of the concept of sales targets, having significant dedicated Partner time to focus on client projects and not having alliances with certain ecosystem or platforms and technologies requiring to always be the correct solution to any shaped problem.
2What types of work projects excite you the most?
For my sins the two factors that appeal the most from a work project perspective are scale of impact and complexity. This can apply both from an early stage strategy perspective right through to large scale delivery programmes in the sharp end of implementation. I believe it is vital to have experience of both in order to be effective in doing either.
Whilst the work at Berkeley is incredibly varied across industry and nature, Berkeley is brought in when an issue or question is at the top of the executive agenda to be resolved which means the two factors mentioned will almost always be satisfied.
3What might people be interested in knowing about you?
Having always been passionate about sport I have developed a habit of entering challenges or setting goals only to then spend the time working out quite what is required to accomplish them!
The most rewarding of these to date was running the Marathon Des Sables raising money for Macmillan. This is a 6 day, 260km ultra-marathon in the Sahara Desert in which you cover 260km in the Sahara Desert carrying all your food and equipment.
I believe that, ironically, the skillset to succeed in endurance sport is extremely similar to that of consulting. Time needs to be spent coming up with an end goal, training strategy and detailed plan before moving into execution mode overcoming the many challenges that will inevitably come your way.
