From construction sites to AI systems; a non-linear path
I grew up across Southern Africa, the Middle East, and Europe before arriving at Imperial College London to study civil and environmental engineering. The programme was technical; I added philosophy and ethics electives because the engineering curriculum assumed you already knew what was worth building.
Alongside the degree, I served with the London Officers Training Corps (2006–2008), completing Military Leadership and Development qualifications. In summer 2007 that meant manual construction of a pedestrian bridge in Glenlivet, Scotland as part of Military Assistance to the Civilian Community. I also captained the Imperial College Squash 1st Team and became Club President, having never picked up a racquet before university.
Immediately after graduation in 2009, I joined a humanitarian engineering expedition to Bolivia as Foundations Section Lead. The project was a 24-metre span steel truss bridge in rural Oruro; my responsibility covered foundation design and construction, concrete mixing, timber procurement, and day-to-day liaison with the local labour force.
Three years with Bechtel on construction sites in Qatar and Australia. Field and office engineering on large-scale infrastructure. This is where I learned that systems work or fail at the point of human execution, not on paper.
Moved to Arcadis in Oman as a project manager. During this period I also began a serious meditation practice; my first extended silent retreat was in 2014. The two disciplines, structured project delivery and contemplative inquiry, have informed each other since.
The years between Oman contracts were spent travelling through Thailand, Nepal, Malaysia, Myanmar, Laos, and China. In 2015 I taught English at Mahamakut Buddhist University in Chiang Mai. In 2016 I completed a silent retreat at Shwe Oo Min monastery in Myanmar. Back in England in 2017, further retreats at Amaravati and Chithurst Buddhist Monasteries. That same year I managed a family architectural renovation project on Korcula, Croatia.
Transferred to Arcadis UK as a Senior Programme Analyst. Taught myself Tableau through self-directed learning, earned expert certification, and built business intelligence products across seven governance and assurance workstreams. Introduced automation through scheduled workflows and app integration. This was the pivot from managing projects to making data useful.
A year at Dataiku as Implementation Manager and Social Good Ambassador. Coordinated data science services for Fortune 500 and non-profit organisations. Managed the deployment of Dataiku DSS across multiple enterprise environments. Also served as the company's Social Good Ambassador, connecting data science capability with organisations that needed it most.
Left conventional employment in 2020. Spent the first years running analytics and AI solutions for Action for Change in SouthEast Asia (ActSEA), a regional NGO; training teams in analytics tools, mentoring university students, and coordinating development projects.
Now I work independently, helping organisations integrate AI into their operations. Current work includes building AI-powered briefing systems for a UK Amazon agency, synthesising five data sources into structured intelligence that account managers can use in under two minutes.
The thread across all of it is the same question: how do you take complex information and make it useful to the people who need it?