The first thing you should know about me is that I have only just started working in a school.  I am writing this bio in early February 2019 which is the mid-way point of my first year ever working in a school.  That’s not to say that I don’t have any marketing experience.  I started my career properly in 1998 so have around 20 years of experience working largely in digital marketing agencies of some kind.

I started out rather randomly in Vienna, Austria, speaking no German whatsoever.  I coordinated media campaigns for International clients across Central and Eastern Europe working for Ogilvy & Mather and then the media arm – MindShare.   Just as the internet bubble was exploding in America and Western Europe it was just starting out in Central and Eastern Europe so I switched my focus from offline media to online media helping our agencies in the region establish some kind of digital presence. That started I then focussed on the Austrian market where I began MindShare’s digital department.  I was a founding member of the Internet Advertising Bureau in Austria and got digital numbers added to the annual media spend figures for the first time.

Eventually I wanted to move back to London and was lucky enough to be moved with MindShare in 2004 to the London office.  That was my first experience working in Search Engine Marketing jointly running a team of 10 focussing on paid search and search engine optimisation.  In January of 2006 I changed companies after 7 years with WPP to an independent search engine marketing agency with two arms – ‘The Search Works’ and ‘The Technology Works’.  It was then that I met my now wife, Lindsey who was working at the American School of London as one of their Librarians and the seeds were sown for the eventual move that I’ve just made.  I moved from the technology arm to the agency arm in the run up to that company being sold for a whopping £56m to the Affiliate Marketing Company – Tradedoubler.

I moved to Tradedoubler along with everyone else and performed various roles for that company until about 2011 when I was made redundant.  Oddly they asked me back as a consultant which started the consultancy part of my career.  I worked with a few different companies but spent most of my contract time in the last few years working for a website design and build agency called AWESEM (there’s a pun in the name but not everyone gets it)!

Lindsey and I had always planned to travel with her job once we’d met certain goals of our own.  We had a three year plan which rapidly became a 1 year plan.  Initially, I would go as a trailing spouse hoping to pick up work along the way.  By a fluke of circumstances there happened to be a communications role open at the time Lindsey applied for her job in the library.  Once the school offered me a job too it became a no brainer and before we knew it we had moved all our worldly belongings (including a dog), rented our flat in London and started at The International School Yangon (ISY) in Yangon, Myanmar!