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- Born in the late 1970’s in Somerset, England
- During my childhood was dragged across Europe and the middle east by
my parent’s late hippyness (initially in a bright yellow cross between a
removal van and a landrover).
- Won a scholarship to Millfield School
- Grade A in lots of GCSEs (the exception was a B in English
Language)
- Grade A in French, Physics, Maths, Further Maths A-Levels and in a
Further Additional Maths AS.
- Captained the dinghy sailing team
- Gained sponsorship from the civilian side of the UK Ministry of Defence. Spent nine
months at their training centre before university and then worked each
summer at:
- GKN Westland Aerospace in
Yeovil
- The Guided Weapons and Surveillance Support Group in Malvern
- A (now dead?) start-up called Netcentric Solutions outside
Cambridge
- The Battle Group Battle Management System procurement team in
Bristol.
- Spent four years reading Engineering at Clare College, Cambridge University.
- Rowed, politiked, grooved and worked for a couple of start-ups
- BA (hons) first class etc followed by a MEng and later the
joke/honorary MA.
- Worked for Marakon Associates
for three years
- Strategy Consulting. Based out of London. On projects in Europe, the
USA and the Far East in Banking, Pharmaceuticals and Chocolate doing
Corporate and Business Unit strategy, organisation design, pay, new
business start-up and old-business shut-down.
- Got a big promotion and left to….
- Return to Cambridge to study for a PhD under
Dr Julian
Allwood and live with my soon-to-be-wife Catherine
- Got married
- Worked as a teaching assistant in the department while I …
- … finished my PhD, moved to Brighton and
started work with the …
- Carbon Trust in the
strategy team.
- Subject expert on emissions trading schemes, working closely with Professor Michael
Grubb.
- Worked on internal projects defining what the organisation could and
should do
- Helped to produce a whole series of publications
- Seconded to the Department for
Energy and Climate Change …
- Became a permanent civil servant in the department and:
- Created the new engineering team
- then took over DECC’s Futures team, part of the Strategy
Directorate
- then took my whole team to the International Climate Change
directorate, to help other countries replicate what we did
- whilst in the International Directorate, I also looked after the
forests, private finance and international climate finance team when
their manager moved on.
- then moved to the newly expanded Analysis Directorate, working for
the Chief Economist
- After eight years of commuting from Brighton to London (a four hour
round trip), I’d had enough and moved to a tiny firm in Lewes that helps children’s nurseries
- Went from a few people in the founder’s house to a grown-up firm
with a team of ten engineers and a million dollar spend.
- Spent lots of quality time with my children and fell in love with
running across the South Downs
- My wife fell seriously ill, leading me to step-back and care for her
and the children for a while
- Became interested in Effective Altruism and started
work for Give Directly who set
the standard for other charities to beat, by providing
no-strings-attached cash to the poorest people in a way that is quick,
efficient, large scale and well tested.