Curriculum Vitae

PERSONAL PROFILE
I am an innovative and creative thought leader that works best outside of my comfort zone in a challenging role, where I can not only evolve my knowledge and insights, but also develop new skills. Over the past twenty eight years I have gained extensive experience in design and innovation, with a proven track record of developing award winning, sustainable and market leading scalable solutions.

More recently I have focused significantly on transitioning my career from a direct hands on approach to innovation, to one of strategy, leadership and the coaching of other creatives within my network.
I excel working in agile, creative, fast paced teams and environments, whilst also having extensive experience of building relationships with teams, colleagues and customers at a global scale and director level.

My comprehensive history in innovation and manufacturing has provided me with a unique ability to not only develop creative and industry leading solutions, but also ensure they are efficient to manufacture from a strong commercial understanding, as well as selling solutions to customers at a global director level.

KEY SKILLS

  • Strategic Innovation
  • Roadmap creation
  • Road map creation
  • Gap & opportunity identification
  • Setting up and development of expert networks
  • Customer pain point interviews
  • Innovation & design workshops or sprints
  • Innovation pipelines
  • Problem solving
  • Articles & presenting as an SME
  • Future scenarios
  • Customer experience events

KEY CAREER ACHIEVEMENTS

  • 14 National, European and International design awards for innovation
  • Presented at a number of European events as a subject matter expert for design, innovation and sustainability, as well as being interviewed on BBC Radio 4 and taking part in webinars
  • Creation of thought leadership articles on innovation best practice, sustainability and cost optimisation, which have featured in a number of industry publications

EMPLOYMENT HISTORY
Role held in addition to e-commerce Design Manager position and duties

2022 – Present
e-commerce Key Account Innovation Manager DS Smith Central Innovation Team (Global)

  • Through pro-active innovation, outperformed five current suppliers to increase the size of customer account from 34 million m² to 65 million m², whilst also securing a 2 year contract and further opportunities for over £5 million
  • Management of innovation pipeline and driving pro-active innovation for a global e-commerce key account
  • Single point of contact for customer innovation team, co-ordinating internal resources, ensuring most effective response to all requests for design and innovation
  • Established and developed relationship with customer innovation team to understand current and future innovation pipeline, creating new opportunities for business growth
  • Organise innovation workshops and design sprints to collaborate with customer on solutions for identified pain points
  • Support European manufacturing sites with granular cost reduction and optimisation project
  • Identified over 3.5 million metre² of waste savings on a single box reference

2019 – Present
e-commerce Design Manager DS Smith Central Innovation Team (Global)

  • Creation of strategic roadmap for e-commerce innovation, driving a pro-active approach for communication, resource requirements and mapping of projects to highlight gaps or opportunities
  • Development of the role to become the thought leader for e-commerce innovation and design, resulting in speaking at a number of European seminars and events, writing articles for industry publications and being interviewed on BBC Radio 4
  • Identifying the need for Next Generation e-commerce packaging solutions. Researching, developing and creating material to communicate internally and externally the opportunities and value. This resulted in not only the identification of a new material with a 325% performance increase whilst reducing material usage, but also a new structural design that required 18% less material and out performed existing solutions in supply chain testing
  • Developing new tools for the e-commerce design community to support greater scalability of innovations
  • Organisation and creation of testing events for new design concepts and materials, providing critical insights for the design teams
  • Creation and delivery of a Design Master Class, involving mentoring nine country e-commerce Design Leads and supporting the global development of our e-commerce design network by ‘Training the Trainer’
  • Courier and customer site visits/audits, researching and collecting insights to enable greater understanding and experience of supply chain pain points
  • Hosting of customer testing, innovation and best practice workshops at DISCS™ laboratories, enabling customers to collaborate and solve packaging pain points quickly and effectively
  • Organising, supporting and development of Design Sprint process for e-commerce innovation
  • Working in partnership with the Marketing Team as a subject matter expert to support external e-commerce campaigns
  • Creation of processes and documents for predicting the performance of e-commerce packaging in the supply chain

Role held in addition to e-commerce Design Manager position and duties

February 2020
September 2020 Technical Implant DS Smith CBU (Global)

  • Technical implant for global strategic project client side in one of the worlds largest food and drink companies Investigate opportunities for savings in supply chain, material, design and transportation
  • Created and developed scalable methodology to enable process to be replicated within other DS Smith customers
  • Development of tools to gain consistent and quicker optimisation results
  • Create transparent reporting method for customer, ensuring all value saving opportunities are presented clearly and enable the customer to deploy the optimal solution. balancing investment and implementation timescale
  • Established relationship with customers team members to become an integral part of the process
  • Develop graphics and visuals to demonstrate to customer full potential and opportunities for cost savings
  • Complete the seven month pilot project in lock down due to COVID-19, resulting in all connections, relationships, experience, research and meetings conducted remotely
  • Identified over £1,000,000 of savings during pilot project, over 70 product lines. Total customer lines of over 2,000
  • Deliver training and present to over 80 members of the customers Global Technical Team
  • Presentation of the project and methodology to the Global Improvements Team

2017 – 2018
e-commerce Testing & Certification Manager DS Smith Central Innovation Team (European)

  • Creation of training material and delivery to European Design Team in e-commerce best practice
    ISTA 6-amazon Testing & Certification Project Lead, including specialist training at the amazon.com laboratory in Seattle
  • Creation of DISCS™ e-commerce Testing Laboratory equipment, including research, design, budgeting and sourcing
  • Supporting installation of DISCS™ laboratory in Milton Keynes, U.K. and Eerbeek, Netherlands
  • Creation of DISCS™ e-commerce testing process
  • Creation of the e-commerce Life Cycle, which has become a foundation for e-commerce communication and training for DS Smith
  • Design, development and creation of e-commerce Customer Reviews and Auditing material
  • Presentations and participation in workshops with global customers for e-commerce packaging
  • Organising and hosting of European e-commerce Designer Workshops
  • Research programme using data logging into insights of e-commerce packaging through the supply cycle
  • Participation in the European Materials Innovation Team, supporting next generation material research and development
  • General design support to the Central Innovation Team on e-commerce packaging
  • Customer and vendor site visits, including amazon.com for auditing and external sales support
  • Marketing of managed projects internally and externally, to include creation of monthly newsletter and social media posts

2014 – 2016
Technical Innovation Manager DS Smith Launceston (UK)

  • Supporting the UK Pack Right Centres as lead designer for e-retail enquiries or projects
  • Develop marketing support material for the external sales team, which included the research, purchasing, introduction and updating of tablets for client presentations, as well as the creation of Sales Tool Boxes
  • Working with the European e-commerce Team to support development of e-commerce materials and the DISCS testing process within DS Smith
  • Presentation of new innovations to clients including data research, sample mockups, videos, animations and graphic visuals
  • Maintaining the electronic internal marketing storage facility and providing monthly updates to the external sales team of developments within the e-commerce sector
  • Supporting external sales team with marketing material including; new design innovations, presentations, videos, data sheets and images
  • Investigating customer complaints or technical issues which included site visits throughout the UK, compiling reports, finding and implementation of solutions
  • Responsible for testing of new e-commerce innovations, researching and creating testing and reporting process
  • Develop a proto typing and new customer area, including planning, sourcing and implementation of the UK’s first specific ecommerce testing equipment, as well as the construction of a meeting room with break out area
  • Hosting on site and external customer innovation days including; taking client brief and guidelines, managing innovation session, creation of initial concept, design testing, concept development and providing mocked up proto types
  • Researching current and the future e-commerce pack supply cycle to understand full requirements, including updating of electronic fully interactive e-commerce supply cycle sales and training file
  • Work in conjunction with the graphic design department and new business team to identify, brief and develop animations or videos to use for marketing or training purposes
  • Organise and visit courier sites, this included spending three days of unrestricted access to one of the UK’s largest courier networks and open access to pack testing
  • Creating support files for the design team to predict e-commerce box weights, pack recyclable percentages, e-commerce pack optimisation and performance
  • Updating and maintenance of the Plant Capabilities
  • Working with client briefs, develop creative ideas or concepts and supplying proto types
  • Attending events to represent and promote the e-commerce innovation of the Launceston site

Published Articles

Packaging Europe
The power of a millimetre in packaging design – October 2020
packagingeurope.com/the-power-of-a-millimetre-in-packaging-design

How can packaging increase sales capacity and profits during peak season?

Packaging News

Speaker Events

  • Deliver
    • 2020
    • 2022
  • e-commerce Packaging Summit 2022
  • Environmental Packaging Summit
    • 2021
    • 2022
  • Packaging Innovations 2021