A living document · Updated June 2026

Leadership README.

If you're reading this, we're probably working together. This is a short guide to how I think, how I work, and how we can do our best work together.

This isn't set in stone. If something doesn't ring true, tell me. Ask questions, challenge my thinking, and help me improve it.

It won't do the real work for us. Trust gets built in the actual conversations, not on this page. But I'll point back to it now and then, and I'll expect you to hold me to it.

Why I do this

The thread through my whole career is the same: from bringing transparency to blockchain UX, then helping people save money with humour, and now helping people learn AI by using AI.

I want people to feel limitless, safe, free, brave, wild at heart, even in old age. That's a mindset worth protecting. Technology at its best liberates people. That's the version of it I'm here to build.

How I view success

I'm not the leader who waits for perfect conditions. I'm the one who works inside the actual ones.

My job is to set the team up to do their best work: clear direction, room to make calls, a high bar, and cover when it gets messy. Getting the right people firing is 60% of the game. Clarity and pace are the other 40.

That's the theory. For the practice, see the testimonials from people I've led, and the case-study deep-dives in my work.

What are my priorities

  • Build the team.Hire, coach, and hold a high bar. People is the whole game.
  • Make design matter to the business.Tie the work to customer value and ship it where leadership can see it.
  • Lead from the front.I set direction and clear the path. When craft matters, I'm in the work.

How I work

  • Trust first.You're good at your job and you can do it better than I can. My job is context, decision rights, and air cover. Then I get out of the way.
  • Bring yourself, not a work version of yourself.I'll adjust to how you work best, not the other way round. If something about how I operate doesn't fit how you operate, tell me, and we'll change it.
  • Send a regular written update.In your project channel, every two weeks. Two lines is fine, e.g. "Onboarding test is live, two variants, blocked on copy review." Going quiet is what makes me nervous.
  • Show over tell.Bring me rough work and early problems. I react better to a real prototype than a polished story about one. A clickable flow beats a deck describing the flow.
  • Customer obsessed.Thirty minutes every morning reading product feedback, then thirty minutes of maker time turning what I read into fixes for the bugs and problems behind it.
  • Build the mechanism, not the one-off.When a problem keeps recurring, the answer is a paved path (a rubric, a scaffold, a template) that the team pulls from. I'd rather build it once than solve it twelve times.
  • Imperfect progress.I'd rather see it at 60% this week than 95% next month. Speed of learning is the game. Pace over perfection. Think days, not weeks.
  • Own the decision.If a decision is yours, it's yours. I won't overrule you. I might try to persuade you. Disagreement isn't bad judgement.
  • The right question moves things faster than the right answer.When a decision is stuck, the unblocker is usually a dependency no-one's named. I'll ask it.
  • Disagree, then commit.Bring me your sharpest counter-view, in writing, before the call. A Slack message or a doc comment is plenty. Once we land, we move together.
  • I'll tell you the truth, even when I can't tell you everything.Sometimes there's news I know before you can. I won't lie to you about it. I'll say "I can't talk about that yet" and you'll know there's something to come back to.
  • I write things down.A lot. You'll see decisions and conversations turned into docs so nothing gets re-litigated.

What I expect of you

  • Be a driver, not a passenger.Own your patch end-to-end. If something's broken, fix it or flag it, instead of waiting for someone else to notice.
  • Design like AI is in the room.It is. Every brief starts with how would an agent do this? and what's the human-shaped part only we can do?
  • I touch grass daily.Something offline, no AI in it - it's how I stay good at the rest.
  • Prototype the answer.If you can test it in a day, build it rather than debate it in a meeting. The prototype settles it.
  • Know the customer.Read the research. Talk to users. The person closest to the customer usually has the answer.
  • Raise the bar on craft.Every screen, every word, every component. The platform is a B2C consumer product wearing a B2B suit. Treat it that way.
  • Bring your taste.I hired you for your judgement, not just your output. Tell me when something looks wrong, feels wrong, or isn't good enough.
  • Recognition turns into responsibility.If you ran something well, the next version is yours. Praise without scope is just decoration.
  • Bring me mistakes early, not buried.Everyone makes them. The only ones I mind are the hidden ones, and the repeated ones. Tell me, fix what you can, write down what you learned.
  • Make new mistakes.It's ok to make mistakes - just make new ones. If you're not making any, you're probably being too cautious.
  • Tell me when I get it wrong.If I do something that makes you want to leave, or that feels more like me telling you how to do your job than giving you context, tell me as soon as you can. You'd be doing me a real favour.

What I don't have patience for

  • Status as theatre.Long updates that hide what's actually happening. Just tell me where it is.
  • Asking for permission you don't need.If it's your call, make it. Don't loop me in to share the risk.
  • The "right way" argument when no-one's tried it yet.Build the thing. We'll learn faster.
  • Politics dressed up as concern.If you have a problem with someone, it goes to them first.

How I give feedback

Rhythm

  • Bi-weekly 1:1s.Fifty minutes, owned by you. Not for status, but for coaching, career, and blockers.
  • Coaching in the moment.Feedback in the work itself, not saved for a quarterly review.
  • Quiet isn't approval.If I've gone silent, that's not a yes. Worth a nudge.

Style

  • Direct, kindly.Specific to behaviour, not character. No vague "be more strategic".
  • Named and reframed.I'll name what I'm seeing, then ask how you see it. Usually the gap is the work.
  • Praise in public, correct in private.The default, with rare exceptions when the team needs to see the standard live.

What earns and loses my trust

Signal · noise

Earns it

  • Owning a problem to fixed, not just flagging it.
  • Telling me hard things early.
  • Keeping commitments, or resetting them the moment you know you can't.
  • Acting on feedback you've asked for.

Loses it

  • Hearing about a team problem from someone other than you.
  • Reporting progress that isn't real.
  • Talking about a colleague instead of to them.
  • Treating disagreement as disloyalty.

Where I get in my own way

  • "I think out loud."I'll talk through an idea before I land it. Ask me to bottom-line it.
  • "I look for one more data point when the call is close."Push me to decide.
  • "I ask questions when you wanted an answer."Say "I just want your view."
  • "I take it home with me."When someone on the team is struggling, I feel it. That makes me a present manager and sometimes a tired one. If my approach isn't working for you, tell me. I'd rather adjust than over-carry.
  • "I'm warm and direct at the same time."Some people read the directness as cold, or the warmth as soft. It's both. That's just how I work.
  • "I move between altitudes fast."I'll go from strategy to a pixel in one conversation. It's not unfocused, it's how I see the work.

The fit test

Hire me if

  • You're building, scaling, or untangling a design function.I've done all three. Love it every time.
  • Demos, not decks.Building and learning beats endless discovery. The work is the demo, not the slides about it.
  • The role wants direction and autonomy.I'll set both and ask for both.

Don't hire me if

  • It's a pure IC role, no team.I'll get in the work, but I lead through the team.
  • Design systems, brand, and research are seen as overhead.I treat them as growth multipliers.
  • You want a leader who just executes.I lead from the front by role-modelling the learning and craft I expect, not by running as an execution machine. A leader who only ships can't set the standard for anyone else.

Fun facts

  • A Londoner, born and bred, raised by a special needs teacher and a building surveyor. Between them I got the two things I still lead with: seeing people as they actually are, and getting the details exactly right.
  • My first job, at thirteen, was measuring bird seed in a pet shop — it taught me the bags don't weigh themselves.
  • I will always say yes to cancelling a meeting.
  • I coach people to be patient and I am, personally, terribly impatient.
  • I'm hopeless at sport but weirdly good with an axe; we make fire in the countryside and my husband cooks on it.
  • The fastest way onto my good side is baklava; the fastest way onto my bad side is a brave face when I've asked how you're really doing.
  • Widows and orphans haunt me, and a single word stranded on its own line will derail my whole afternoon.
  • I recharge on long walks and sound baths.
  • If you can't find me, I'm down a rabbit hole on deep space, the human heart, ancient civilizations, or modern ritual design.

Where this came from

Shaped by the user manuals of Emily Campbell, Julie Zhuo, and Thom Rimmer.