I tell stories. They come in every shape, size and format a creative can find. And this one's mine. Here are the chapters so far. And the ones I've left out? Well, they're for another time…
It's taken me to far-flung corners of the world, capturing fleeting moments never to be seen again – from filming a polar bear family and a pod of 100 beluga whales in a single day, to basking sharks rising from the ocean depths. I've told the stories of extraordinary humans – indigenous Korean free divers, arctic row expeditionists and nature's most respected conservationists.
It's led me to being sat behind the wheel while an Icelandic blizzard tried to take the 4x4 with it. To 3 months of a year spent in quarantine. And when I'm not on location, I'm behind a desk, concepting ad campaigns and driving fame for global brands. And whatever the story, whatever the format – the goal is about getting the world to talk about it.
I started in graphic design and became the UK's top young designer, earning a place on a 2 year cycle for Team UK at WorldSkills – “the Olympics of Skills.” Over 1,000 competitors. 51 countries and regions. One category, design, one seat for the whole country. Over 100 days of training and elimination later, the squad was cut down to a final team of 43. I made the cut, won a Medallion for Excellence in London 2011, and picked up a shortlist as a London 2012 Olympic Torchbearer along the way. While I was still cutting my teeth, repeat trips over 4 years took me touring China as a Creative Ambassador for the British Council – creative workshops, TED-style talks broadcast live on QQ and Tencent, and a stage talk to a stadium field of over 6,000 students.
From frog Munich to AKQA London, I worked my way up from designer to Art Director – moving from design into creative concepting, leading digital business transformation and digital advertising for global brands: products, services, platforms, entire customer experiences, for names like Red Bull, M&S, Rolls-Royce, Audi and Barclays, to name a few. Six back-to-back new-business wins came with it. I carried that same craft into TribalDDB, deeper into digital and social advertising, with Volkswagen as a lead client alongside Walls and Lipton and many more.
By 26 I was a Creative Director at adam&eveDDB, one of the world's most awarded creative ad agencies – leading teams and concepting fame-driven, 360 campaigns for brands like PlayStation.
On the side, I picked up a drone and started shooting the natural world from new heights. Photographer of the Year rolled in. Features in Forbes, WWF and National Geographic. Hundreds more awards and nominations. That side hustle became a second career. I wrote, directed and exec produced a slate of original feature films in a year, shot around the globe from Jeju island to the Arctic circle – 20+ nominations, finalists against Netflix and the BBC at Jackson Wild, the “Oscars of Nature,” a Director's Vision Award in San Diego, and a best-in-show Heinz Sielmann Award that earned our film Wild Isles a floor plaque on Germany's Green Screen 'Walk of Fame', laid alongside My Octopus Teacher and Blue Planet II. I founded Newyonder Studios and its curated streaming platform, scaling it from that original slate to 500+ hand-picked titles that 'take subscribers on a journey across the globe from their sofa', and exited on acquisition, which continues today out of LA.
Most recently, as a entertainment studio consultancy, I ran Development for Uncommon Creative Studio, spearheading brand entertainment as a new vertical from the ground up – the blueprint, the commercial model, the creative framework – developing original IP and creative across feature biopics, documentaries, factual entertainment series and original formats, turning it into entertainment that's strategically and commercially buyable, across a roster of global brands spanning sports to aviation.