02 / EXPERIENCE
A view from inside the business.
My career has moved through finance, global operations, commercial leadership and the executive table, with a founder’s experience alongside it. Each chapter broadened my responsibilities and sharpened how I think about business.
EY · Eli Lilly · Harsco
Understand how the business works
I joined EY directly from school and qualified as an accountant. Mapping businesses taught me to follow the connections between decisions, processes, risk and financial outcomes. Eli Lilly added experience inside a major corporate; Harsco took me into international operations, acquisitions and industrial business models.
The foundation was commercial curiosity. Understand how a business makes money, what could go wrong and where the opportunity sits.
Burberry · Selfridges
Follow the customer. Question the machinery.
At Burberry, I saw a global brand take back control of its proposition, embrace digital and maintain strategic conviction through recession. It was also where a mentor’s recurring question, “So what?”, became a lasting discipline. Why should the business care?
At Selfridges, my remit expanded from group oversight into commercial finance, digital strategy and major investment decisions. Trading, customer behaviour, store productivity and capital allocation became connected parts of the same picture.
A strategy earns its value through the choices it changes.
Charlotte Tilbury
Build the conditions for growth
I joined after the majority acquisition by Puig, contributing to the value-creation plan and helping shape the operating model for the business’s next phase of growth. My remit expanded across international markets, business planning and organisational capability, before I took on the Chief People & Transformation Officer role, with responsibility for a global workforce of more than 3,000.
Working with the founder, CEO and shareholders, I connected growth ambitions to the capabilities, investment choices and execution required to deliver them. Taking on the People function added direct responsibility for leadership, talent and difficult decisions about cost and structure. Commercial discipline, trust and respect all mattered.
Delivering value means aligning the economics, the operating model and the people behind it.
Happy Bird
Put your own assumptions on the line
Alongside Selfridges, I co-founded Happy Bird. Raising capital, opening a restaurant and working through pricing and delivery economics made the consequences immediate. An appealing proposition still has to support a viable business.
The experience put my own assumptions to the test and sharpened my understanding of the decisions, pressures and trade-offs founders face.
A promising idea deserves a rigorous commercial test.