Position: Head of Technology Platforms and Data Science
Period: February 2017 – Present
Insurance Australia Group is the largest insurance company in Australia, with famous brands like NRMA and CGU. ROLLiN’ Insurance is its newest brand, launched in 2021 on the ashes of an internal startup (RIP Poncho Insurance), with a proposition designed with the intention to resonate with a younger customer cohort.
I was given an opportunity to lead the design and development of the operating model and technology platform that underpins ROLLiN’, and today look after thirty’ish humans that focus on SaaS application configuration and development, security and operations, solution design and architecture, release definition, planning and management, data science and analytics, and test automation and quality assurance.
We leverage state-of-the-art technology and services from companies like Amazon, Google, Salesforce, Atlassian, Vercel, GitLab and Snowflake. We work to a high-velocity release cadence via lean/agile practices. We are somewhat experimental, contextually ambitious, and it always feels like we are just getting started. We have won a bunch of interesting awards over the years for some of this stuff.
I spend a lot of my time working on and communicating a vision for the service we provide to customers and colleagues, coaching people and teams, challenging assumptions, negotiating, tracking and reporting and thinking about how to keep up with what the future might bring. I’m occasionally compelled to communicate some of this to audiences of over-caffeinated strangers at live events.
I’ve worked for IAG for nearly twice as long as any other company in my career because it’s remained interesting, and the people are generally great. I’ve been given a lot of autonomy and agency, and I’ve been able to positively influence the careers of a large number of people with challenge and opportunity.
While some people consider it an un-sexy industry, insurance has existed at a local community level for thousands of years, to smooth out life’s losses and wins and to help people on their toughest day. This resonates with me. Could the industry be better? Could it cost less and be more relevant? Are there parts of the industry that make me cringe?
Sure. That’s the opportunity. To help more people recover, faster. To move from recovery services to prevention services. To be part of the solution and less of a critic.
2014 - EY
Position: Director | Financial Services Operations, Digital Advisory
Period: December 2014 – January 2017
EY is a global consulting firm, and one of “big four” that has significant outposts in Australia. For two years I was part of a new “digitally savvy” team that a number of local partners decided they needed, responding to the queries and questions of their clients and the demands of the market. Initially I was encouraged to repeat the process I had learned and practiced at Accenture; to engage with partners to understand opportunities, help write proposals and pitch work to senior executives, to find people and or external agencies who could deliver this work, and staff and manage them if the bid was successful. To understand trends and translate them into roadmaps for improvement. To form alliances and get deals done and work delivered.
This proved fairly difficult in a competitive and saturated market, with the bigger firms having a significant advantage in their operating models and offshore delivery centres, but I was lucky enough to sell and work on a couple of interesting projects in Australia, Hong Kong and Singapore, hire and mentor a large number of people, and spend less time in airports and away from home and family than I had for four or five years.
My time there also helped me to confirm my suspicion that consulting was no longer a career path that I wanted to pursue, mainly because most of the staff are not making choices as to what clients they work on and why. One does the work that brings chargeability, not necessarily challenge, and with little regard as to the alignment of social impacts or to the relative value of the work.
Helping a bank get a better return on its marketing investment is a cognitive challenge, but the outcome is difficult to feel proud of. Helping a company update its ancient core technology to make it more attractive to buyers is really difficult to do, but you are not incentivised by or emotionally invested in the outcome. Ramming square pegs into round holes to get work done helps some people learn new skills, but it also breaks a lot of pegs.
When the new unit was disbanded, I actually felt a little relief, and I hoped to get the chance to do something with a little more significance with my next role.
2010 - Accenture
Position: Director | Accenture Interactive, Digital Advisory
Period: September 2010 – September 2014
Accenture is the biggest of the “big four” consulting firms, with hundreds of thousands of people working in specialty areas in countries all over the world, with headquarters in the US. Providing a wide variety of services to some of the biggest brands and companies, I was invited to join a team that was focussed on delivering customer-facing software and services with modern applications and agile practices. Globally, we numbered in the low thousands, but in Australia, there were less than ten of us, and many had joined as part of a technology acquisition.
As a director, it was my job to engage with partners to understand and help respond to tenders or to extend the scope of work being delivered to existing clients into adjacent (“digital”, customer facing) areas. I had to articulate problems, identify the complicating factors and propose solutions, identify teams and people and technology and delivery models with research and frameworks to make a compelling offering to partners and clients.
It was often extremely interesting and challenging work, with long hours. I worked across industries that included retail, utilities, government services, telcos, media and finance. I networked with great people already at Accenture and brought them into the interactive practice, and was constantly attempting to hire ahead of demand.
I also travelled a lot, both up and down the east coast of Australia and overseas, with the US and Singapore being my most frequent destinations. At first this was ok - I was doing what needed to be done to support my growing family financially, and not being home for a few nights every second week and a week or so every couple of months felt like an acceptable trade. The romance of travel wore off after a nine-month period of being in Melbourne for several days every week, and I focussed on bringing remote working practices to my projects, reducing costs for clients and opening up offshore delivery options (as well as keeping me in Sydney more often).
While I was part of teams that were selling and delivering some pretty impressive things, some of which had direct and positive impact on real people, over time I found myself being dragged into more and more opportunities that were not aligned with my values. For the most part I was able to avoid the partners who had clients that I didn’t personally want to provide services to, while growing the revenue of the interactive practice and dealing with internal restructures and brand adjustments. Eventually though, my boss left due to the diminishing autonomy and shifting focus of our practice, and I ended up reporting to someone who’s lifestyle choices made it hard to respect. He brought with him a gambling client that I refused to work on, and a way of delivering work that I saw as wastefully inefficient. Though I tried, I failed to get support for my dissent from other partners, and this proved to be the end of the line for me at Accenture.
I met some truly amazing, smart and driven people while I was there, the majority of whom went into industry-side roles over the years. It gave me a great deal of confidence to be able to bring what I had learned from my time in media and agencies into a top-tier consulting company, and exposed me to start-up thinking within a corporate environment as a way to get change done.
2006 - News Limited Australia
Position: Head of Technology | Digital Media |Carsguide.com.au
Period: September 2006 – September 2010
After nearly a decade of short-term project management gigs in agencies, I was approached to move industry-side with a technical leadership role reporting to the CTO of Australia's largest media company, a chance that I jumped at. The recruiter was helpful and engaging, the role was interesting, and I was ready to focus my career on something more technically demanding. I spent the weeks leading up to the interview researching and studying as many angles as I could, being ready to answer a wide-variety of questions.
When I met the CTO Tom Quinn, I was a little nervous, but he couldn’t have been more warm and encouraging, and after forty five minutes offered me the job, which I accepted on the spot. Initially I was asked to look after the modernisation of a vehicle classifieds online experience, and over time, our business became the test-and-learn engine for News while it invested heavily to keep up with the shifting media landscape, while customer expectations lept from print to digital. I was given the opportunity to learn about and run experiments with cloud hosting, edge computing, development operations, content management, search, payments, partner data integration, advertising, agile delivery practices and front-end frameworks.
During my time with News I gained a lot of confidence in my ability as an architect, leader, business partner, visionary, communicator and people manager. When Accenture came knocking, I felt ready to take another step up thanks to the opportunities I was given.
2005 - M&C Saatchi
Position: Digital Account Director
Period: July 2005 – September 2006
Moving to the marketing agency M&C Saatchi was a bit of a turning point for me, as I took a full-time salary for the first time in a number of years, and I’d mainly worked in specialist digital media agencies up until this point. It was a small team doing front-end design and campaign management, and I looked after a number of their largest clients. We delivered some great work, but at the end of the day, I found that I missed the technical aspect of application development, and found working mainly on marketing activities a little uninspiring, though I did work with a financial services startup and a large media company to design and launch their websites, both of which helped me get my next role.
When the recruiter for News reached out, my decision to pursue the opportunity was an easy one.
2004 - Wunderman
Position: Senior Project Manager
Period: November 2004 – June 2005
Helping to scope and deliver content management system based websites for international technology companies, with a small but fun team, on contract.
2003 - Hyro Australia
Position: Senior Project Manager
Period: July 2003 – September 2004
At the time, Hyro was a small but growing technical internet agency, with offices in a couple of cities on the east coast. I was offered a contract to help pitch and deliver content management system based internet presences, doing project management, information architecture and vendor management. We did some great work for some household names to give them self-publishing capabilities that changed their operating models and reduced costs.
2002 - FitSmart International
Position: Business Development Manager
Period: October 2002 – April 2003
This was a short-term contract to help with the launch phase of a startup online fitness app founded by ten Australian sporting legends at the time. It was amazing, and years ahead of its time (and not very successful, unfortunately).
2001 - Workhouse London, UK (Channel 4 Online)
Position: Project Manager / Developer
Period: October 2001 to July 2002
I developed an app that was delivered to customers via IPTV, as a proof-of-concept.
2000 - Dimension Data
Position: Senior Online Producer
Period: March 2000 to June 2001
After accepting a role with a small interactive design and development agency that was acquired by Dimension Data, I ended up working in a team of about ninety, selling and building websites for some household names, including a start-up mobile service provider where at launch, a world famous entrepreneur flew down Darling Harbour dangling beneath a helicopter.
When the tech bubble burst in the US, we all got fired.
1999 - Spike Networks Sydney
Position: Senior Project Manager / Producer
Period: February 1999 to March 2000
Spike was one of the first specialist interactive agencies in Sydney, and I was recruited to manage their largest client, a car brand. We worked on a couple of firsts for them, including an interactive new car showroom, online vehicle launches and the first network of used car dealers who were able list their stock on self-managed websites.
1998 - Telstra Australia, Sydney & Melbourne
Position: Project Manager / Online Business Analyst
Period: February 1998 to February 1999
My first contract role, and an interesting time to be at Australia's largest telco, while they were exploring internet publishing for the first time. I wrote code, administered servers, designed websites and managed databases.
1996 - OzEmail Limited Sydney
Position: Technical Support Supervisor
Period: September 1996 to February 1998
After the collapse of my first career, and with my second not paying the bills, I responded to an ad in the local paper for technical support engineers, and was a little surprised to both get an interview and then be offered a job, the eighth employee for this start-up internet service provider. It was wild. My starting salary was double what I had earned in my best year working in theatre and live performance, which certainly softened the blow of stepping away from career-paths that I loved. I worked the night shift, learned quickly, made life-long friends and used my people skills to firstly get good at managing customers and secondly at coordinating and helping other technicians, being promoted to supervisor after only six months while the team grew to somewhere near one hundred techs. Because I was a life-long nerd and loved to learn, I was able to keep up with the technical demands of rapidly evolving software, computers, networks and the internet itself.
