“I’m deeply curious, love to learn, pay attention to people, student of psychology, deft at communication, excel at networking, deeply tech-savvy, and relish growing others through education and leadership.”

Eric is an experienced global C-level leader who uniquely combines advanced software development, engineering, marketing, communications, and leadership to produce superior business results. Known for building, motivating, and growing high-performing teams ranging from 10 to 21,000 people while holding numerous executive and board-level roles. With over 17 years of direct technology experience, has developed a variety of innovative systems including well-known mobile, web, machine learning, and E-commerce systems.

Eric is a polymath with the ability to learn almost anything whilst being an expansive thinker. Not seeing the world as a pile of discreet facts but seeing it as a matrix of interrelated data. Finding solutions both in other established fields & creating new solutions.

Having worked in many sectors – private, public, community, political, non-profit, and government they have become an anthropologist of organization & office/remote cultures.

“As an experienced leader, I attempt to balance the needs of stakeholders and those of my team. I catalyze the growth of others by facilitating opportunities for achievement, leadership, and learning. I am deeply curious, love to learn, empathetic and thoughtful even as I remain proactive and decisive. I strive to build a positive, transparent, and constructive culture and I thrive in a variety of environments.”

You can find my Strength Finder results here:

Activator
Individualization
Futuristic
Arranger
Strategic

Career Summary

As an Executive and experienced leader with 20+ years total and 10+ years at the Executive level.

Leader – Held six Executive roles and six Board roles in the UK, Canada, and the US. Over 20 years of leadership, led 31 teams, led 21,000+ people, and £1.1 Billion turnover. I have led an organization of 300 people as President/CEO, and departments of 120, 400, and 21,000 people as an Executive.

Software/IT – 17 years of technology experience, worked on codebases (both mobile and web) and IT infrastructure over the last 9 years as well as leading IT services with 100 staff, for 6,000 users and 371 Schools for 3 years.

Educator – Over 2 decades of certified training including Executives, Ministers, and managers. As well as trained/coached people stepping into management for the first time

Communications & Marketing – 19 years of communications, marketing, and product work.

Global & Cultural – Have worked in 11 countries including the US, Canada, and Britain – England, Wales, Northern Ireland, Ireland, France, Netherlands, Argentina, Australia, Thailand, Canada, United States

Capabilities

Leadership – led by example, getting the best out of people and giving my best back
Technology – Software, customer & product development and high level IT management
Strategy – devising options, scenario planning, looking around corners, play to win, business model creation
Marketing & Communications – Social, digital, print, branding, market research, real life, I have done it all
Education – Mentoring, coaching, teaching, training & facilitation
Community – Politics, government & community engagement
Innovation & Creativity – thinking out of the box and other shapes, able to discern disparate patterns, intrapreneur and entrepreneur
People – High EQ, people politics, culture, conflict resolution, matchmaking and student of psychology
Organization Development – Alliances, mergers, restructures, change management, development, culture and real talent management

Leadership

Getting the best out of people and giving my best back

Eric has 20 years of leadership experience and 8 years at a senior exec level. In the UK, Canada, and the US. They have led several divisions in communications, marketing, technology, corporate services, and external service delivery (both corporate and consumer-facing). They led as CEO 300 people with a $3.5 Million Sterling turnover, with loss to profit and through a major restructure. As an executive, they have been responsible for, in one instance, departments of £71 million in revenues and 400 staff. Their board-level experience includes service as Governor for a British university (University of Hertfordshire) and multiple smaller companies.

To reinforce their experience and skills they took a number of postgraduate courses as part of a MBA program at Open University, UK. At MIT, US they gained a Certificate of Executive Leadership after completing a program of both in-class and online courses in June 2021. As well as taking on Executive Coaches throughout their career.

Throughout their career, they have led 31 teams and had 27 jobs where they have been responsible for both people and strategy, in private, government, and public sectors.

Their work has not gone unrecognized. On Linkedin, they have over 100+ Endorsements for Leadership and over 100 Recommendations with commentary on his management and leadership.

Sample of teams Eric was responsible for:

SpotHero – USA – 30 to 120/180 Software Engineers, Data Scientists, Business Analysts, Corporate IT, and SecOps
Yello – USA- 10 to 27 Software Engineers, six scrum teams – Campus Recruiting/Events, Native Mobile Apps, Integrations, Core API, Core UI
Enova – USA – 1 to 7 Mobile engineers in two teams, Android and iOS. 6 backend engineers within teams in Russia, Ukraine, and China
CastingWorkBook – Canada- 7 people -> 0 to 5 full-stack engineers, 1 Product Designer and 1 DevOps
Professional You – Canada- 4 people
Vision Critical – Canada- 12 people – Two teams one Creative and one Communications/Marketing
Cornwall Council (merged 7 councils into 1) – United Kingdom – 22,000 people, £1.1 Billion turnover
Cornwall County Council – United Kingdom- 400 people, £71 Million Turnover
Liberal Democrats – United Kingdom- 35 People
Consumer Association – United Kingdom- 24 People
NCDL/Dogs Trust – United Kingdom- 16 People
University of Hertfordshire Students Union – United Kingdom- 300 People, £3.5 Million turnover

Strategy

Devising options, scenario planning, looking around corners, play to win, business model creation

Eric is good at connecting disparate dots and paying attention to trends. They are a natural and trained problem solver. They own over 300 strategy games, and they believe in testing ideas out. Whilst their nature is optimistic, they plan for several eventualities. They have run hundreds of communication campaigns and participated in over 100 public elections in both the UK and Canada.

They have taught strategy to hundreds of students in several different fields. They have time in the tech startup community helped them learn how to build numerous business models and learn how to adapt them fast. With their insight into people, they are able to factor in the human dimensions to both the big picture and the tactical delivery.

Eric has had 25 jobs where they have been responsible for both staff and strategy, in private, government, and public sectors.

Their work has not gone unrecognized on Linkedin they have over 100+ Endorsements for Strategy and numerous Recommendations with commentary on their vision and strategy.

Eric led multiple campaigns to create Mission, Vision and Culture Values:

Multiple Organization alliances – NSPPC, NCDL, CA, CCC
Organisation wide Mission, Vision, Culture – SpotHero, Cornwall County Council, Professional You, Vision Critical/Angus Reid Strategies
Large Software Departments Cultural Values – SpotHero, Enova, Yello
New Business and Products – Vision Critical, Professional You, Casting Workbook, Enova
Governor of University of Hertfordshire – University of 21,000 students, £70 Million + turnover. Served on a number of sub committees and task forces including Strategic Information Systems Review and Student Recruitment.

Eric at Scale, I have led 21,000 people (through a merger of 6 different organizations), led 400 people which include 100 people IT department, 300 people as a CEO through a major restructuring and turned the organization from loss to profit, I have led multiple political election campaigns with 50+ people, working 18 hour days for 3-6 months, I have seen the worst and the best of people.

Technology

Software, customer & product development and high level IT management

Eric‘s passion for new technology is part of their DNA. Their father fixed mainframes for Digital/DEC, as a single father he often took Eric to work with him. Eric gained their first degree from the University of Hertfordshire, UK in Computer Science BSc Hons, and the IT consultancy (Pure Imagination) they set up at that time with a friend paid off his University debts and allowed them to travel the world.

Since then, they have been responsible for an IT department (over 100 people) serving 18,000 staff and during the merger described, was leader of the associated IT program.

Between 2011 and 2013 they took an Applied Web Development diploma and Applied Web Applications diploma, with over 10 courses with an average grade of 94% from BCIT, British Columbia Institute of Technology, Canada. They did this in the evening and on weekends on top of his full-time job. After they focused on building their Ruby on Rails capabilities, whilst working for Apple as a “Genius”.

In 2014 they went full-time as a Junior Rails developer. Working for a year as a full stack engineer they worked on multiple codebases full stack. In 2015 they were promoted to Product and Software Development Manager and recruited a team of developers and designers. In 2016 Eric moved to the US to work as a Manager of Software Engineering working on Mobile Apps both Android and iOS. They took courses at Big Nerd Ranch to further their coding skills on both Android and iOS. In 2018 they moved companies and are now leading over 20 engineers in four teams web, mobile, and integrations, as a Senior Engineering Manager. In 2019 Eric started to study Artificial Intelligence at MIT, in Multiple classes on campus and online. In 2020 Eric studied BlockChain at MIT and in 2021 they studied Cybersecurity at MIT. In 2023 Eric studied advanced mathematics and then studied Quantum Computing at MIT.

I have worked on production code for 16 Apps (a mixture of Web 10 and Mobile 6). I have worked on Infrastructure/dev ops (both on Prem and cloud) for five organizations (from owned hardware/servers, through Virtualization to the Cloud), with a heavy leaning towards Mobile CI/CD. I have facilitated Vision/Values and principles for three Software Engineering departments, one with 135 engineers, one with 50 engineers, and one with 7 engineers. I have introduced new technologies and approaches to software engineering in five companies. I have led Architecture in three different companies.

In terms of languages, I have worked in and released production code in Ada, Module 2, Pascal, C, Java, Lisp, HTML, JavaScript, PHP, Ruby, C#, C++, Objective-C, Swift, Kotlin, GoLang, and Python.

In terms of Cloud Infrastructure, I have worked in AWS, GCP, and multiple smaller ones both as an individual contributor and as a Leader.

Eric’s head is regularly buried in the latest sci-tech publication, in his spare time they build new applications.

Eric had 8 jobs as a Software Engineer, 1 as IT Consultant, 2 with IT Networks, 1 as a Department leader, 1 as an IT Trainer, as an Engineering Manager 9 teams, as VP Eng 22 teams, as a CTO 27 teams.

Examples Codebases

Yello -> Yello Enterprise web app, Yello Pro Mobile App (Android and iOS)
Enova -> NetCredit web app, SimpleCredit web app, Simplic Android App, NetCredit iOS App
CWB-> CastingWorkBook web app
MyBestHelper web app
LXVentures -> WannawatchIt. web app and Mobio web app
Big Mama Textbooks -> web app
Apple – web Retail Employee Appreciation site
PowerShifter -> Multiple Telus websites

IT Infrastructure/DevOps/CI/CD

SoilFlo PWA
Yello Mobile Only
Enova Mobile only
CastingWork Book – All systems including moving Hardware servers to Virtualization
MyBestHelper – All cloud AWS
Cornwall County Council – On-Premises Servers

Marketing & Communications

Social, digital, print, branding, market research, real life, I have done it all

Eric has worked in communications for 19 years, in both Europe and North America. This has included B2B and B2C marketing for businesses, brands, products, services, policies, and individuals in the private, non-profit, and government sectors.

In addition to leading divisions responsible for delivering core marcoms strategy and execution, nationally and internationally, Eric has also held roles responsible for advertising (print & digital), social media, employee comms, stakeholder comms, market research, information systems, information technology, product development, sales, fundraising, branding, public relations, CRM, VoC, public affairs and campaigns (political & charitable). This rare diversity of experience has facilitated Eric’s success in breaking down silos and building strong inter-linkages between practices.

Eric does not just work behind the scenes, but has been a public spokesperson for organizations and campaigns in countless media appearances and print interviews, and has frequently addressed audiences both large and small as a public speaker.

Eric has had 31 jobs in Communications & Marketing.

Education

Mentoring, Training and Facilitation

Eric has trained many hundreds of individuals: from business leaders & executives to campaigners, candidates, and politicians, to youth & students. Eric’s training includes management and communication skills, media training, public speaking, negotiation, organization development, and conflict resolution, as well as desktop publishing, IT networks… and scuba diving. Eric has accreditations from a number of national organizations in training and also in training trainers.

Eric has also facilitated multiple strategic management sessions including one recently to establish a vision for an alliance between Petrochemical businesses in Canada as well as having acted as an independent chair for alliances.

Eric frequently takes on mentoring as a fundamental aspect of their management style and helps mentorees understand their key drivers and values, and to make fundamental decisions their own way.

Eric has had 10 jobs as a instructor/trainer.

Examples of Education roles:

Mentor @ 1871 – Provide mentorship, time and expertise for the benefit of member companies (Startups)
College Instructor – Part-Time evening and online instructor in Marketing and Communications
Associate – Facilitation multiple away days, mission setting for multiple management teams
English Teacher – I gained my TEFAL (Teach English as a Foreign Language)
Rescue Diver (PADI) – Supported training of 100+ scuba divers
Activist Development Manager – Trained over 500 activists including government ministers, politicians and activists.
Trainer (Liberal Democrats) Trained hundreds of political candidates and activists in election and communication skills
Training Consultant – Trained 1,000+ teenagers in campaign development and lobbying
Regional Trainer – Taught 100’s in management skills over 6 years
Network Technical – Design and educate setting up IT networks
IT Software Trainer – Desktop Publishing

Community

Politics, Government and Community engagement

Eric’s keen sense of social justice in communities is borne of his personal experience being brought up in the foster care system. They have been an advocate and elected officials in a number of capacities – as well as political advisers to Government Leaders and Parliamentary MPs.

As an elected politician for over three years (in the UK), Eric both campaigned at the grassroots level to build solutions for his constituent communities, as well as working at the macro level as a Cabinet Member responsible for delivering Communities and Cultural Services to a region of 500,000 individuals.

Within Canada, Eric was one of the core members of the successful Startup Visa Campaign and they were Vice-Chair of the Active Transportation Policy Council (for the City of Vancouver, BC). Whilst in Chicago Eric was a mentor for 1871 helping others form new businesses and tech companies.

Consequently, Eric is uniquely placed to provide strategic advice, understanding the total picture of the inter-relationships between individuals, communities, representatives, and businesses. Their insight into community-building has particular pertinence today for clients looking to understand the formation of virtual communities.

Eric has worked in 110 election campaigns, has stood and won 17 positions, and being elected to public office. With responsibilities ranging from volunteer to nationwide head of campaigns. They have sat on 7 committees in a senior capacity. Worked in 6 non-profits as campaigns lead, running a large number of issue-based campaigns. In addition, they have volunteered for a large number of organizations.

Innovation & Creativity

Thinking out of the box and other shapes, able to discern disparate patterns, intrapreneur and entrepreneur

Eric has been described as someone whose thinking simply cannot be put ‘into the box’, and who refuses to be limited by disciplines or dogmas.

Their diversity of experience and active imagination enables them to make connections where other people do not. As a result, they have a reputation for encouraging creativity in people and challenging them to innovate new ways to meet needs, whether formally or informally.

Some of their favorite ‘out of the box’ accomplishments include putting libraries on beaches, getting marketers to learn from gamers on engagement techniques, harnessing Digital TVs to deliver health services, having run the most recognized charity campaign in the UK, and the idea behind their latest project Professional You which anticipates will make the resume redundant. It is worth noting that they are a very good cook, essentially because they are willing to try new things.

To further their ability to innovate and be open to change, Eric went to Second City (in Chicago) and took all five levels of Improv. Once this was completed they performed on multiple stages in multiple theaters. They also went to Annoyance Theatre and took not only the five levels of classes but multiple summertime intensive (week-long) courses with people from all over the world.

Erics’ favorite hobby is Roleplaying games and they have written multiple campaigns and scenarios (in multiple settings e.g. Fantasy, Science Fiction, Horror, Historical and present-day) and is the Story Teller/Game master with groups of friends and at Conventions (e.g. GenCon).

Examples of Innovation

Chicken Checkin post actual pitch
Encouraging Curiosity
Profession You – My Startup
Startup Vancouver Weekend 2011
Building a tech/startup/knowledge friendly government in BC
Hacking Health – Gaining a suntan in Whitehorse, Yukon whilst coding

People

High EQ, people, culture, conflict resolution, matchmaking and student of psychology

They have been “best man” five times and brought many more couples and friends together. Professionally they have brought some awesome teams together and they have led over 31 teams throughout his career. Perhaps it started due to Eric being a foster child and going to 12 schools (before college) and having to work out people fast.

Perhaps it is because they come from two very different cultures British and Argentine. Or maybe it is because they were an immigrant from Britain to Canada and then to the US. Or maybe it comes from starting in multiple careers always starting at the bottom of the ladder multiple times. Either way, they have failed a lot and learned.

Regardless their curiosity has led them to read an exceptional amount about people, psychology, sociology, and anthropology, spending the last two years studying most of the published psychology work for the last decade AND listening to all the MIT psychology degree lectures( via podcast), AND building a team of psychology advisers for Professional You. Either way, Eric is incredibly curious about humans.

Eric has been responsible for recruiting in 11 organisations – USHU, NUS, NCDL, CA, Liberal Democrats, CCC, Vision Critical, ProfessionalYou,Casting WorkBook, Enova, Yello, SpotHero
Types of recruiting including adding to a team, building an entire team, campus recruitment, diversity recruitment
Eric has built entire interview processes for Managers, Service Providers, Marketers, Designers, Software Engineers (Mobile, Test, FullStack, and FrontEnd), and DevOps.
Eric has been a leader through two mergers, one with seven organizations.

Organization Development

Alliances, mergers, restructures, change management, development, culture and real talent management

Eric has led and helped build a number of key alliances and strategic partnerships spanning private, public, non-profit, and government sectors. Through these, Eric has developed an unparalleled understanding of organizational culture and its development, change management, and alliance-forming techniques.

The Implementation Executive (Leaders from six organizations) merged six organizations (with a total of 22,000 staff and £1.15 billion in revenues), Eric’s particular achievement was to realize a culture shift from bureaucratic to customer-centric throughout the new organization. They later led a merger between a technology company and a market research company, 400 staff at the time.

They have led an award-winning public-private partnership in Digital innovation, and a nationally recognized program to reduce overlap and wastage between multiple service delivery organizations.

Success & Drive

Eric’s energy knows no bounds. Constantly striving to innovate and create, Eric brings vision, as well as his passion for developing both people and technology to every project. Campaigning and advocacy is in his blood – and it is this drive to succeed, as well as diverse experience and exceptional ability to see the big picture, that makes him a considerable asset to any organization.

Eric left school at 16 and started his working life in a restaurant kitchen at the age of 14.

More than work?

My mother was Argentine, my father British and I chose to become Canadian.

People

I love to have good intense conversations about things that matter and my friends cross all ages, sex, genders, sexual identities, trans, races, politics, cultures, and nationalities. I love to learn from others

Table Top Roleplaying Games(RPGs)
I have been playing RPGs for a few decades, starting out with Dungeons and Dragons and quickly evolving to many other RPGs – I love creating new worlds, and writing interesting scenarios for players to explore – keeps the imagination alive and well, whilst also entertaining a group of friends. You can see most of them on Board Game Geek -> Roleplaying games,. I have run many sessions at Conventions for strangers and introduced them to new worlds and rulesets. I also enjoy the odd Board game – Board/War Games. Most years I go to GenCon and other conventions and play and run sessions.

Reading

I own about 3,500 books and in-fact have a small library. You can see most of them on GoodReads

Cooking
My third career (Pre University) started as working in a Kitchen cleaning dishes and I left the career as a Head Chef at a Four Star Restaurant

Strength Training

I got into this after working two years without any breaks – daytime worked at Apple, evening studied at Community college and weekends worked for multiple Startups as a Software Engineer my doctor told me I will die unless I got healthy, over 10 years, strength training has given physical and mental healthiness

Traveling

I have visited and some I have lived in e.g. England, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland, Ireland, France, Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Spain, Italy, Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, Australia, Thailand, Vietnam, United States, and Canada

Writing

Started with a lot of writing at work, and then blogging and recording my journey (my augmented memory), and then RPGs, and multiple short stories

Improv – Trained at Second City & Annoyance. Performed on multiple stages and multiple groups

Other Hobbies – Scuba Diving (PADI Divemaster), Hiking, Computer gaming, Skiing

Updated March 2023