I graduated with a 2:1 degree from Queen Mary College, University of London, in 1996 and studied a PGCE at the Institute of Education the following year. Instead of a career in education I joined Hays Plc in 1997 developing specialist skills in recruiting professional finance and accountancy staff. This included a very successful spell working exclusively with public and not-for-profit organisations in Central London, where I first met Dawar, and then I continued recruiting accountants at Michael Page and then my first headhunting role finding Chief Financial Officers for start-up internet businesses across Europe in 2000/1.

In late 2001 I joined The Bernard Hodes Group where I spent over five years building and leading the Public Sector and Not-for-Profit Practice for Macmillan Davies Hodes, providing HR professionals to a range of organisations including Local Government, Police Forces, NHS and Charities. This led to the formation of Hodes Public Service an executive search practice where amongst other roles I worked to appoint the Chief Executives of Victim Support and RoSPA, a number of Directors for the MS Society, Executive Directors for Groundwork, and led the appointments of Chair and a new Trustee for Avenues.

The next stage of my career was with the now leading executive search firm in local government, although it was relatively small and growing when I joined. Here I honed my experience recruiting across most areas of local government at executive level as well helped build the offering in the Third Sector with significant Trustee appointments and non-executive appointments for organisations such as WaterAid, Shelter and WRAP.

Before Dawar and I set up Peridot Partners I led TMP Worldwide’s Executive Search Practice for Local Government and the Third Sector. I am proud of many of my achievements in this role including leading the process of appointing a Chair and 10 Trustees in a short timeframe, first time, for the new pan-sector skills body called Skills–Third Sector. I also led multiple national searches for recruiting some of the best Headteachers for schools and academies across the UK and appoint six critical third tier roles for the Royal Horticultural Society at a difficult time in their history.