Oversight, content creation, and delivery of high-impact regional funding and business support programmes, including Scale-up 4 Growth Gloucestershire, the Digital Innovation Fund, and UWE Bristol’s Launch Space Incubator. In 2022, I worked with more than 30 founders as they built their businesses.

I worked for Oxford Innovation, where I was Innovation Manager for Future Space, Bristol. I was part of a wider network of Innovation Directors across the portfolio of Innovation Centres, each with distinct areas of specialism designed to deliver business support and drive business growth.

As Innovation Manager for Future Space, I was responsible for driving forward the innovation and business support agenda for the 50+ resident companies. This ranged from one-to-one support and matching to expert advice, to designing wider events and workshops, and peer group facilitation. I had oversight for all the business needs of the Future Space community, with a focus on driving collaboration opportunities between resident businesses and UWE Bristol. This included delivering a yearly fully-funded internship scheme, to bring in vital resource and skills for the resident science and tech community.As well as sitting on several regional forums, I also jointly led the Launch Space Incubator programme with the University, to further enhance opportunities for entrepreneurs and early-stage businesses to succeed and grow in the Region, and beyond.

Working in the Business Improvement & Innovation Team, I was responsible for developing and implementing the business’ innovation agenda, including Robotic Process Automation (RPA), and managing the business incubator –The Workshop – which aims to grow innovative start-up businesses. I was also responsible for driving internal and external engagement, in order to maintain a culture of challenging innovation and external recognition. Key to all of this is growing innovation partnerships, ensuring that the business worked with those who lead on areas of importance to the water industry.

Working in the Business Improvement & Innovation Team, I was responsible for leading a number of projects. My initial focus was to identify and assess potential initiatives that could make up our Transformation Programme, primarily to deliver efficiencies across the next regulatory period (2020-25), and to quantify the expected savings. Alongside this, I have been involved in new and innovative ways to drive improvements – one example is Robotic Process Automation (RPA), using software to perform repetitive manual processes. In early 2018. I managed the delivery of our first pilot RPA project, working across a multidisciplinary team to automate a time-consuming, and repetitive finance process. This delivered a number of benefits, including freeing up resource time to deliver other work, and future-proofing us against increased work volumes in this area. I have a great interest in driving innovation and new approaches to work, and I took on responsibility for our internal innovation forum. This is a platform for all employees to submit ideas on how to tackle business problems, or put forward a great suggestion to do something new. I facilitate this, and drive ownership in the business to investigate and implement the best ideas.

Working in the Customer Insights (CI) department at the UK’s largest retail and commercial bank, I operated across multiple projects. My main focus was the delivery of a ‘one stop shop’ for insight and analytics, giving the business visibility and self-serve access to the content produced across CI – the solution (a web-based portal) was rolled out to over 700 stakeholders and LBGs 200 Senior Leaders. I also managed the personal development of two Senior Data Analysts, building compelling visualisations (using Tableau), info-graphics and presentations to bring customer information to life. Further, I was an advocate for lean and Agile methodologies, and found opportunity to put forward suggestions on how to employ these techniques in the team, as well as coaching other colleagues in these practices.

Working in the Transformation & Change department for the UK’s largest water and wastewater company, I led a team of data analysts, comprising internal analysts and external consultants. I was responsible for the operation and strategy of the MI and Analytics function, including the design and implementation of effective MI solutions focused on understanding and improving the end-to-end customer journey. Using advanced analytical and data visualisation tools, including SPSS Modeler and Qlik Sense, my team developed and ran a range of highly visible reports, including weekly reporting of customer-focussed MI to key stakeholders. We were often required to respond to ad-hoc requests for insight and analysis from senior management and executives.Other responsibilities included: •Benefits - calculating the benefits associated with projects in the wider team. This includes assessing the potential for these projects to help the business meet and exceed its customer-focussed regulatory targets. •Analytics and reporting - team responsible for producing and running consolidated reports for various parts of the business. This includes weekly reporting of customer-focussed MI to key stakeholders, as well as ad-hoc analysis for senior management and executives.•Stakeholder management - My responsibilities required that I communicate with, be respected by, and influence the most senior stakeholders across the Wastewater Business, including in Regulation, Operations, Information Services and Retail.

As part of the Continuous Improvement Team I led short-term projects aimed at positively impacting customer satisfaction. These projects involved implementing lean principles and methodologies to deliver quality projects in a timely manner. I enjoyed working in this fast-paced environment as it gave me the opportunity to get involved in a diverse range of projects, seeing them through from an initial problem statement to implementation and delivery of benefits. This involved communicating with people from all over the business, analysing and interpreting complex datasets, and learning key project management skills.Key Responsibilities:• Leading continuous improvement projects across the end to end customer journey in both clean and wastewater network teams• Applying lean and six sigma principles and methodologies to manage the whole project life cycle from defining the issue and understanding root causes, to implementation of the change and associated benefit realisation• Working in line with project governance processes to ensure quality projects delivered to time and scope• Working collaboratively with stakeholders at all levels, and developing communication and implementation plans to ensure successful delivery of projects • Providing data insight and analytics to drive project development and realise project benefits. This includes designing and implementing project dashboards capturing information from multiple system reports to track key performance indicators

As part of the Strategic Wastewater Planning team, I helped to coordinate and write parts of the wholesale wastewater business plan and the investment area documents (IADs) as part of PR14. I have specifically written the Sludge Incineration IAD, detailing the preferred plan for AMP6, historical performance analysis, risk mitigation and the forward look for the sludge powered generators (SPGs) at our incineration sites Beckton and Crossness. I have also worked on other projects such as the technical appendices, business plan cross-referencing exercises and the Ofwat data tables. As a side project I wrote a document detailing how our wastewater performance data can be used to measure our sustainability.

Working with Research & Development as part of the innovation team. Worked on an individual project to help identify Fat Oil and Grease (FOG) build up in the wastewater network. I presented this work to the innovation team and managers, and I produced a report detailing my findings. This work is now being looked into further by the pollution prevention team.

I work in the Network Modelling Team. The team build computer models of the wastewater network and use real data (e.g. flow rates) to verify the models. Once verified the models can be used to, for example, solve flooding issues and understand where asset investment is needed.

* 6-week placement learning the roles of Environmental Health Officers within the Council. Placements in the Housing, Environmental Protection, Pollution Control and Public Health departments.* Tasks including air quality monitoring, water sampling, house and food inspections, contaminated land investigations and soil sampling.