Business Analysis and Solution Design on large-scale transformation projects.

After leaving my post with Baker McKenzie I was very lucky to find an opportunity to refocus my career with Choice-Housing Ireland Ltd. I took up the role of business’ first dedicated Business Analyst during a major transformation period for the organisation. Choice has offered me the chance to develop and enhance my skills in business analysis, project management, change management and IT delivery in a really rewarding environment.

It quickly became apparent that this role was a poor fit and Baker McKenzie and I parted ways.Unfortunate, but there's always something to learn from these experiences.

I had a great role with Deloitte's expanding Transformation Services team where I headed up the Northern Ireland Change Management unit.The team included myself and eighteen young professionals, spending our time building easy-to-use solutions and packages to help our colleagues across the UK deliver change for their clients. I was fortunate to work with a brilliant young team, and together we built a new analytics service, a communications team, and a growing L&D business offering. We supported clients in all shapes and sizes and worked with some pretty interesting leaders on big, complex transformations. When we weren't working with clients directly, our team supported internal projects to help manage Deloitte's own organisational changes, and Deloitte is a very interesting customer.The team kept me on my toes with new ideas and interesting innovations. They were quite simply a brilliant group of people who worked hard and built a real bond with each other and our clients.But, to be honest, this brilliant young team hates receiving any form of congratulations, compliments, or 'self-promotion'. In fact, most of them detest the mention that they're an award-winning, globally recognised group of experts in multiple fields who have quickly built a powerful reputation within the firm as excellent representatives of Northern Ireland's talent pool for professional services and innovation, because statements like those embarrass them. Deeply.So, I definitely won't say anything like that.

Between 2011 and 2013 I was offered the opportunity to work on projects in both England and Northern Ireland as part of the DWP and the Social Security Agency, delivering new IT services, target operating model changes, and working with cross-government departments in preparation for the dreaded Welfare Reform initiative.One highlight was the opportunity to lead a small cross-government team to develop new processes, services, and IT systems across the agencies impacted by the Welfare Reform Bill in NI. My team landed some of the first Welfare Reform changes in NI - mostly back office but I thought still significant given the original difficulties of the programme. We had a lovely mix of policy, process, IT, behaviour, and legislative change to deal with - along with the usual fun of convincing very manual teams to automate some of their services. In 2014 I returned to the DWP and had the opportunity to join the department's emerging Web Operations team.In this brave new world, I established the basic technical services, introduced Agile practices to our internal project managers, and ran the communications and engagement pieces to help get our new little business off the ground. Where I enjoyed my role the most was leading a training and development programme to convert current civil servants into technical wizards and set up an apprenticeship programme to recruit school leavers into a pretty highly skilled area. I loved this job. It was my first L&D role and it was an amazing experience - I learned a lot from several gifted people, my own boss and a whole heap of teenagers and seasoned civil servants who had hundreds of great ideas and passions for better tapping into our existing talent pools :)Unfortunately, it had to end when a big opportunity arose closer to home.

Served as a Deputy Store Manager and later as a Store Manager across three of Northern Ireland's flagship branches.I managed a team of skilled and un-skilled staff across several key store areas (sales point, warehouse, fresh food) and consistently achieved high standards and exceeded store targets in difficult circumstances.

I joined the business as a work placement student during the first year of operation. I had the opportunity to run and maintain the business' web services and customer facing content as well as first contact sales and all online marketing materials.I helped manage the implementation and continuous improvement of the business' website functionality and capturing feedback on user experience.Our business grew rapidly in year 1 and our customer retention was 90%+. It was a fantastic experience working with front end IT services, a broad range of customers and managing my first supplier relationship.