About

The longer version

I started out studying primary education — qualified as a teacher, then a Masters in psychology. I then put two degrees and £50k of student debt to good use by going into B2B sales, where I was the top-performing graduate account manager three quarters in a row and closed the largest deal in the firm's history.

I was then headhunted to Nottingham Trent University, where I managed the end-to-end design and deployment of an institution-wide software training service. That's where I first got seriously into AI — starting with GPT-3, and eventually leading organisational AI training, contributing to policy, and co-authoring NTU's first institutional AI guidance document.

In that time I trained approximately 2,000 academics on how to use AI tools, founded the Trent Institute for Learning and Teaching's Generative AI Practice and Scholarship Group, and started giving talks externally to other universities, NGOs, businesses and charities.

I was then promoted to lead on institutional digital sophistication as Digital Confidence Delivery Manager. I was accepted into Microsoft's Founders Program and shortlisted by the Times Higher Education as a startup partner. I was also contracted by HM Government's Midlands Engine scheme to deliver AI training to SME owners, and invited to give a talk on AI and entrepreneurship to student founders — which I've since been asked to repeat.

The thread through all of it: making this stuff understandable for people who were never supposed to find it intimidating.