Profile
"I sit at the intersection of Finance, Technology and Delivery - the place where transformation programmes either succeed or quietly fall apart."
I'm an IT Project Manager and Digital Finance Transformation specialist with a background that's genuinely unusual: a career that began in management accounting, ran through the engine rooms of Ford and Ford Credit across Europe, and pivoted, deliberately and with eyes open, into enterprise IT delivery and modern data architecture. That combination of knowing how a CFO thinks and how a microservices pipeline actually behaves under pressure is what I bring to every engagement.
My Story - Starting in Finance
I studied Accounting and Finance at the University of Kent before building my early career as a management accountant - qualifying as a Chartered Management Accountant (CIMA). I learned a great deal through that qualification and that chapter of my career. I've since let the membership lapse and wouldn't return to it — not because the fundamentals aren't valuable, but because my path took me somewhere more interesting: the place where finance meets technology and neither side quite speaks the other's language.
That gap is where I've built my career.
At Ford Motor Company I began moving from accounting into transformation. An international assignment in Romania saw me build the internal control function from scratch for a brownfield manufacturing site - identifying and closing control deficiencies across $186m of balance sheet items, leading emergency supplier negotiations that saved $20.6m, and acting as finance lead for the deployment of Ford Production Systems lean manufacturing methods. It was a masterclass in operating under pressure with incomplete information.
My Story - Finance to Projects
Moving into Ford Credit - Ford's PRA-regulated banking and financial services division - I became the only Project Manager on Ford's global transformation portfolio, running multiple large programmes in parallel. Key outcomes included:
- $5.1m net annual cost savings across Europe through low-cost outsourcing and process standardisation
- Harmonising the EU Finance systems portfolio across AR, AP, Expenses, Interco and payment platforms — delivering $635k in project savings and $440k p.a. in ongoing BAU savings
- Eliminating $360k p.a. in legacy application licensing across Belgium, Netherlands, France, Italy and Germany
- Deploying Finance systems for 6 new legal entities across 4 locations as part of Ford's Brexit strategy - in compliance with IFRS, US GAAP, PRA/FCA and local regulations including BaFin
- Delivering 23 bespoke accounting automation developments as Product Owner on an agile programme
My Story - Cost cutting to Big Data Analytics
When Ford's restructuring reduced the availability of transformation roles, rather than wait I used the transition period deliberately. I completed a Code Institute Diploma in Software Development (Full Stack, credit-rated at Level 8 by Edinburgh Napier University / SCQF) — adding genuine technical depth across HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Python, SQL, Django, Flask, CI/CD, TDD and distributed version control to my existing finance and delivery foundations.
That investment led directly to my current engagement at Mars, where I contract as an IT Project Manager within the Finance & Data Systems Strategy (FDSS) programme - leading technical delivery of a complex SAP and Microservices transformation, overseeing advanced FP&A analytics, Data Lake architecture and Machine Learning capabilities for global finance operations - built on Azure and Databricks. I work across cross-functional teams and alongside partners including Deloitte, EY, IBM, Cognizant, TCS, Siemens (formerly Innovation Strategies), Insight Analytics and specialist data firms including Aays.
What I Actually Do
Most large-scale Finance transformation programmes have a structural problem: the people who design them and the people who have to implement them are rarely the same people - and often don't speak the same language.
Big 4 firms produce elegant high-level architecture. GSI delivery partners execute standardised playbooks. Neither is wrong, exactly. But the gap between the slide and the live system, particularly when Finance data integrity is at stake, is where programmes go off track.
I bridge that gap. I understand the strategy and the plumbing. I can sit with a CFO and articulate what the programme needs to achieve. I can sit with an engineering team and understand why the SAP-to-Azure Databricks pipeline isn't reconciling. And I can translate between the two - clearly, quickly and without losing either audience.
Whether you need someone to lead a Finance IT programme end-to-end, stabilise a delivery that's losing momentum, navigate a complex vendor landscape, or help your team build the internal capability to own transformation themselves - that's where I work best.
Credentials
Active
- Project Management Professional (PMP) - PMI
- PMI Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI-ACP) - PMI
Formerly certified (frameworks that shaped how I think about delivery - I chose not to renew them; at this level the work speaks louder than the paperwork)
- Managing Successful Programmes (MSP)
- Certified ScrumMaster (CSM)
- SAFe 5 Agilist
Technical
- Code Institute Diploma in Software Development - Full Stack (university credit-rated at Level 8, SCQF / Edinburgh Napier University, 2021), supplemented with Big Data and Database Design.
Built around industry coding standards - not just syntax, not just facilitation. Actual engineering discipline: TDD, CI/CD, distributed version control, agile development practices and pair programming. - Languages and frameworks: HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Python, SQL, Django, Flask, Bootstrap, Tailwind CSS, Vite
- Approach: both hand-coded and AI-assisted development - knowing when to use each is the skill.
Academic
- BA (Hons) Accounting and Finance - University of Kent
- Chartered Management Accountant (CIMA) - lapsed; not planning to renew
If you're working on something complex at the intersection of Finance and IT and you think I can help, I'm open for a discussion.