Favourite holiday destination?
Can there ever be a single answer to this one! If I could be anywhere in the world, it would be on top of a mountain with some skis on my feet, but now that I have two young children, Mia (6) and Edie (3), I enjoy spending time with them at our favourite UK holiday location, Dartmouth – boats, beaches, chips, and ice cream, what else could you want.
What car do you drive?
I currently drive a Tesla. I love the app and the ability to pre-condition and schedule events. My children both love the light show of course!
I haven’t been in an EV all that long, and recently took the Tesla on its longest trip, which was up to the opening of our latest site at Southgate Retail Park. I drove up there to take the first charge from our 200kw Ultra-Rapid chargers. I headed there on a single charge and was reliant on taking a top-up from the site on its opening day. It of course worked brilliantly (never a doubt in my mind!) and I drove home feeling full of energy and enthusiasm thinking about the 100’s of PoGo sites that are due for delivery in 2024.
How and when did you get into this industry?
I have always been attracted to emerging technology, it’s both exciting and inspiring to come to work and explore new products and services. The rapid growth of the sector also brings frequent and varied challenges, and this is something that I am naturally drawn to.
I love challenging the status quo and invoking change, and also working at pace and instilling this culture into the teams and businesses I work with. The EV industry felt like a great fit for me, and I moved across from a partner business at SWARCO as soon as the opportunity arose.
Tell us a bit more about PoGo?
PoGo’s ambitions are very clear, deploying high volumes of ultra-rapid chargers in strategic locations throughout the UK to support the adoption of electric vehicles. My role is to support and enable our teams and departments to deliver this. Because we are in a high growth phase, this means there is a great deal of focus on people, process, and structure right now – ultimately, we are setting up for a very busy 2024 and 2025!
We recently agreed our largest single deal, which will see us deploy more than 600 ultra-rapid charge points across key retail locations in the UK. I am, of course, delighted that we were successful with this bid, but I am really proud of the way in which multiple teams and people came together and collaborated to deliver this piece of work. From my perspective, you can have the biggest budgets and the best products in the world, but if you don’t have great people then you can’t achieve all that much.
At PoGo, we are very flexible and dynamic. This means we make decisions and commitments quickly, and once we are in that all-important deployment phase we can move unbelievably quickly thanks to our stock-holding strategy and our experienced in-house services (PMO, CAD, Electrical Design).
As a result, I have absolutely no doubt that PoGo will emerge as a major CPO in record time, and I can see that every single person in our business is striving to achieve that together. The collaboration and cross-departmental support is actually very special here.
What are your industry predictions for the next 12 months?
There are so many different technologies, manufacturers, and back-office systems delivering EV charging in the UK. Consistency and ease of use across so many products may be a challenge for the public, and the opportunity here is for guiding bodies, such as the PAS guidance and ChargeSafe, and roaming services, such as Paua and Zap-Pay, to provide quality consolidated services for all. I believe these roaming services and bodies will have a major impact on the driver experience over the next 12 months and support mass adoption.
What is the strangest or most challenging job you have done?
I am a believer that the hardest job on the planet is that of a parent, it has some pretty strange moments too as toddlers are unequivocally bonkers! My daughter’s toenail broke and fell off recently, she was devastated when the ‘toenail fairy’ failed to show and leave her some cold hard cash in exchange for her toenail.
There is the saying that nothing good comes easy, and that is true of parenthood – it gives you some of the most challenging moments, but also so much fun, laughter, and happiness.
If you had your time again, would you have followed the same career path?
I’m far more academic now than I was as a teenager, recently completing a four-year degree with Open University. We change and evolve so much over time, but if I could take my current mindset back into my teenage years then I’d likely explore a career in law. I love the idea of representing people and fighting for something that is right.
If you had been reincarnated, who or what do you think you were in a past life?
I try to have fun every day and can make a joke during the toughest of moments, so to answer this question I asked Google ‘which animal has the most fun?’ – Dolphins apparently!
If you could invite four people to a dinner party – living or dead – who would they be – and why?
I’m going to avoid the historical figures and just go for fun!
Frank Sinatra – For the music
Eddie Murphy – For the laughs
George Best – For the stories
Barack Obama – For the insights
What are your passions outside the workplace?
I have just started climbing and recently made my way across Crib Goch up to the Snowden Summit, Everest is an ambition that I’m not sure will ever be met. I’m also a keen sports fan and enjoy the challenging (and rarely rewarding) game of golf when time allows.
If they made a film about your life who would play you?
The temptation to name Brad Pitt or Tom Cruise here is almost irresistible. The self-defacing comedian in me would go for Danny DeVito, but I’m not sure this is the time or place for Dad jokes. I’ll go quite left-field here and say Tom Hanks – he comes across as such a gentleman and is full of kindness, which the world needs a little more of sometimes.
Describe yourself in five words?
Driven
Impatient
Fair
Active
Inspirited
