I have been a part of the RNLI for five years, holding various positions throughout my tenure. Most recently, I have had the privilege of establishing and leading our Data Governance, Data Quality, and Enterprise Architecture practice. In this role, I have developed a talented and cohesive team, comprising both technical and business-facing roles. By aligning our three-year strategy with the RNLI's 'Our Watch' strategic intent, I have defined a future target architecture for information governance and a digital workplace, which is now being implemented within our complex environment of 35,000 volunteers and staff.

While I possess a strong technical foundation, my true strength lies in bringing visions to life through concrete, sustainable, and secure plans. Additionally, I excel at building well-rounded teams and ensuring key stakeholder engagement. I have also established a clear succession plan for my role and the wider team, giving me the confidence to explore external opportunities.

In my current role, I have led the development of the RNLI’s capability-led technology roadmap, focusing on cost-effective and efficient solutions that transition us to a more composable, cloud-based architecture, all while maintaining our exceptional lifesaving services. To continually monitor and develop our technology estate, we have implemented an application register with reporting capabilities, allowing us to track technology spend against organizational capabilities. We have also assigned product owners to our core applications to improve the management of our products, services, and supplier relationships.

Over the past five years, I have worked with my team to highlight the importance of Data Governance and Architecture. Historically, these teams were seen as blockers rather than enablers, leading many departments to create their own shadow IT instead of engaging with our central function. Recognising this issue, I initially worked with our executive team and senior leadership to educate them. Subsequently, our team has regularly met with directorates to understand their priorities and frustrations, ensuring that our data governance and enterprise architecture practices deliver services and improvements with a positive impact on our end users.

The RNLI, a 200-year-old organization, faced significant challenges such as duplication, technical debt, and end-of-life software. When I took on my role, our technology estate included over 800 products, including four CRMs (live, legacy, and EOL), a monolithic ERP tool, and several standalone products with no integration. This situation led to numerous manual processes and workarounds to manage our data and deliver end-to-end processes. With the support of my colleagues and delivery partners, we are now consolidating our estate through two transformation programs. One program aims to replace our current fundraising CRM (D365), and the other aims to deliver a new, more composable ERP solution covering buildings management, field service, production, retail, HR, payroll, and finance. We are also developing a front-end ‘wrapper’ to ensure the best experience for our volunteers and staff. This work has significantly increased my technical knowledge and focus on improving a large organization's enterprise architecture to meet future needs.

In my role, I am responsible for ensuring proper management of our technology spend. Although I do not own the entire technology budget, I am responsible for coordinating the four departments within our CIO’s team (Data, IT Services and Security, Digital and Technology Futures, and Applications and Governance) to align our spending and track deliverables against the technology roadmap.

I pride myself on my ability to translate technical solutions into outcome-focused, non-technical messaging for teams across the RNLI. I have consciously spent time with our operational and fundraising volunteers to better understand their roles and frequently volunteer with our legacy and water safety teams to see how our technological developments impact their work.