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Hello and welcome

Thank you for your visit. If you're interested, you can find out a little more about me in the introduction below.

People who know me describe me as creative, insightful and curious. I'm a natural problem-solver and enjoy nothing more than finding out about situations and helping to devise practical solutions. I've been lucky enough to work in exciting environments where organisations have been growing or changing fast. From working on innovative development projects to championing collaboration across organisational boundaries, it's been a lot of fun, and I've worked with a lot of great people. It has also given me a unique insight into what enables leaders and their teams to work at their best and what makes for great value from supply chains. These are things I feel strongly about and they shape the work I do.

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I set up Athena 9 Ltd. in 2011 to provide value-for-money, bespoke services to organisations wishing to develop strategic and practical procurement capability. Alongside these professional skills, I also work to develop communication, coaching and team building skills. Depending on the scale of the assignment, I work independently or with a team of  associates .

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So how did I get here? Well, I started out as a linguist and can speak French, Spanish and German. After graduating from Durham, I was keen to stay in the North East and joined the Japanese car manufacturer, Nissan, in their Purchasing department. I never looked back! At the time, they were setting up their factory on a greenfield site in Sunderland and urgently looking for European suppliers. There was a real buzz about the place and I worked in close-knit teams with engineers and designers to hit very challenging targets. At Nissan I experienced first hand the power of cross-functional teamwork, agile working, lean manufacturing and a strategic approach to managing suppliers. 

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The year after the Barcelona Olympics, Nissan sent me to their sister plant in the city on an 18 month assignment where I was to experience very different ways of doing things, seek out synergies and begin to build bridges between the two Purchasing organisations. I learned many things here that influenced my approach to work and life going forward. Ultimately, and with sadness, I left the blue skies of Spain behind me, moving to London to join the household and pharmaceutical giant Reckitt & Colman, later Reckitt Benckiser. Here I was lucky enough to work with many brilliant and wonderful people around the world, from whom I learned a great deal as I undertook a variety of exciting procurement leadership roles.

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After 16 years working in a couple of large corporates, it felt a natural step to move into consulting. I wanted the freedom to be creative and to focus on helping people and organisations to work at their best. Of course, there are aspects of my work I enjoy more than others, but I do enjoy the variety and challenge provided by regularly moving into different contexts, and in particular I love that, while I am supporting others in their own development, I never stop learning myself.


Before setting up Athena 9, I worked with well-respected consultancies in Procurement, Leadership and Management, developing close ties which continue to this day. Alongside these relationships, I also worked as an Associate French Lecturer in a part-time role for the Open University. It was here that I first experimented with, what were then, new ways of transferring knowledge using digital technology, drawing on the latest research into how people learn, both face-to-face and online. These blended learning approaches motivated me greatly at the time; and the things I discovered about how we learn have stood me in very good stead since, shaping the highly interactive and practical way in which I work.

 

My professional qualifications include:

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International Institute of Advanced Purchasing & Supply: Green Belt in Purchasing & Supply

American Production & Inventory Control Society: Certificate in Production and Inventory Management

Open University: Managing Collaboration across Cultural and Organisational Boundaries

Open University: Discovering Psychology

Open University: Certificate in Coaching at work

DiSC Workplace: Everything DiSC certified consultant

About: About
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