Where do you hail from and where are you based now?
I am originally from Swansea, South Wales but I have lived in Hertfordshire for most of my working career.
How did you get started in the industry?
I joined Hewlett Packard as a graduate sales engineer in their technical sales side and they launched the first personal computing device, the HP 9816, that same year.
What advice can you give someone starting out?
Ask as many questions of your potential employer as they ask of you at the interview. Make sure you really WANT to work for them. Don’t worry about not matching what’s on the job description – your attitude and drive will determine whether you can be successful far more than a CV full of similar jobs.
How did you fill your time during lockdown? Any new hobbies?
Lots of home learning (I could never be a teacher), teaching my kids to ride bikes, finding new recipes for the BBQ, enjoying our garden and the sun, helping to build a treehouse for the kids (thanks to my brothers-in-law), and not missing travelling. Working at home wasn’t as bad for me as many others.
What football/rugby/other teams do you support, if any?
I love most sport but rugby and cricket have always been my passion, so I am a Welsh rugby supporter and an England cricket fan. I am a perennial optimist so I support Tottenham too.
Tell us something about you that may surprise people
I owned a Tesla up until October 2020 and now a hybrid car (I will be going back to full electric as soon as I can). I have become passionate about having a planet for the future for my children and theirs to live in and to have the same opportunities I have had.
I am delighted my company, Jabra, is committed to a more sustainable future and has ambitious goals which I will support in the UK. I have little time for people who cannot understand that the last 300 years of human industrial change has not had some detrimental impact on our planet and its future.
What’s your outlook on life
We live in an age where there is more instant information available than ever before but that comes at a price of less truth and fact. I hope that politicians and people in general find more truth and be more honest with each other. I am an optimist; I believe the youth of today will be better than the adults of today.
If you could change one thing about your life, what would it be?
I have a wonderful family and a happy life. There isn’t much I would change other than to have my parents see what I have made of my life and to see their grandchildren. I think they’d be pretty happy about that.
How has Jabra fared during Covid? What plans have you got for the business as we continue to move forward?
The race to work from home ensured Jabra experienced unprecedented demand for our products in 2020. While that produced fantastic growth, it also put great stress on our teams to fulfil demand and keep our customers happy. I am very proud of the job we did, prioritising healthcare and key workers, emergency services, education, Government and Local Authorities and call centres to help the world serve the public as best it could. The IT industry deserves credit
for this.
The world has changed and the way we work has changed. We have proved to ourselves that hybrid working and the ability to work from anywhere doesn’t make us less but makes us more productive and satisfied with our lives. Nothing held us back from making these changes; the technology has always been available, but the pandemic accelerated our thinking and proved the point that digital transformation enables greater collaboration which drives productivity and innovation.
For Jabra, our role is to ensure we provide companies with the right solutions for the right situations to drive that collaboration and productivity faster.
That makes it an exciting time to be in the industry.
