What did you want to be when you grew up?
When I was growing up I wanted to be a scientist or a spy in MI5. My dad taught chemistry, biology and physics so we always had stuff around like bunsen burners at home. I was always experimenting. When I was at university, I did apply to join MI5 and I went through two interviews but didn’t get in!
When do you go to bed and when do you get up?
Generally, I go to bed at 9:00 and I get up at kid o'clock! There are sporadic moments where I work late, when I have a burning desire to get something done because I don't want to lose momentum. When I was younger, it was slightly different because I felt that I had to do that. Now, if I do burn the midnight oil for work it's because I've found something I want to complete.
Can you briefly explain your career path to date?
I was born in Barbados, but we won't go that far back! At the start of my career I thought I was going to go into banking. I went to university in London and then applied for lots of graduate schemes. I had to wait for a response to my applications and because I’m a little bit of a hustler I got some temp work in data science while I waited. I was given an address and just turned up one morning and low and behold it was a media agency call Mindshare. This place was full of people wearing jeans and Nike shoes! They had just started an econometrics division and I was manually running regression analysis to work out the cannibalization effect of a bread company, launching a small loaf of bread over their traditional large loaf of bread. I was captivated! I just thought if I could use the same tricks at Mindshare that I would in a bank, why would I go anywhere else? And that’s how I accidentally fell into media.
It was a phenomenal part of my career. I then got poached by a client to go and work in Bahrain, working for Formula One because Bahrain wanted to build a whole city around Motorsport. I lived there for a year and it was excellent – talk about fake it till you make it. I was 28 and just threw myself at the opportunity. I learned little bits about imposter syndrome but also that it’s completely fine to make mistakes.
I returned to Australia shortly after my time in Bahrain to join WPP and started working on the Vegemite brand. Through that client I met my business partner Sean Cummins, he was about to launch a new agency and asked me to join him. After a decade overseas I felt that I could create my own destiny in Australia and build an agency model that was strategic and creative and had media and everything in one place. Today, it sounds quite normal, but 11 years ago it wasn't.
Running Cummins and Partners was an interesting journey. One being a business owner, starting a business, putting money into something, having zero to begin with and then building a culture. It wasn’t all instantaneous and building a strong culture took many years. After 11 years running Cummins and Partners, I have left to become CEO of Dentsu Creative in Australia and New Zealand.
Leaving Cummins and Partners was incredibly hard because those 11 years had been so formative for me. I was only 29 when Sean asked me to join him and in that period not only did we start an agency together and go through all of that as partners, but I met my partner, my mother died, I had two children. That life stage of my 30s was intrinsically linked to that agency and that journey. But I felt I was ready for something new and I wanted to go and tread a different path for a little while.
What is the biggest obstacle you’ve overcome, as it relates to your career or industry?
It's a good question. There's probably many but one of them made me feel really angry. When I was about nine months pregnant with my first child, I was sitting around a boardroom table and all of a sudden, I felt really different to everybody else because no one else around that table, and there were women there too, had to have a child. There's something physical about having a child. I'm not saying it's a bad thing, but there was a difference to having a child and then taking time off work for a long period of time.
Then I had my child and I was roughly five months into parental leave and for some reason I had this anger bumbling away inside of me around inequality when it comes to having children and wanting to work. I didn't necessarily suffer from that because I was running a business and I was still doing projects. But it was more a broader issue in society where I started looking under the cover a little and it didn’t feel fair. I have a lot of friends who spent three years out of work, not because they wanted to, but because they had to. They couldn't afford childcare. Childcare in Australia is unbelievably expensive, and their partners were earning more than them, so they were the ones that had to take the time out for affordability reasons to take care of their beautiful children. But that anger that there was this bias and inequality really got to me and I needed to find a way to work through it because I found it quite blinding.
What motivates you?
I get out of bed for a challenge. It motivates me to learn something new about myself and about the world.
What do you wish you’d known at the start of your career?
Not to be so impatient. I think my impatience got in the way of my learning journey. I had such a bold eagerness to work my way up the ladder. Eagerness to jump into a new role, even though it was within the same business. I wish I had had just sat back a little bit, enjoyed the journey a little more, taken some time to absorb what was around me, it probably would've served me well.
What do you consider your greatest achievement?
My greatest achievement is that I overcame anorexia. When I was in my twenties, I had an eating disorder and the mental strength that got me into that place also got me out of it. You can win all the awards in the world, but nothing is as challenging or as great a success as looking after yourself.
My second greatest achievement would be to that would be Cummins&Partners, that I spent 11 years from start up to being a very successful agency. I'll always feel proud of that.
What is your life motto?
Non nobis solum (Latin: Not for Ourselves Alone)
This was my school motto, and I didn’t appreciate so much at school as I do now.
In a leadership role you're never doing something for yourself and you're constantly trying to bring people together.
What’s the best advice you’ve ever been given?
There are three things and they have all been equally helpful over my career.
The first is don't tread on people on the way up, which is very true. Because the people that I was dealing with in my 20s, I now see deep into my 40s.
The second is, have three things when you are thinking about moving or changing something and do the one that scares you the most. That really resonates with me.
Thirdly, don't move for money.
Who do you most admire in business? Why?
Julia Gillard. Politics is so insular and there’s so much infighting, which was very distracting while she was Prime Minister. As Julia stepped out of politics, I've heard her speak a couple of times, and she takes my breath away. I've never heard anyone stand up and speak so passionately and so well, and everything she said just resonated. I welcome her out of politics and into the rest of the world, particularly corporate culture because, wow, she's inspiring.
What do you believe is the secret to rising up to the top?
I don't know that there is a secret to rising to the top. There's plenty of advice though. As you're rising to the top, you'll take big leaps. Don't tread on people on the way up. I’ve seen so many people fall prey to their ego. It's a big responsibility when you are at the top, you're not doing it for yourself. You're doing it for other people and even setting up people for the future or making things better for the future.
As told to Caroline Hugall at The Commons on Thursday 10th of February 2022