"Integrity is doing the the right thing, even when no one is watching"

- C.S. Lewis

I’m fascinated by why people in organisations choose to do the right thing, or not.

It's not just about policies or systems, it's about leadership, ethics, and human behaviour in context. Why do some teams have bad actors while others don't? What makes someone decide to break the rules? How do firms create environments where misconduct happens and they fail to stop or change it? And critically, what role does leadership play in all of this?

My Story

I moved into HR because I wanted to understand how organisations work from the inside, not the org charts and processes, but the human dynamics that make things succeed or fail. My early work in diversity and inclusion at Lehman Brothers taught me that high-performing organisations enable talented people to contribute what they were hired to contribute. When we fail to create the environment for that, we undermine our own success and create conditions where things go wrong.

As the regulatory landscape shifted after major industry scandals, the focus on conduct and behaviour moved into compliance teams, and I followed, because I saw the same principles at play: how do we create environments where doing the right thing is the natural choice? How do we identify when things aren't right? And when misconduct happens, how do we respond in ways that actually change behaviour, not just punish it?

Over two decades in senior roles at Standard Chartered Bank, JP Morgan, and ICAP across London, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Australia, I designed and led core compliance and surveillance programmes, investigations, managed conduct risk frameworks, and built teams that had to navigate these questions in practice.

I learned that productive, successful organisations aren't just about having the right controls, they require leadership that sets the tone, systems that identify problems early, and responses that remediate rather than just react. I also found, through experience, that compliance and risk leaders themselves need support to step beyond technical expertise into strategic, influential leadership, because they're the ones who have to make this work in the real world.

When Everything Changed

In 2022, while based in Singapore, life demanded I reassess everything. Two years into COVID lockdowns, we hadn't seen family in years. Within a few weeks multiple challenges hit simultaneously, my mum fell seriously ill in Australia, I had a health scare and my son was involved in a serious road incident.

We'd been planning to relocate in time, but these events compressed our decisions. Family needed us. We needed each other. So, we pulled the trigger - fast, without the careful planning I'd usually insist on professionally - and moved home, to Australia.

The move meant leaving my corporate role, and it gave me clarity about what I wanted to build next. That's when I started my own company, taking the opportunity to put my regulatory experience, organisational development knowledge and strategic leadership skills to support organisations and leaders solve these problems differently; to build compliance cultures and programs that work through surveillance, ethical leadership, strategic influence, and sustainable behaviour change.

Today, I work with financial services organisations globally, combining deep regulatory and surveillance expertise with executive coaching and applied ethics. I'm the author of Behind the Screens: Understanding Employee Surveillance in Financial Services, an ICF-certified coach, and a philosopher by academic training (I hold a Master's from The London School of Economics).

Outside of work, I live on the Sunshine Coast in Queensland with my family and our Golden Irish dog, and spend time landscaping and gardening, a pursuit that reminds me that good design, whether for a garden or a compliance program, requires a vision, planning, understanding what thrives in the environment you're working with and ongoing maintenance to keep the conditions optimal.

What's Possible

This work is more than a career for me. It's about creating workplaces where people can do their best work, where compliance isn’t the ‘c’ word, but a core part of the risk management strategy, and where doing the right thing isn't just policy, it's culture.