Professional Portfolio
The Swiss-army-knife of Creative Operations - I back up my talents for project management with a flare for organising and empowering creative teams to deliver outstanding results every time. Experienced in planning, production and analytics across TV, film, animation, web, social media, theatre and events management I bring a wealth of ideas for creative problem solving to any situation. Below is a suite of excerpts from my professional work to date.
At Mrs Wordsmith I wear many hats. My role spans across operations, production and project management while also holding responsibility for the company's entire global supply-chain and fulfillment logistics. As well as leading the coordination of the creative teams' workloads and acting as an internal operations excellence consultant I also act as the organisation's Click Up superuser and champion efforts to integrate AI into our process flows.
I report directly to the company's owner and acting CEO and liaise daily with the Head of Marketing, Creative Director, Writing Lead, Art Directors, Design Lead, Director of Business Development, Director of Curriculum and the team of Producers.
I own the organisation's content production operations company wide and am chiefly tasked with ensuring our creative teams are outputting incredible work on schedule and in a way that meets the brief tasked. I also coordinate with a number of creative agencies to product content for marketing campaigns, physical products and apps.
One key responsibility I currently hold is the end-to-end production management of animated content for the Readiculous app wherein I work with writers, illustrators, storyboarders, composers, voice actors, producers, art directors and developers to deliver animated snippets for use in the app's cutscenes. We are currently producing over 700 of these snippets totaling over 2 hours worth of animation and I am responsible for the overall project's delivery. An example of a typical animated snippet can be seen below.
I also lead SEO, CRO and UX projects to improve the performance of www.mrswordsmith.com by managing analytics, design and developer teams to optimise PDPs, PLPs, Cart, Checkout and specialist pages as well as the homepage. Here you can see a before and after of my efforts to optimise the site's homepage.
At Up Learn I have finished the creation of an online learning platform for our corporate client: Merck. I have project managed the scripting, animation and post production of all the course content as well as coordinated the review of all materials to ensure they meet standards of Medical, Legal and Regulatory approval at a global level. I have also been working as the principle client liaison / account manager for Merck during this time. I worked with our internal engineering team and data teams to design and build the web-based platform as well as dashboards for the client to track user progress. The project also required me to work with an external comms agency to develop a video to showcase the platform. You can watch it below.
Also while at Up Learn I have risen through the ranks, being promoted 4 times in 2 years to reach my current role as head of the Content Operations team and the post production lead. I currently line manage 5 full time staff and am responsible for over 40 content freelancers. During my time at Up Learn I have introduced quality management steps that have reduced post production rework by over 70% and I also single-handedly built the company's internal employee intranet. I produced a video to launch the intranet internally which you can watch below.
At Tuesday's Child TV I worked as a program developer in gameshow design. Having participated as a contestant in LEGO MASTERS Season 1, I was invited by the team to help develop other competition shows in-house. While working there my role was mainly to support in the creation of pitch-decks for commissioners where I worked on, among other things, the pitch for LEGO MASTERS Season 2 which was later picked up by Channel 4. I also went on to work on the challenge design for this show - fully developing the challenges used in the first 2 episodes of the series. I was invited on set as a content consultant to help support the production team in the challenge implementation and direction. LEGO MASTERS can be viewed on 4OD where I appear credited. You can watch a trailer for the show below.
I have been developing my creative skills producing content to support my own bueiness: "Everybody Improvise" - an organisation that teaches people how to improvise. I produce the script, graphics, animations, voiceover and video edit for the following materials and also built a website for the idea here.
While working with the Cambridge Impronauts I undertook a vast array of roles including producer and director for over 25 performances. I also led the full rebranding of this improvised comedy troupe. This included building them a new website and social media presence. When acting as producer, shows saw unprecedented attendance levels as my work in branding and publicity took audience numbers to over 1000 per show. With sell out performances becoming a norm under my leadership the troupe increased yearly revenues by a factor of over 100x. One particular highlight was my work as Producer and Director for "A Series Of Improv-able Events" which I produced at the Edinburgh Fringe festival in 2018. Another was my production of "Yo Ho Ho - An Improv Show" produced in a Cambridge Theatre. This was the first ever Impronauts show to sell out on all 5 nights of performances. I produced all the marketing materials for these productions some of which can be seen below.
At Cambridge University I studied a 4 year integrated Masters degree in Engineering specialising in Production Optimisation. I topped my class in Operations Management and have since come to understand that the principles for optimising the production of components in factories can be applied within creative production environments to great effect too. This is where my passions now lie and what I have set about pursuing as a career.
For our University 3rd year project, we had to develop our own product in teams of 4 - this included the design, build, test and marketing. Our team produced a miniture wax candel production kit that could be used in schools to educate students about engineering principles. I took charge of the product's marketing and produced the following video. Our project won first place in the whole year group.
At Heraeus I was in charge of continuous improvement operations in production. My work to streamline the workflows on their main production line saved the company over £350,000 per year. I achieved this by applying lean and six-sigma methodologies that I learned during my time at Cambridge University studying Operations Management. I was also sent to represent the company at a trade fair in San Francisco in 2019 wherein I helped run the company's trade stall and generate leads for our products with potential buyers.
I worked as the Production Manager on Clare College May Ball 2017 to own the technical logistics of the event. The event was attended by over 2000 people across a 5.5 acre venue in central Cambirdge. I worked closely with an external production supply company to coordinate the provision of lighting around the historic gardens of Clare College and also managed the construction of the 5 stages for the event. I was additionally in charge of managing the tech-specs of the performing artists and the hospitality arrangements for the workers. I attended meetings with the City Council and was responsible for noise pollution monitoring during the event itself. I managed a budget of over £30k and was instrumental in the production of an exceptional night of entertainment. The showreel for the Ball is below. You can see me listed as Production Manager in the credits.
While working at Event Horizon Precision Energetics as an Explosives and Pyrotechnical Engineer I got the opportunity to work on a variety of design projects for clients such as Disney, the BBC, Rolls Royce and the MOD. I helped to produce a nitrogen cannon that was used in the filming of SFX for Rogue One: A Star Wars Story which you can read up about here. Additionally I worked on the design of a 'shaped charge' for a BBC4 documentary on the atomic bomb. You can see my explosive lens featured in the documentary around 23mins in (video below). I also got to work on explosives and fireworks for live events including the Yeovilton Airshow 2015.
Before Uni I was always very ambitious in my creative projects. While at sixth form I managed to become the producer of a Classical Music show on Abbey104 radio at just the age of 17! At secondary school in my GCSE year I spearheaded a whole-school world record attempt as Head Boy. We successfully broke the record for "The greatest number of people popping party poppers simultaneously" but we have since been surpassed!! Here is a video made at the time to showcase the scale of our attempt - bear in mind I organised this alongside my GCSEs at just the age of 15.
