Professional Experience

How I Work

Over the years I’ve found that one of my strengths is being able to step into unfamiliar situations, get a clear sense of what matters, and turn that into something practical and useful. I enjoy working through complexity, understanding how things fit together, and finding solutions that are thoughtful, usable, and grounded in real needs rather than theory.

My background has taken me across technical, analytical, and business-facing roles, which means I’m comfortable moving between detail and the bigger picture. I like asking questions, understanding the real problem, and refining ideas through feedback until the end result feels right for the people using it.

I’m naturally analytical and enjoy investigating systems, data, and processes, especially when something isn’t working as it should or there’s an opportunity to make it simpler, clearer, or more effective. At the same time, I care a lot about usability and practicality — I’ve always preferred solutions that genuinely help rather than ones that are clever for their own sake.

I also learn quickly and work well independently. I’m comfortable picking up new tools, technologies, or business domains, doing the research needed to get up to speed, and then getting on with the job. I tend to be proactive, self-managing, and happiest in work where I can combine analysis, technical understanding, and hands-on delivery.

Availability

I’m based in Wellington, New Zealand and open to local, remote, or relocation opportunities depending on the role.

Specialisations and Certifications

Microsoft Excel Professional Specialisation (Microsoft) fa-solid fa-award

May 2026

This Professional Certificate equips learners with practical, in-demand skills in Microsoft Excel, VBA automation, and AI-powered tools like Excel Copilot. Through hands-on projects and real-world applications, participants learn to clean and analyse data, automate repetitive tasks, create reports and dashboards, and build portfolio-ready work that demonstrates their expertise. The program helps develop valuable data-driven problem-solving skills that can be applied across a wide range of industries and roles.

1. Excel and Copilot Fundamentals fa-solid fa-award
2. Data Cleaning & Processing with Copilot in Excel fa-solid fa-award
3. Advanced Data Analysis & Visualisation with Copilot in Excel fa-solid fa-award
4. Automation & Advanced Techniques with Copilot in Excel fa-solid fa-award

Project Management Professional Certificate (Google) fa-solid fa-award

June 2022

A programme of six courses covering managing the full project life-cycle: start, plan, and execute a project using both traditional and agile project management approaches; employ effective and ethical leadership to motivate and inspire project teams and stakeholders; use data-informed decision making.

1. Foundations of Project Management fa-solid fa-award
2. Project Initiation: Starting a Successful Project fa-solid fa-award
3. Project Planning: Putting It All Together fa-solid fa-award
4. Project Execution: Running the Project fa-solid fa-award
5. Agile Project Management fa-solid fa-award
6. Capstone: Applying Project Management in the Real World fa-solid fa-award

Data Science Specialisation (Johns Hopkins University) fa-solid fa-award

April 2022

A programme of ten courses covering concepts and tools for an entire data science pipeline, including: using R for data manipulation, cleansing and analysis; thinking analytically about complex problems; managing large data sets, deploying statistical principles and creating visualisations; building and evaluating machine learning algorithms; publishing reproducible analyses; and developing interactive data products.

1. The Data Scientist’s Toolbox fa-solid fa-award
2. R Programming fa-solid fa-award
3. Getting and Cleaning Data fa-solid fa-award
4. Exploratory Data Analysis fa-solid fa-award
5. Reproducible Research fa-solid fa-award
6. Statistical Inference fa-solid fa-award
7. Regression Models fa-solid fa-award
8. Practical Machine Learning fa-solid fa-award
9. Developing Data Products fa-solid fa-award
10. Data Science Capstone fa-solid fa-award

Statistics with R Specialisation (Duke University) fa-solid fa-award

April 2022

A programme of five courses concentrating on the mathematical principles of data science using R: Analyse and visualise data in R and create reproducible data analysis reports; demonstrate a conceptual understanding of the unified nature of statistical inference; perform frequentist and Bayesian statistical inference and modelling to understand natural phenomena and make data-based decisions; communicate statistical results correctly, effectively, and in context without relying on statistical jargon; critique data-based claims and evaluate data-based decisions; and wrangle and visualise data with R packages for data analysis.

1. Introduction to Probability and Data with R fa-solid fa-award
2. Inferential Statistics fa-solid fa-award
3. Linear Regression and Modelling fa-solid fa-award
4. Bayesian Statistics fa-solid fa-award
5. Statistics with R Capstone Project fa-solid fa-award

Other Courses

Learn Go Programming - Golang Tutorial for Beginners - April 2026

Master the fundamentals of this open-source language created by Google, known for its simplicity, reliability, and efficiency in software development.

Python and Statistics for Financial Analysis fa-solid fa-award - Jan 2023

The course combines both python coding and statistical concepts and applies to analysing financial data, such as stock data. Build a trading model using multiple linear regression and evaluate the performance of the trading model using different investment indicators.

Creating Interactive Web Apps with Streamlit and Python (3 courses) - May 2022

Using Pandas and Scikit in Python to create rapid-deployment web apps with the Streamlit package.

Mastering Data Analysis with Pandas in Python - May 2022

Five-part guided project detailing data loading, cleansing and analysis with the Pandas package.

Multiple Linear Regression with scikit-learn fa-solid fa-award - May 2022

Project-based course building and evaluating multiple linear regression models using Python using the scikit-learn package to calculate regression, while using pandas for data management and seaborn for data visualisation.

The R Toolkit fa-solid fa-award - January 2022

Learning the fundamentals of the R programming language, applied to statistical analysis, visualisations, and machine learning. Variables, Vectors, Matrices, Loops, Functions, Packages, Plotting, K-means clustering, Decision Trees.

Full-Stack JavaScript fa-solid fa-award - December 2021

Introduction to full-stack web development using JavaScript (ReactJS, LoopbackJS, Redux and Material-UI)

The React Crash Course fa-solid fa-award - November 2021

This course covers installation, folder structure, the App file, JSX Templating, JSX Attributes and Styles, Using Expressions and Events in JSX, using React CDNs, Functional Components, Class Components, Props, Component Nesting, Reusability and State Management.

The Node.js Master Class fa-solid fa-award - November 2021

Node.js from scratch with no frameworks and no dependencies. Build a RESTful API, a web app GUI and a CLI with no external libraries.

JavaScript ES6 fa-solid fa-award - October 2021

Spread, rest, maps, sets, destructuring, template literals, classes, try/catch/finally, promises, fetch, Babel, Webpack, Gulp.

Introduction to Machine Learning fa-solid fa-award - June 2021

Fundamental Concepts of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning as the Next Game-Changing Technology

Learn Wagtail - May 2021

Creating Django websites using Python and the Wagtail CMS with a set of over 50 tutorial videos and a professional course.

Django 2 & Python | The Ultimate Web Development Bootcamp fa-solid fa-award - October 2020

Build three complete websites, learn back-end and front-end web development.

Interests

Published Photographer

Published in numerous travel magazines & news sites. Previous exhibition of images of the Kuna Yala people in Panama’s BioMuseo. IG: rich_on_travels.

Outdoor Enthusiast

Accomplished hiker. Completed many long-distance solo-hikes around the world including traversing the Pyrenees from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic, hiking the wilderness areas along the deserted south-eastern coastline of Greenland and hiking to and around Everest Base Camp and west from Langtang along the Himalayas for 1000 kilometres.

Experienced diver, qualified to Assistant Instructor level. Taught diving in Honduras specialising in mentoring students with phobia of water, guiding them past their fears to become confident divers. This was an aspect I found particularly fulfilling.

Other outdoor interests include cross-country biking (highlight being cycling around Iceland) and snowboarding.

Experienced Traveller

Travelled to all continents to fulfil my passion to explore the world’s diverse environments and experience first-hand many of the cultures to be found there. Overland trips include Hong Kong to Scotland via Mongolia & Siberia, London to Cape Town, Alaska to Antarctica, China to Nordkapp via India & the Silk Road.

If you're an employer looking to fill a gap that you think I might be a good fit for, either for a project or for a permanent role, feel free to contact me here.