Vitae

The conventional-format summary: what I do, why, how, and the career record - with a downloadable PDF.

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Executive Summary

I'm a system synthesist. In any room, in any organisation, I instinctively see:

• Disconnected business capabilities
• Disconnected data
• Disconnected teams
• Disconnected products
• Disconnected legal entities
• Disconnected workflows
• Disconnected incentives

And then I construct a coherent system around them.

Twelve years of doing that in practice has produced a working thesis I call the 30/70: meaningful transformation is roughly 30% technology and 70% everything else - operations, culture, governance, legacy reality, and the lived behaviour of the people who actually run the business day to day. Most transformations fail because they get the ratio backwards.

I don't only design to this ratio - I argue it in the room. In client meetings with VP- and head-of-operations–level stakeholders I frame the work in exactly these terms: the digital layer is the 30%, and the operational reality, governance, and human behaviour behind it are the 70% that decides whether any of it works.

I'm best deployed where a business has the right ambition but the wrong shape - where the systems, teams, products, and contracts have grown faster than the architecture holding them together. My work is to read what's actually there, design what coherence looks like, and build the path to it without breaking what already works.

I write regularly about this - how transformation actually behaves in real organisations, how AI gets deployed usefully rather than decoratively, and why the technology is consistently the smaller half of the work. You can read those pieces on this site or on LinkedIn. If you want the fullest statement of the approach, start with The Talent.

What I Currently Do

The formal title is Head of Business Development and Digital. What that actually covers, after twelve years of scope expanding into whatever the business needed and nobody else was holding, is the following. Each is linked to the evidence.

I own a customer engagement platform and the products built on it. Six live instances across two countries for global OEM brands, plus the leads-management and queue-management systems that grew out of it. I hold the architecture across every instance rather than letting each client pull the product into a bespoke fork - because a platform that forks stops being a platform and becomes six maintenance problems. Every enhancement one client pays for is designed so the others can inherit it. (See Section: Operating Scope and Case Study 1 - A white-label customer engagement platform (2016–present))

I negotiate and redline the group's commercial agreements, and I am the first draft, first reviewer and last line before signature. Master agreements, framework agreements, data intermediary agreements, NDAs - including with a BNM-regulated financial institution and with OEM principals whose templates arrive drafted entirely in their favour. My value here is not legal expertise; it is that I am the only person in the room who holds the commercial intent, the operational reality, the partnership dynamics and the legal exposure at the same time. I work each clause for what it does to the business rather than what it says, translate it into plain language for the people who actually hold signatory authority, and take the position to Group Legal for proper vetting. The people who sign are not the people who understand the deal; my job is to close that gap before they sign. (See Case Study 7 - A regulated fintech × the publication - framework agreement under precedent pressure (June–July 2026) and Case Study 10 - Aftersales nudges - turning an unused capability into a billed service (2025–2026))

I design and hold the commercial governance layer. Pricing structures, discount authority, content and service policies, the terms that get attached to every order the company issues. Most of it exists because I watched the same disputes recur and concluded the problem was not the clients but the absence of a written position. Codifying it converted years of case-by-case argument into a policy that now travels with every agreement - and, just as importantly, told my own team which fights were worth having. (See Case Study 14 - Revenue operations - the commercial ledger under the deals (2014–present))

I run revenue operations - the commercial ledger underneath the deals. Invoicing instructions, utilisation tracking, tax treatment, credit notes, the reconciliation between what was sold and what was actually delivered and billed. Unglamorous, and the place where a company quietly loses money it never notices. I automated the mechanical parts and deliberately kept the verification human, because the check is the control, not the bottleneck. (See Case Study 13 - The automotive ad network commercial layer (2014–present))

I hold data protection and governance for systems handling hundreds of thousands of customer records. Consent architecture, retention, the question of who is actually the controller when a global principal, a national sales company and a local partner all touch the same data. I have written policy artefacts adopted by clients into their own internal governance, and I have argued positions with principals' data protection officers on their own agreements, in their interest. (See Case Study 10 - Aftersales nudges - turning an unused capability into a billed service (2025–2026))

I run the commercial layer of a media and advertising network. Rate structures, packaging, inventory, the relationship between editorial independence and commercial appetite - which is a governance problem before it is a sales problem. (See Case Study 12 - A conglomerate motor group - multi-year group media commitment (2020–present))

I built and run an AI operating model across all of the above. Not as a tool bolted onto the work, but as a structured operating layer: documentation first, purpose-built assistant personas loaded with our actual policies and context, independent review threads whose only job is to find the holes, and judgment held firmly human at every decision point. It is how one person carries the working volume of a function. (See Section: Current Build)

And I grow the people who will hold it after me. The measure I actually care about is what keeps running when I am not in the room, and who is running it. (See Section: Operating Scope)

I have grown as far as this container allows, and I am ready to do considerably more.

Career Arc

The conventional record, for the file.

The Company (the parent group) · 2014–present

Head of Digital & Business Development (2016–present) · Business Development Manager (2014–2016)

Joined initially as product manager for the classifieds site and BDM for the wider network. Scope expanded organically into commercial governance, SaaS product, legal and contracts, ad operations, and company-wide SOP. Title formalised in November 2018; operating scope had already substantially exceeded the BDM role for years prior, and has continued to expand into territory typically held at Chief Operating or Chief Digital Officer level - internal policy and discount authority, invoicing and outgoing-document sign-off, senior client and vendor escalation, and ultimate authority on operational policy and commercial risk.

Motionworks Sdn Bhd · 2009–2011

Interactive Producer (2011) · Operations Manager (2009–2011)

Operations, accounting, HR, administration, client servicing, project management. The years that taught me the difference between client interests and team interests and what happens when an organisation consistently sacrifices the latter for the former.

Earlier career

Web development and digital production roles in Kuala Lumpur from the early 2000s, including running a top-ten Malaysian web development company prior to joining the Company.