John was responsible for strategic planning, corporate governance, assurance, legal services, major incident planning, and business intelligence as Director of Strategic Planning and Governance at Cardiff University. John has 20 years’ experience in higher education, and has also worked in local and central government.
John led the work at Cardiff University that enabled his team to win HESPA Strategic Planning Team of the Year 2019. The award recognised John’s leadership in developing Cardiff Data Professionals, a cross-departmental network supported on a governance, technical, and strategic level by his team. This ‘new’ approach has engendered a step-change in the institution’s capability for using data, enabling a more robust, data-driven approach to strategic decision-making, reducing risk. John has been a member of several UK level committees that have shaped the higher education data landscape.
John has high-level transferable skills in horizon-scanning and policy analysis, and was seconded part-time to the Welsh Government in 2015 to support Professor Sir Ian Diamond’s Review of HE Funding and Student Finance Arrangements in Wales, drafting the Review’s first report. In an earlier role, he led the strategic planning function at Swansea University through several strategic plan development and implementation cycles. UUK’s Efficiency, Effectiveness and Value for Money Report (2015) cited a project he designed the metrics for (The Performance Enabling Programme) as a case study that “led to significant improvements to staff engagement and performance.”