Dewynters

Dewynters is the London advertising agency for live entertainment, working across theatre, immersive, festivals and exhibitions. Founded in 1976, it built its name on West End campaigns — Cats, Les Misérables, The Phantom of the Opera, The Lion King — and a long working relationship with Andrew Lloyd Webber.

It acquired the New York agency SpotCo in 2013 and today sits inside Miroma Group. Roughly 90 people run brand strategy, creative, content, social, ticketing and sales analysis, insights and media buying under one roof. That structure is why the performance function mattered: an integrated agency can act on what the numbers say in the same week it sees them.

Theatre inventory expires. Every performance is a separate sale with a fixed capacity and a hard deadline, across a seating map where the same show has a dozen price points. Media has to respond to yield, not just to demand.

Producers report on weekly grosses. That cadence, not a quarterly marketing cycle, sets how fast measurement has to work.

There was no performance marketing department. I built one: the channel structure, the measurement model, the hiring, and the reporting line back into producers and marketing leads who had never had daily paid media numbers before.

Trinity
School

I grew up in the area, so Trinity was always the place I wanted to go. After entrance exams the choice came down to Dulwich, Wilson's, Wallington, Whitgift and Trinity. My mum left the decision to me and my brother. I chose Trinity. He chose Whitgift.

The friends I made there are the friends I still see and plan things with. We had our fifteen-year reunion recently and the facilities had moved on again.

I represented the school in water polo and swimming, at galas and competitions through the season, and went on to the England under-16 water polo team and swam for Beckenham at regional level.

History, geography, physics, mathematics. Maths was the one. My mum encouraged me towards it on the grounds that it is either right or wrong — not true of everything, but there was a simplicity in that I liked.

Algebra, a problem, a resolution. That habit came with me: in senior and leadership roles the work is still mostly finding the problem and finding the solution.

Design and technology was the subject I loved: metallurgy, woodworking, metalworking. The first place I got to express an idea by building it, which is still roughly how I work.

St Andrews

I went up early for water polo pre-season. I was treasurer of the African Caribbean Society, and put on and ran events, which was the first properly entrepreneurial thing I did: budget, room, promotion, door.

The cohort was the other half of the education. Academic mum, academic dad, academic brothers and sisters, and classmates from Hong Kong, America, Canada, Vietnam, Singapore, Scotland and England.

I was not especially interested in politics before St Andrews. International relations gave me the theoretical frameworks, and the habit I took away — first as a student, then as a new graduate — was holding them up against whatever was actually happening that week.

Divinity alongside the economics and the politics is part of that. Where it landed is stated on the homepage.

It started with DJing at St Andrews around 2015, and writing for Saint Audio, the university's music magazine. Two ways into the same thing: one is reading a room, the other is working out why a record does what it does.

Both are selection problems, which is probably why they stuck.

Now it is Logic Pro X, and teaching myself piano, music theory and guitar to go with it. There is a bank of instrumentals and minor recordings building up: unreleased, mostly, and useful practice either way.

A friend pointed out that almost everything I do now is solo. He is right. Water polo was the team sport and I let it go; swimming, training and production are all things you do on your own, and I did not choose that consciously.

Athletic and creative, both since school. They are the same instinct in different rooms, and the shared philosophy is discipline, adaptation and innovation.