CTO, Sixteen Pillars.

The fundamentals haven’t changed

The first computer I worked with seriously was a BBC Micro. A-level computing in the 1980s — BBC Basic, a network of teletext screens, and hardware with constraints that forced precision. You could not be imprecise. There was no room for it.

The fundamentals I learned then are the ones I apply now. Data structures. Logic. Systems thinking. The importance of getting the model right before writing the first line. Most of the problems I find in enterprise systems exist because someone forgot them.

They have not changed. The systems have. The principles have not.

The other side of the desk

My background is not conventional for a CTO.

I began my career as a qualified dispensing optician and spectacle maker — a bricks and mortar role with real customers, real suppliers, real management pressure, and a P&L that mattered. I ran optical practices at a time when the industry operated almost entirely on paper.

I introduced technology into those practices. Not as a technologist brought in to modernise them — as the person responsible for the business, who understood what needed to change and why. I built the first website in the UK to sell contact lenses. I took optical from paper to digital, from the inside.

That experience is the foundation of how I work. I have sat at both sides of the conversation — the business leader who needed to understand technology, and the technical authority explaining it. I understand what it costs a business to make the wrong technical decision, because I have been the person making those decisions.

I come from the other side of the desk.

That is why the mentoring I offer is for MDs, founders, and business owners — not for technical practitioners. And it is why the fractional CTO work I do is grounded in business outcomes, not technical preference.

The career

After optical, I ran the digital operation for the Society of All Artists — 45,000 SKUs, membership systems, and the full web presence for one of the UK’s largest art societies. Then Specialist Crafts, a larger business serving schools, local authorities, and public institutions.

Then NHS and DHL Supply Chain, where the work was enterprise-scale digital transformation — the kind of project that changes how a large organisation operates, not just what technology it uses.

From there, four years as CTO for an international law firm operating across the EU and the United States. A named executive role at a firm where technology decisions carried direct regulatory and jurisdictional weight — GDPR compliance, cross-border data governance, and the technical infrastructure to support a legal practice operating under multiple legal frameworks simultaneously.

In parallel, and permanently, freelance technical leadership. The work that is now Sixteen Pillars has been the work throughout — it simply has a name and a structure now.

I have been doing what a fractional CTO does for more than ten years. The title is newer than the practice.

The approach

Every engagement starts with the data model. Always.

Most technical problems I encounter — fragmented systems, costly integrations, compliance gaps, architecture that nobody fully controls — trace back to a data model that was never properly defined. That is where the work starts.

The same tested framework for security, standards, and accessibility is applied to every engagement. Not invented fresh each time. Applied consistently.

The goal is always elegant solutions. The right answer, not the fast one. The one that holds when the business changes, when the team turns over, and when the auditor arrives.

I love solving problems elegantly.

Credentials

BSc (Honours) Computing and IT — The Open University
Qualified Dispensing Optician and Spectacle Maker
Medical Physics and Physiological Measurements

Sixteen Pillars

Sixteen Pillars is an enterprise technology consultancy. Technical leadership, architecture, and governance for organisations that need it without the overhead of a full-time hire.

Based in Cyprus. Available globally.

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