This work had all the hallmarks of the stars aligning. I was ready to start my own people first organisation, but I needed a push to get going and take the leap into the unknown. As I was umming and arring an amazing opportunity to work with Ustwo came along.
This project gave us an opportunity to get our first paid work as Elsewhere and learn a bucket load about people first culture from one of the studios that does it best (UsTwo).

Working alongside some extremely talented Ustwobies and client team out in India, the project itself allowed me to use my skills around customer/ethnographic research, workshop facilitation and turning human insights into tangible concepts that could be taken back into an organisation. All this whilst being thrust into a new, unfamiliar culture out in India.

I finished my work with UsTwo with a whole new level of experience and knowledge (appreciations) about how to do things people first, an amazing group of friends and the will and desire to get elsewhere off the ground.

I moved to Copenhagen in 2015 and started a Masters degree with a focus on Artificial intelligence and user experience. I wrote my master's thesis with Hello Great Works and then started full time employment with them soon after.

It was quite a culture shock, partly because the work culture in Copenhagen is so different to the work culture in London (and Germany), but also HGW was a very different type of agency than I’d been used to at Axonn Media.

I’d moved from an agency focussed on coding, creating and executing campaigns to a lot of research, workshops and strategy. Given my aptitude for strategic thinking I succeeded in learning a lot about design thinking, qualitative research methods and innovation strategy. Essentially how to understand what people need and bring a whole team of people along with turning that understanding of needs into a solution that people truly want.

But I missed being involved in implementing the things I’d strategize about, I needed to learn if the strategies I made were working over the following years. Luckily this is when I met Luke, my legend of a business partner, and Elsewhere started to form.

After a relatively quick promotion, strategic thinking was now a big part of my role. I started to realise I had a talent for strategy and future thinking, both in terms of technological innovation for clients but also in terms of strategic planning, roadmaps and plans for my department.

But yet again it was people that were the main challenge and what I learned most in this time. The boardroom I was in had a very diverse set of personalities, opinions and skills sets. The clients I worked with were being pulled in all directions by their bosses and staff. No matter how good the process, strategy or solution, it was being held up by conflicting agendas, motivations and success criteria.

What I know now is that I was trying to do what was best for our customers, my department and team members but this was conflicting against the need for fast growth and profit. I thought at the time it was because I didn’t enjoy my job and so decided to change my career path and move to Denmark.