Approach

From a distance, this image tells one story.
Move closer and it tells thousands.

The picture only works because someone understood each piece and figured out where it belongs.

That's how I think about strategic work. Customer research, business data, market dynamics, organizational context. I bring them together into a picture that is clear enough to act on.

Artwork: Face to Face: Connecting Lives © Helen Marshall / The People's Picture

 

Customer.

Clarity.

Impact.

The way I work is as important as the work itself. Collaborative, rigorous, deeply customer-centered, and always willing to roll up sleeves. I work closely with your team and share my thinking as it develops, not just when it's polished.

Every engagement starts with the customer — framing the right question, which isn't always the question the organization came in with. From there, the work brings together whatever it takes to build the full picture: customer research, behavioral data, competitive intelligence, market analysis. The value is in connecting those inputs into clarity — something more useful than any single one could be on its own. And then staying close enough to drive real impact, helping the organization act on it.

That approach has roots. It was built and tested over twelve years leading insights and strategy at Vistaprint, where the team I built, known as CCI, earned its place through rigor and strategic clarity, working exactly this way. That's the same standard I bring to every engagement.

How We Can Work Together

CCI Strategy Lab is a boutique practice. I lead every engagement directly and stay close to the work throughout. I bring in trusted partners when projects benefit from additional expertise. Engagements take many shapes:

  • Focused projects

    Some organizations bring me in for a specific engagement: a segmentation, a brand positioning study, a CX roadmap, with a clear outcome in mind.

  • End to end

    Others need something broader, working from the business challenge through research, recommendation, and activation.

  • Ongoing advisory

    Some need a senior perspective as strategy evolves. Someone who stays close to the business and brings customer and market understanding to strategic questions as they come up.

  • Fractional leadership

    Others need a fractional head of insights and strategy: embedded in the leadership team, driving the strategic agenda from the inside, without the commitment of a full-time hire.

    Deeper than advisory. More flexible than a full-time executive.

  • Building capability alongside the work

    For organizations with leaner teams, there’s another way this can work. I work directly alongside your team with the explicit goal of building capability as we go. Often this means pairing with a designated internal partner who learns the methods, the thinking, and the approach alongside the project work. When the engagement ends, the understanding stays