Earthian moral imagineer learning how to be a good ancestor
Who I Am
I’m an action researcher and advisor. I work with organisations and communities on ethical complexity and transformative change, doing the inquiry alongside the people who live inside it. My work draws on responsible innovation, systems design, collective intelligence and moral imagination.
Much of that work comes down to trustworthiness and exploring the patterns, structures, disclosures and conditions that make an organisation worth trusting. Trust is what people extend to you. Trustworthiness, and proof of it, is the only half you get to design.
What I Do
My career started on building sites in the mid-90s. Bricklaying, then running crews across residential and commercial projects, taught the trade by a grandfather who was an artisan stonemason and master builder. Laying bricks teaches you what load-bearing means before you have a word for it.
I’ve been building ever since. The work has just become socio-technical, and steadily less visible. A decentralised protocol for multi-party data sharing in 2013, consent architecture and digital identity, open banking standards in the UK and Australia, digital ethics and responsible AI, and now the trust and culture that hold organisations up. Work across banks, technology companies, telcos and governments. Along the way, product management, learning experience design, and two decades across startups, public policy, social ventures, arts and culture, education and academia.
That work has mostly been about the same thing from different angles: what has to be true for people to reasonably place trust in a system, and who carries the cost when they can’t.
I currently live and learn from Country on the unceded Bidjigal, Gweagal and Kamay clans lands of the Dharawal Nations, in Sydney, Australia. Connection to the land, the sky, the water, and the living systems that sustain us is central to my work. I’m a father, a husband, an artist, founding member of Anuna Research Cooperative, and a human being trying to be a good ancestor.
How I See My Work
Beyond strategy and design, I’m a moral imagineer. I explore how imagination, technology and ethics shape what comes next. My practice bridges the poetic and the pragmatic — philosophy, cognitive science, design and systems thinking, put to work on real decisions.
Grounded in Dharawal Country and informed by the wisdom of living systems, I believe we can collectively craft technologies and cultures that serve life rather than exploit it.
What I believe
I believe we can collectively design a world where technological change is guided by compassion, care, and coopetition.
A world that recognises our shared humanity and kinship with the web of life.
A world where our creative power serves livingry, building what future generations will be proud to inherit.
Let's talk
About what your organisation is up against, and where moral imagination and responsible innovation earn their place.
book a call