Future of Work Strategist, entrepreneur and pioneer

Start with the work, not the job description

Rather than starting with a job description or the way things have always been done, Sarah starts with the work that needs doing, the people who could contribute and the potential that might otherwise be missed.

Her career has never fitted neatly into one box

She started in FMCG marketing, working on brands including Clover, Quorn and Mum deodorant. As part of her marketing degree, she spent a year in Paris in 1985 working as a marketing intern for the French trade association for artificial intelligence.

After travelling around the world in her mid twenties, Sarah returned to the UK and worked as an interim manager, including three assignments with Dairy Crest.

That experience changed the direction of her career.

People started asking Sarah where they could find someone like her, so in 1996 she co founded an interim management business. It grew from zero to £5.5 million turnover in five years.

See the capability. See the potential.

Interim management also showed Sarah something important about talent.

When an organisation urgently needed someone to come in and deliver, many of the usual barriers disappeared. Clients were less interested in age, background or where somebody went to university. They wanted to know whether the person had the capability to do the work.

It opened opportunities for experienced people, including senior women in marketing and HR, who might have been overlooked through more conventional recruitment.

That thinking still sits at the heart of Sarah’s work today. See the capability. See the potential. Then think differently about how the work could be done.

Combine what every generation brings

For the past ten years Sarah has also worked with schools, young people and the Careers & Enterprise Company, co creating interactive careers experiences and festivals.

As a parent to two Gen Z children, she also watches different generations’ expectations of work, technology, flexibility and careers play out in real life.

Sarah believes the opportunity is not to pitch one generation against another, but to combine what different generations bring. Experience, emerging talent, different perspectives, new technology and AI. She calls it intergenerational alchemy.

Sarah also co created a 50/50 work experiment bringing together 50 people over 50, 50 organisations and 50 hours of work. It was an early example of what she now calls a microship, a short piece of meaningful work that allows someone to contribute, experiment and demonstrate what they can do.

Rethinking talent, work and workforce design

Today Sarah helps organisations rethink talent, work and workforce design across the whole working life. Her work includes intergenerational working, experienced talent, flexible careers, ageism, gendered ageism, Human plus AI and new ways of organising work through interim roles, job shares, fractional work and microships.

She also helps individuals explore what comes next, both in work and beyond it.