Mike Morris

Strategic advisor to a Czech premium fabric and textile e-commerce startup; supporting business development, commercial strategy, and international market growth. • Business Development: Provided ongoing strategic and commercial advisory support, contributing to growth strategy and operational planning in a similar capacity to other long-term consultancy engagements. • International Exhibition Representation: Attended and represented the business at international trade exhibitions, supporting sales activity, building client and supplier relationships, and strengthening the brand's presence in key markets.

Ongoing strategic advisor to an e-commerce and sports training provider, supporting product strategy, business growth, and brand development. • KPI Framework: Developed company-wide strategic objectives and a KPI framework to track and support sustained business growth. • Corporate Philanthropy: Organised and orchestrated charity and community initiatives, enhancing brand positioning and deepening community engagement.

• Critical Project Recovery: Rescued the CFIUS regulatory compliance initiative from Red status to Green within two weeks. Recommended cancellation once recovery was confirmed, saving $150,000 USD • Executive Dashboarding: Took ownership of a stalled executive reporting initiative and delivered a suite Power BI dashboards. Consolidated data from disparate sources into a Data Lake architecture (Bronze, Silver, Gold), giving C-suite unified real-time visibility across the business for the first time. • Agile Transformation: Led Agile adoption across the development team. Introduced standups, retrospectives, sprint planning, story point tracking, and MVP thinking. Reduced developer utilisation from 300% to 85% across four sprints, significantly improving quality, morale, and delivery predictability. • Resource and Capacity Visibility: Built a centralised Project Hub in Power BI providing the Director with real-time oversight of 20+ projects across five resources, including RAG status, resource commitments, RAID, and Lessons Learned. • Global Leasing and Contracts Process: Standardised and unified Leasing and Contracts processes across EMEA (circa 120 contracts) and APAC (circa 45 contracts), aligning with North America and providing Global Leadership with unified visibility for the first time. • Hardware Programme: Directed a $10M estate-wide hardware upgrade across global operations, managing complex vendor relationships and delivering on time with minimal disruption to 30+ data centre facilities.

Strategic advisor to a sustainable footwear start-up, providing commercial planning and operational support across a two-year engagement. Strategic Planning: Led long-term business planning including market positioning, growth strategy, and operational roadmap development. Financial Management: Built P&L forecasting models and established financial controls and reporting mechanisms to optimise profitability and support commercial decision-making. Business Performance: Designed and implemented performance reporting frameworks to track progress against strategic objectives and identify areas for improvement.

• PMO from Scratch: Designed and implemented a full PMO framework including project lifecycle methodology, portfolio governance, resource management protocols, and risk assessment systems, establishing operational maturity where none previously existed. • RAID Training Programme: Created and piloted a comprehensive RAID training programme for ten project team members, resulting in 100% improved understanding of risk management, 70% improved project delivery confidence, and a 65% reduction in CEO-level escalations on pilot projects. • Executive Reporting: Implemented a Master Summary Schedule providing the CEO and leadership team with real-time portfolio visibility across health, resource allocation, financial performance, and strategic risk.

• Portfolio Roadmap: Created a comprehensive strategic roadmap across all 7 portfolios and 35 initiatives upon joining, immediately identifying 6 delivery window clashes that would have caused a minimum of 3 project delays. Resolved all clashes in partnership with senior leadership, avoiding reputational damage and protecting customer satisfaction scores. • RAID Framework: Established a RAID reporting framework and risk management best practices across the Support Portfolio, improving risk identification by 30% and enabling proactive decision-making across the senior leadership team. • Product Delivery: Managed customer-facing digital products through the full lifecycle from business case to market launch, coordinating Technology, Compliance, Marketing, and Operations to deliver experience improvements for 350,000+ retail banking customers. • Sustainability Initiative: Spearheaded a corporate sustainability initiative resulting in strategic partnerships with three Refill Stores and a group-wide staff discount programme.

• International Policy: Represented the United Kingdom at international maritime conventions including the European Maritime Safety Agency workshop in Lisbon, building cross-cultural relationships that proved vital during the COVID-19 pandemic. • COVID-19 Maritime Response: Managed the UK maritime COVID-19 response, tracking seafarers on UK-flagged vessels and successfully repatriating 80% of crew before their legal limit at sea was reached. Maintained zero delays to global shipping whilst navigating constantly changing international entry restrictions. • Tripartite Governance: Chaired biannual tripartite working groups between seafarers, shipowners, and Government, restructuring the format for virtual delivery during the pandemic and receiving positive feedback from all members for effective time management and outcome focus.

Progressed through three roles across HR, recruitment, and service coordination, taking on operational improvement responsibilities beyond each job description and delivering the most significant transformation of the Stop-Gap service in four years. • Stop-Gap Service Recovery: Spearheaded the end-to-end digitisation of the Stop-Gap service as interim Coordinator, introducing automation, digital records, and email-based communications to replace manual processes. Reduced administrative workload by 90%, achieved 100% positive customer feedback, reduced billing queries by 35%, and returned the service to profitability for the first time after four consecutive years of losses. • Recruitment Team Leadership: Led a team of 8 managing end-to-end recruitment for Trafford Council, streamlining processes and ensuring legislative compliance throughout the full recruitment lifecycle. Provided implementation support for a new online recruitment portal. Payroll and Financial Support: Provided support across payroll, budgeting, and forecasting alongside day-to-day service operations, developing broad commercial and operational awareness across HR functions.

• Early customer service, duty management, and team leadership experience. • Progressed from Customer Service Advisor to Deputy Manager