After a short service commission with the Royal Air Force, Alastair turned the practical skills learned as military logistics officer to working in disaster relief for a number of NGO and UN agencies. He has responded the Darfur Crisis, Tsunami, South Asia Earthquake and Haitian Earthquake.
On any given day Alastair describes himself as “an eclectic”, “an expert generalist” and “an overactive storyteller”; he brings the attributes that underlie these titles together to form a holistic approach to developing organisations in the commercial and not for profit sectors. Whether acting as an interim leader, business advisor or coach he maintains the same commitment to ensuring that every great vision has an organisation strong enough to deliver it.
Alastair’s latest role has been as Interim Director of Shared Services for Water & Sanitation for the Urban Poor (WSUP), a not-for-profit company that helps transform cities to benefit the millions who lack access to water and sanitation. WSUP’s mission to bring improved water and sanitation to 17 million people living in urban areas in Africa and Asia by 2020 required Alastair to develop a support function agile enough to respond to working with the distinct needs of the private sector, academic research institutions, regulatory bodies, funding bodies and international municipal utilities. The key to Alastair’s delivery was to put information at the heart of WSUP’s support operations, implementing a community intranet, CRM systems, shared services helpdesk and increasing the accessibility of IT platforms by moving them to cloud based services. In addition he undertook to develop the HR function to minimise HR risk, develop the employer brand and source high quality support in recruitment all of this contributing to releasing frontline staff and leadership to deliver on their mission.