How I can help
When the pivot matters,
I take the wheel.
Companies usually come to me when they are making a strong strategic pivot in how they attract, engage, or transact with customers. That usually means large scale technology change: re-platforming customer journeys, moving to new cloud capability, or reimagining the customer experience end to end, for maximum delight outside and real process efficiency inside. Unlike many of my peers, who arrived at AI adoption at the LLM stage in 2023, I have led machine learning and algorithm-centric AI change since 2017. My focus has always been reducing friction in the way customers interact. Sometimes that takes better ways of working, sometimes finding the bottlenecks at enterprise level, sometimes new business architecture, and sometimes a radical digital product that replaces monoliths and a dozen data sets.
Fractional and interim product leadership
Sometimes you don't need advice, you need someone in the chair. I step in as Head of Product or transformation lead, embedded days per week, with real accountability for the roadmap, the function and the outcomes. When I leave, you keep a stronger team than I found.
Transformation engagements
A defined piece of work with a defined end: assessing a product function, rebuilding a portfolio and strategy, getting an organisation ready for an acquisition or an operating model change. We agree what good looks like, then we go and get it.
Coaching for product leaders and their teams
When companies engage me to lead and build product culture, I run book clubs and communities of practice, and I coach product leaders through hard customer and business problems with strong questions about the common gotchas, especially around AI enablement. I also bring a product capability assessment that benchmarks individuals and whole product functions, so we can see the logical next steps in skills building and get on with them. I am an ICF member coach and ICAgile certified.
My training methods have kept pace with the tools. I build custom GPTs into the classroom, trained on the artefacts and concepts a product leader or product manager is expected to produce in the role. Learners bring real-world scenarios, create genuine product artefacts as pre-work, and are assessed against rubrics that reflect the job rather than the theory. It is the approach behind the custom GPT that became the most-used tool in Bloomberg's enterprise suite, and it means people leave my sessions with work they can use on Monday, not notes they will never open again.
Workshops, offsites and speaking
I am a trained visual facilitator and a LEGO® Serious Play® certified facilitator, which means your strategy day involves more drawing and building and rather less slideware. I also speak on product, transformation and careers in technology, on stages and panels.
A portfolio career
I am a UK Armed Forces spouse, so my career has asked for flexibility and adaptability. Since 2007 I have been a professional interim product leader for FTSE 100 and S&P 500 companies.
Working through agency placements and Big 4 consultancies, I have led major transformations and web and app products that help multinational businesses win in their industries. That has meant solving the internal problems along the way too: technology modernisation, ways of working, workflow simplification, and totally reimagining how these companies engage, transact with, and delight their customers.
The bulk of my career has centred on B2C product areas in e-commerce and mobile, and on B2B and B2C AI and ML technology products. As new business problems emerged, I sought training to sharpen my views, and over time became a sought-after paid public speaker, sharing what I learned from changing business architecture and reducing internal friction through flow-efficient ways of working. I qualified in both ICAgile and ICF coaching disciplines to strengthen the way I lead and motivate people.
All of this built a successful portfolio career: serving a variety of clients in a consultative capacity, full-time or fractional, as the market and my personal circumstances evolved. These engagements aren't listed as main brands on my LinkedIn profile, purely for reading clarity. They include:
Bloomberg · product consultant, agentic AI and custom GPTs
Meta · fractional product leader
Hargreaves Lansdown · fractional Head of Product
Pixar Animation Studios · Brain Trust coach
Adidas · enterprise agile coach
GSK · product consultant
Marsh McLennan · agile coach
The London Stock Exchange · product consultant
Aberdeen Asset Management & Standard Life Group · business architect
Powerverse · product training
What people are saying
"Elle has a rare ability to balance strategic product thinking with human dynamics. Her coaching mindset helped teams cut through noise, stay outcome-focused, and build confidence in their delivery approach... I would happily work with Elle again and strongly recommend her to any organisation looking to build strong products, effective teams, and meaningful customer impact."
Mike McKinlay · Strategic Agile Delivery Lead, worked with me at Bloomberg
"Unlike some coaches and programme managers, she talks the talk and walks the walk. She coached at enterprise level and had delivery accountability while under tight timescales... We began with a chaotic structure and ended up with a collaborative scaled agile environment."
Zeynab Khalesi · Senior Program Manager, Capital One
"Imagine the room, starting the day wondering why they're even there... Ending the day engaged and collaborating with other teams, building and iterating Lego prototypes together with engineers, designers and other leaders. 100% convinced this had a hugely positive impact on everyone."
Ashley Kay · Group Head of Design & Digital Transformation, Bupa
"She's been hands-on with countless digital customer journeys where she personally mapped these out with teams and leaders... in Europe and Latin America, Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, UK and Arabia. Elle has helped thousands of individuals at Bupa be better at their jobs without taking the credit away from their deliveries."
Azza Hashim · Senior Governance, Risk & ESG Professional, Bupa
"What stands out about Elle is not just her knowledge sharing but also her ability to inspire continuous growth in those around her."
Kaushal Kishore Thakur · Engineering leader, reported to me at Bupa
"She is one of my favourite people to kick ideas around with and if I have a really gnarly problem to wrestle with or a tough deliverable to make, I want her on my team. You should too."
Paul Brown · Product & Delivery Partner
Start with the free stuff
Before you spend a penny, take the tools: the Product Leadership Toolkit and the AI Nomenclature For Product Leaders are free, public and usable. If they help, we will probably work well together.
Hiring instead? Request my CV.