1) What is your current position?
Managing Director, La Touche Global Limited, developing international business strategies for businesses wishing to engage in international business.
Founder Global Governance Associates, focused on developing software as a service to facilitate international political economic analysis using open source data.
2) What are your proudest achievements?
Participating in the negotiations and drafting of the outcome document at the UN Sustainable Development Conference, Rio+20 in Brazil in 2012. Being instrumental in bringing the African delegation and the Latin American delegation into agreement on defining good governance and the rule of law in the sustainable development process, is an outcome that I will forever cherish.
3) What inspires you?
Fairness; equal rights and justice. It may sound cliché, but inequality is at the root cause of many of our world’s problems.
4) What has been the biggest obstacle in your career?
Poverty and a lack of resources have meant that I started late in the race. I am proud to have excelled and achieved irrespective, and managed to graduate with a 2.1 Masters degree from a red brick university in the UK without any government assistance, family support or student loan – all paid from my savings. I have always worked and studied part-time, including my Masters which was completed two years part-time.
5) Who has been the biggest influence on your career to date?
There is a quote stuck in my head since secondary school, which I attribute to W.E.B. Du Boise, “They only way out for the Black man is an education”. I believe this is more a paraphrasing of his philosophy than a direct quotation, but he is the man!
6) What is the best aspect about your current role?
The freedom to pursue my ideas and try to create something good for all humanity from my hands and insignificant position. I am driven by justice in the international system, and I am now free to give my everything to that cause.
7) And the worst?
As a start-up independent consultant I am only one man. I can see all the advantages that will come with having my software developed and in the market, but for now the scaling up must wait on my relentless efforts to secure funding and other resources.
8) What are your long term goals?
To be a significant player at the global table for the benefit of all humanity, especially the underdeveloped and developing world.
My memories of Rio, Brazil and Mumbai, India are the same – it is as if I was in the same country twice. Rio’s world renowned tourist destination juxtaposed against its favelas and Mumbai’s Juhu Beach area and its Bollywood film industry juxtaposed against its slums have cautioned me about the generalisation assigned to the rising “BRICS” countries as booming!
9) If you were Prime Minister, what one aspect would you change?
The constant attack on the welfare state and NHS must stop: the scapegoating of the poor to support the rich is not a sustainable development idea – eventually the poor will fight back when our backs are pushed against the wall.
10) If you were marooned on a desert island, which historical figure would you like to spend your time with and why?
Charles Darwin – he should be able to figure out several ways how we could adapt and survive.
