I'm Barbara.
An Introduction
DATA CONSULTANT · ADVISOR · FRACTIONAL LEADER
I started out in finance and accounting and got pulled in by how organisations actually make decisions, handle complexity and use the information sitting in front of them.
The thread since then has been the same: how delivery really happens, the systems, the data, the way work moves, and being on the hook for whether it works.
That pulled me into data, systems and change work. Most of the last decade has been spent inside regulated, messy organisations, taking scrappy data, unclear processes and tangled systems and turning them into something that works day to day.
The work spans financial services, the public sector and social housing. Clients include Fidelity Investments, Aviva Investors, UBS, the Department for Transport, Monzo and others I can't name in public.
These days I work on two tracks. For Business, large or small, on the bigger calls in data, systems, operations and transformation. And For Founders, building the company, who need senior data and AI thinking without a full-time hire.
I run Stratford Ellis, my consultancy, as Lead Data Consultant. Based in London, working wherever the work is.For Business →·For Founders →
I've built AI-powered platforms, written technical specifications that get funded, and led teams through the kind of data complexity that would stall most businesses.
This is the home for that work.
A Brief Chronology
- Finance and FoundationsNumbers, audit, and an early look at how organisations really run when no one's watching.
- Data and TransformationMost of a decade inside complicated programmes across sectors, turning scrappy data and unclear processes into something that actually works.
- Independent PracticeAn independent practice as Fractional Data Lead, advising on change, data and systems.
- The Work TodayAn advisory and fractional practice. I help organisations make the bigger calls on data, systems and change, then stay close enough to the delivery to make sure they land.
"I make complex delivery decisions clear, then make sure they land."
Words from the room.
A handful of notes from leaders, founders and chairs I've worked alongside.
Barbs walked into a programme that had been stuck for nine months and had us all reading off the same page inside a fortnight. The plan we left with was the one we actually ran.
She tells you what she thinks. No fluff, no vendor agenda. Our board got a read on our data we could finally act on, and a short list of fixes we could start on Monday.
Having Barbs in the room changed how we made the call. She knew the context from month two and saved us from at least one expensive mistake on the systems side.