by Lindsay Uittenbogaard

I’d run my own business before.  In fact, it was the first thing I did when I finished University. I started the UK’s first city-to-city car pool agency for students in 1992.  Crazy actually.  No concept awareness, no funding, no experience, no internet (but we did get a fax machine – woo!) I loved the novelty and the challenge of it. But after 4 years, 17,000 members, EU funding, 7 voluntary staff and sponsorship from Vauxhall Motors – at 10 pounds membership a year, it just wasn’t viable. I was exhausted and oh so disappointed.

After that, I went from small-business marketing in Australia, to a general management position in Scotland, and then someone said, “Hey, I need someone for a communications consultancy job in the Netherlands and you could be that person!” So off I went to start work at Shell in 2001. As I set out on what was to be a fascinating whole new life, I started discovering what large organizations were really about. Continue reading →