In 2011 I took a life-changing decision to come home. After five and a half years on the other side of the planet, skiing, snowboarding, hiking, running, wakeboarding, travelling, essentially living the dream, it was time to grow up.

So I said goodbye to the mountains and vineyards of Otago, New Zealand and booked a one-way ticket to the UK.

Before escaping to the sun and snow, I’d spent a year at Harper Adams where, amongst a number of eye-opening experiences, I achieved a master’s degree and a week of work experience at the Savills Telford office.

That turned into a full-time graduate position which gave me a very broad training in both rural management and professional work.

I was lucky enough to be the assistant to my mentor Clive Beer in the ground-breaking Antrobus Inheritance Tax cases, which was really the beginning of my professional career.

On my return to the UK I came back into the Savills family as part of the Scottish professional team, and over the last four years have worked for some of the most fabulously driven, interesting and successful clients in Scotland.  

I specialise predominately in valuation for mainly tax and loan security purposes which brings tremendous variety to the places I go and the people I meet.

Site inspections can be as fun as my clients, from summoning a boat taxi by raising a red flag on a west coast island visit to bothies that can only be inspected on foot. 

It certainly isn’t glamorous – if I’m in a boardroom full of lawyers one day, I can be in the collecting yard of a dairy farm the next. I have had to help push an Argocat out of a bog, chased escaped horses across a moor and been locked into a hotel on the Isle of Skye.  

While farms, estates and country houses make up the majority of my work, I also act on behalf of clients with fish farms, leisure assets, strategic development land and a full range of residential property including a nunnery.

I have recently taken on the role of leading our rural professional services in Scotland, which brings together a range of specialisms including compulsory purchase, landlord and tenant, rating, and heritage. And while off skiing this year, I learned that I had been successful in my promotion to director.

My job can be challenging, but it is definitely fun, and although I have to travel to get to the mountains these days, in Scotland they are never too far away.

Further information

Contact Savills Scotland