International and remote: 7 proof points
Every row that fits this shape of role: the rows the facts page shows first, then the rest in content order. Tom's own account of it: International and remote. All shapes, the facts page.
| Role | Product | Situation | Task | Action | Result | Year | Skills |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Acting Marketing Manager US, UK2 Group | US Marketing department Managed all online and marketing activity across 5 web properties | Run remotely from the UK, with a team never met in person. | Rebuild the underperforming US Marketing department before recruiting a US-based successor. | Created the marketing strategy, implemented a reporting structure, set and met budget targets. | Bounce rate down ~15%; sales conversion nearly doubled; product roadmap created and 8 products launched in 10 months. | Feb 2009 - Feb 2010 | turnaround, growth, conversion, roadmap, launch, marketing, team leadership, remote, international, budget |
| Associate Product Director at Novo Nordisk (contributed, one of a team) | Wegovy Pill launch Wegovy Pill launch, consumer workstream | Pitched for and invited onto the launch team for a company-critical initiative to inject new thinking (very unusual for a digital role). Digital, packaging and direct distribution sat in separate silos, each with its own assumptions. | Lead the HQ consumer workstream. | Applied subscription-model thinking to connect the physical product to digital fulfilment: QR codes on the boxes linking to the digital experience, and work with production on bundling three boxes in a tertiary carton. | Contributed to the largest pharma launch on record. | Feb 2022 - Feb 2026 | pharma, healthcare, patients, growth, retention, launch, marketing, SaaS, team leadership, international, consumer, budget |
| Head of Marketing, Opbeat | Opbeat Opbeat, developer tools SaaS startup providing application performance monitoring. Backed by the cofounders of Facebook and Instagram. | New product came out of stealth and lacked traction. The audience was developers, who are allergic to advertising. | Build the brand, marketing strategy, team and channels from scratch, and get traction without advertising at people who ignore advertising. | Learnt the developer audience by sitting with the engineers in the team. Defined the core product proposition and the developer narrative, and told the story. Built the brand, the team and the channels from nothing, then ran growth experiments across them. The two biggest levers, the meetup video engine and the pricing restructure, have their own rows. | Trebled traffic and sign-ups in 12 months. The brand became known in the Python, Django and Node.js communities. | Nov 2014 - Apr 2016 | growth, conversion, experimentation, KPIs, launch, 0 to 1, brand, marketing, SaaS, startup, developer tools, team leadership, international, budget |
| Senior Product Manager at Novo Nordisk | Wegovycare Wegovycare, digital patient platform for obesity medicine, built to scale | Every market needed its own version of every digital product, so nothing at Novo had ever scaled beyond one country. | Build one product that many markets could adopt and adapt without forking it. | Designed for scale: modular architecture, feature flags, an integrated CMS and a translation pipeline. Systematised co-creation with the markets so they shaped the product rather than waiting for it. | Novo's first digital health product adopted by multiple markets. First digital Novo product to scale. | Mar 2020 - Feb 2022 | algorithm, API, regulated, pharma, healthcare, patients, discovery, prototyping, ways of working, growth, retention, roadmap, 0 to 1, marketing, team leadership, stakeholders, consumer |
| Marketing Director, EuroDNS | EuroDNS EuroDNS marketing team, run from another country | Based in Copenhagen; the team of four in Luxembourg, visited every two weeks for three days. | Lead a turnaround team without being in the room most of the time. | Set a cadence: fortnightly face-to-face meetings, 1:1s and plenum discussions when in the office, then space to focus and get on with it in between. Available for ad-hoc calls but not hovering. | Structure without micromanagement: clarity on direction, autonomy on execution. It taught him to manage by outcomes rather than tasks, a habit kept since. | Feb 2013 - Nov 2014 | ways of working, turnaround, marketing, team leadership, remote, international |
| Independent Consultant | independent consultant Remote product and strategy consulting | Moved to Denmark after meeting a Dane on a ski slope; needed to finance the move and Danish studies (Prøve i Dansk 3) and wanted into the Danish startup scene. Former employers Host Europe (UK) and EuroDNS (LUX) needed product and strategy work; Everplaces (DK) was a local startup client. | Deliver product and strategy work remotely from Copenhagen while building a life in a new country. | Briefed senior management, product managers, designers and marketeers. Pitched products; produced user stories, specifications, storyboards and wireframes. Wireframed order funnels to improve conversion. Created the strategy to refactor the legacy control panel serving 3M domains. Wrote content and did SEO, including interviews with MailChimp, Creative Commons, the EFF, Rand Fishkin and Michael Palin. Remotely managed teams in the UK, Luxembourg and Romania. | Spotted Raspberry Pi before launch, got in touch and turned it into a sponsorship deal. The EuroDNS engagement turned into the Marketing Director role. | Sep 2010 - Apr 2013 | pharma, growth, conversion, SEO, funnels, launch, marketing, startup, domains, web hosting, team leadership, remote, international, stakeholders, partnerships |
| PM/GM at LEO Innovation Lab | Amgen partnership model Innovation partnership between LEO Innovation Lab and Amgen for Skincoach | Partnerships operated as mercenaries not missionaries. The standard contracting process was delivery to be completed (output), not outcomes. | Negotiate a partnership model that allowed building and piloting inside the constraints of two regulated companies. | Managed stakeholders on both sides and negotiated a new partnership model and ways of working. It challenged convention at the time. | The contract model and ways of working were later adopted by Amgen's core business as an exemplar for innovation partnerships. Tom led in-market discovery and delivery under it. | Feb 2018 - Oct 2018 | regulated, healthcare, patients, discovery, ways of working, growth, launch, domains, international, stakeholders, partnerships, budget |