PORTFOLIO CAREER WORKSHOP
60 Minute Workshop With Q&A
Practical advice to help you build your career as a portfolio, starting now
Ben is on his 4th career reinvention after a global career living in nine countries and working in 60. As the CEO of Digital People International, Ben mentors entrepreneurial CEOs and provides thought leadership and investor insights – find out more about his services here. In addition to himself being a ‘portfolio professional’, Ben is also the CEO and Co-Founder of The Portfolio Collective (TPC), a global community of 10,000+ professionals and business builders. TPC helps their members understand, launch, manage and grow their portfolio careers.
1990s
British Army Captain
2000s
Blue-Chip Corporate Leader
2010s
Technology
C-Suite executive
2020s
Portfolio professional
Ben started his career as a Captain in the British Army’s Royal Engineers, leading various military engineering organisations in Germany, Canada, Cyprus, Northern Ireland, Poland and Bosnia (including relieving the Siege of Sarajevo in 1995).
Following three years as a strategy consultant at McKinsey, Ben moved into senior leadership roles at Coca-Cola spanning Training & Development, Sales, Marketing & Distribution – culminating in leading 12,000 salespeople in India covering one million customers and 300 million active consumers.
Ben returned to the UK to become COO of Google UK, Benelux & Ireland, and then COO of Google Europe. In this role he wrote the blueprint for Google's monetisation approach - developing, launching and optimising many of the most impactful ads products for Search, YouTube, Mobile, Hotels, SMBs and eCommerce.
As an expert on digital marketing, Ben took on a variety of global C-Suite roles at technology companies and authored a book (Marketing for CEOs: Death or Glory in the Digital Age) on what best-in-class marketing looks like. His final full time role before embarking on a portfolio career was launching Ola - India's pioneering mobility company - in the UK.
To hear more about Ben's background, career and life lessons - in his own voice - you can listen to him on the Little Big Vets podcast, the Back Yourself vodcast or during an interview at Behind The Founder.
"If you want to stop your job and cure cancer I'll fund you" Ben on the veteran entrepreneurs podcast where Nick Haley speaks with some of the most inspiring and successful people who’ve left active service and started the next chapter of their life.
In this episode of the Back Yourself Show, Ben explores his impressive career but also explains that corporate life sometimes isn't the dream so he took the choice to step away and start a portfolio career.
During the interview at Behind the Founder, Ben runs through his mind-blowing story decade by decade. A great inspiration for professionals considering portfolio career and working differently!