Predictive oversight
Use Key Performance Predictors alongside retrospective KPIs so the board preserves intervention time and optionality.
Chair · Non-Executive Director · Board Adviser
Better board decisions when reports, KPIs and assumptions do not tell the whole story — or what may happen next.
A board needs independent challenge without becoming a second executive team. The contribution is to examine what evidence supports, recognise what may be changing and improve judgement while preserving clear executive accountability.
Thirteen years of judicial responsibility as a President of Courts Martial required decisions based on evidence rather than rank, confident presentation or institutional convenience.
Authority to govern and challenge.
What the career contributes to a board
The Scar Tissue of Institutions
A board does not appoint a biography. It appoints judgement.
The familiar qualities matter: intellect, critical assessment, judgement, courage, openness, honesty, tact, listening, relationship-building, trust and strength of character. They should be tested in what a director does when institutional accounts do not agree, rather than asserted as a checklist.
Accountability under evidence
Thirteen years presiding over Courts Martial required decisions in which rank, confidence and polished advocacy could not substitute for the evidence. Differing accounts were a reason to test what was known, not to settle for the version that caused the least institutional discomfort.
That is relevant to a board: it must challenge a plausible presentation without making the challenge a contest of personalities.
Judgement under consequence
In Iraq, incomplete pictures, conflicting institutional perspectives and limited time made delay an active choice. On two occasions Steven accepted temporary command of participating Iraqi generals and Regional Command Centres for national homeland-security exercises. The command was exercise-specific; the war, election preparations and risks beyond the exercise were real.
The boardroom is not a battlefield. The transferable point is that a decision must be made within actual authority, on available evidence, at a time when it can still alter the outcome.
Transformation at institutional scale
On Defence Training Rationalisation, finance, risk, commercial and operational perspectives each revealed only part of an £18.6bn programme. Bringing them into one operating picture improved the ability to see dependencies and make cross-system decisions. Even that integration involved genuine trade-offs: common provision needed funded, Service-specific additions to recover capability gaps.
Recovery under market pressure
Turnaround teaches a board to ask which value is recoverable, which deterioration is still forming beneath historical figures and which action is material enough to justify intervention. It also teaches the difference between creating activity and changing trajectory.
Stewardship across time
Family capital and newly formed enterprises add another constraint: ownership, status and expertise are not the same thing. Investment authority can be allocated by expertise while the Principal retains stewardship responsibilities. A Chair must similarly make room for the best judgement without becoming a shadow CEO.
Why this matters now
AI, technology, capital, regulation, supply chains and geopolitics may change faster than normal board packs can be assembled. Historic KPIs remain necessary; they are not sufficient to reveal what may invalidate today's assumptions. The board needs information calibrated to significance and received while choices are still open.
That does not require every NED to become a specialist in everything. It requires a board capable of bringing partial views together, testing their implications and governing at the tempo the situation demands.
My role is to help a board see those fractures early, name them accurately and act before recoverability disappears. That is the scar tissue I bring to the boardroom.
Strengthen judgement before consequence becomes history.
Independent judgement: thirteen years as President of Courts Martial required decisions based on evidence rather than rank, confidence, institutional pressure or polished argument.
Steven strengthens decision quality through independent, proportionate challenge—supporting executives without creating a shadow management structure.
“Steven brings tremendous value to our board”
Selected from 19 public professional recommendations on LinkedIn. Review selected supporting evidence →
- See the trajectory Identify drift while time remains to intervene.
- Protect legitimacy Ensure decisions can survive informed scrutiny.
- Strengthen executives Reinforce accountability without shadow management.
Formation: public-company executive, principal, audit and risk experience reinforced by thirteen years of judicial responsibility.
Board and committee experience includes two years chairing an Audit Board and wider audit, assurance and risk responsibilities. His principal functional focus has been risk, major real-estate portfolios, and HR and workforce change, including TUPE and trade-union engagement and negotiation.
Location and working model: UK or international; on-site, hybrid and remote arrangements are considered according to the mandate.
Board contribution
Dynamic governance
Authority
Evidence
Decision rights made visible
Separate ownership, reserved matters, executive control, regulated permissions and delegated task authority.
Challenge without theatre
Distinguish fact, judgement, assumption, forecast and aspiration, and make qualifications proportionate to consequence.
Chair, audit and judicial assurance
The common discipline is to establish the relevant facts, test whether the evidence supports the proposed decision and keep authority and accountability clear.
Defence Training Rationalisation
Within the £18.6bn Defence Training Rationalisation programme, Steven chaired and contributed to committees addressing programme and operational risk, real estate, construction and site transition, trade-union consultation, TUPE and workforce transfer, contractor dependencies and continuity of military training.
The programme involved approximately 23,000 people, 81 organisations, 54 sites and some 1,200 interdependent change programmes. The operational-risk exposure was approximately £2bn, with a real-estate programme of similar scale. Steven estimates that risk occupied around 60% of his working time; Downing Street required a weekly report on the programme’s ten leading risks.
The requirement was not merely to review reports. It was to determine risk, set and direct mitigation, and reconcile the competing operational, professional, commercial and workforce consequences of decisions before they became programme-wide risks. Senior stakeholders and top-level budget holders took an active interest and frequently disputed the analysis; the chairing responsibility therefore required both evidential discipline and the authority to hold an integrated position.
Audit and organisational assurance
Steven served for two years as an Audit Board Chair and undertook wider assurance responsibilities within military and commercial settings. His approach distinguishes what has been independently verified, what management believes to be true, what remains an assumption or projection, whether the evidence supports the decision requested, and whether the organisation can execute and control that decision.
Thirteen years of judicial responsibility
For thirteen years, alongside his other appointments, Steven served as a President of Courts Martial. He was responsible for the court, its orderly and independent conduct and the integrity of its deliberations. The Judge Advocate directed the court on law and ensured that sentencing remained lawful and proportionate; Steven was neither the Judge Advocate nor the sole decision-maker.
The experience reinforced habits directly relevant to boards and special situations: separating evidence from assertion, testing competing accounts without prejudging them, recognising procedural and evidential weakness, maintaining independence under pressure and reaching a reasoned decision within the authority granted.
Corporate and family governance
Steven chaired acquisition and governance work across regulated-care, technology and cybersecurity transaction pipelines. He also continues to chair the Windmill Family Council, a role held for seven years.
Family Council decisions require financial, cultural, relational, intellectual, institutional and knowledge consequences to be considered together. They also require family history, differing needs, generational perspectives and expectations of fairness to be managed without allowing personal friction to obscure evidence, authority or institutional purpose.
The role is current, governance-rich and exercised in close association with the Honorary Chairman, who helps smooth tensions and preserve participation without displacing the Principal’s responsibility for chairing the Council.
The chairing proposition
Steven does not seek to create a second executive team from the boardroom. He clarifies the decision before the board, tests the reliability of the operating picture, draws together financial, operational, legal and professional evidence, distinguishes reserved matters from delegated authority, and intervenes when evidence, conduct or institutional continuity requires it.
Named appointments
Selected board appointments, with roles and boundaries
Registered directorship verifies statutory appointment, not executive or non-executive capacity. The NED and Chair descriptions below reflect Steven's account; formal appointment dates are stated where supported by Companies House.
Celtic Care
Chair · 2021–2026
Regulated care, safeguarding, commissioner confidence, funding, audit and risk oversight. Appointment capacity and contribution are stated from the candidate's record.
EAG
Chair / NED · 2018–2024
AI and cyber acquisition programme: diligence, portfolio risk, valuation governance and shareholder/adviser engagement. Appointment capacity is stated from the candidate's record.
Metzger Recruitment Consultants
Non-Executive Director · 28 July 2000–27 August 2002
Search and recruitment-sector directorship. Companies House officer record →
Precision Aerospace Investment Group
Non-Executive Director · 15 May 2020–5 May 2026
Company directorship and dates verified in the public officer record; non-executive capacity supplied by Steven. Companies House appointment →
Everest IT (Operations)
Non-Executive Director · 8 July 2019–22 July 2020
Former statutory appointment; non-executive capacity supplied by Steven. Companies House appointment →
Windmill Family Office
Principal from 2019 · Statutory director from 31 July 2026
Family stewardship and governance, not an independent NED mandate. Registered appointment →
Separate executive role: Pan Africa Agric Finance & Communications — CEO, not a NED appointment. Board-advisory and director-development activity is also distinguished from statutory directorship.
Appointment verification and appropriate references are available during controlled diligence.
Board, audit, risk, judicial and executive experience brought together.
Steven has held Chair, NED, audit, risk and board-advisory responsibilities across regulated, technology, private-capital, defence and governance settings. Thirteen years as President of Courts Martial reinforced independent evidential scrutiny, procedural fairness, proportionality and legitimate authority under serious consequence.
The board role remains distinct from executive command. Challenge should strengthen decision quality and executive accountability without creating a shadow management structure.
Appointment boundary
Selected appointments, not volume portfolio-building.
The strongest fit is a board facing transformation, institutional repair, complex stakeholder interfaces, regulated consequence, capital protection or a need to translate strategic intent into decision-useful governance.