Following the thread upstream.

Origin

I died on a road in Somerset.

A motorcycle. A road. The wrong moment. They brought me back. When I came round, I made a decision — that the time I had left would be spent on the only thing that matters: what actually keeps us alive.

Not in the abstract. In the soil. In the grain. In the gut. In the farm that feeds the school that feeds the child who becomes the farmer.

“The health of the cell mirrors the health of the soil mirrors the health of the whole — visible and invisible, personal and planetary, scientific and sacred.”

Before the accident, I’d already been following a thread most people couldn’t see. The accident didn’t create the obsession. It made it non-negotiable.

The Curiosity

Always swimming upstream.

I trained as a systems engineer. Then walked into a kitchen and never quite left — not because I abandoned systems thinking, but because I found the most complex system of all: food.

I needed to know where the flour came from. What the soil was like. Whether the farm was paid fairly. Whether the food was actually feeding people or just filling them. Most chefs stop at the pass. I kept going upstream.

That curiosity took me from Michelin kitchens to market gardens, from a catering lectureship in Somerset to an MBA in Sustainable Food and Agriculture at the Royal Agricultural University, from building regenerative supply chains for hospitality groups to sitting with farmers trying to work out how to make a living from land that’s been farmed to exhaustion.

“I always wanted to swim upstream and find out what was going on. Was it fair? Was it organic? Was it healthy for everyone?”

The Practice

Twenty years of following the thread.

I’ve built procurement infrastructure connecting 10+ regenerative producers to London hospitality. I’ve authored a £1.4M farm business plan. I’ve secured £173,000 in Innovate UK funding. I’ve run the P&L of an organic whole foods retailer. I’ve taught NVQ students in Somerset schools.

I’ve made bread with heritage wheat populations milled on stone, shaped by hand, baked in wood-fired ovens. I’ve sat in fields doing macroscopic soil assessment with farmers who hadn’t been shown how to read the land they’d worked for decades.

All of it is the same work. Following the thread. Finding out what’s actually going on. Asking whether it’s healthy — for the cell, for the soil, for the person, for the community, for the planet.

MitoKit is the container for that work.

The Journey

How we got here.

2002–2006   BSc Systems Engineering, University of East Anglia.

2011–2012   Cambridge ESOL Level 5. Teaching as craft.

2012–2015   Head Chef & GM, Holywell Inns / Catering Lecturer, Yeovil College. FEAST healthy eating programme in Somerset schools.

2017–2021   Head of Operations, Lean Lunch Ltd. Sustainable food at scale — PwC, Burberry, Sky. From concept to second-round investment.

2021–2022   COO, Handheld Health Ltd — £173k Innovate UK grant secured. NHS clinical partnerships. Simultaneously: MBA in Innovation in Sustainable Food & Agriculture, Royal Agricultural University.

2022–2023   Operations Manager, Tablehurst Farm — BBC Food Producer of the Year 2022. Biodynamic community farming.

2023–2024   General Manager, Seasons Whole Foods, Forest Row. £47k net profit December 2023.

2024–2025   Food Systems Specialist, Public House. 10+ regenerative farms connected to hospitality. £1.4M farm infrastructure plan authored.

2025 —   MitoKit founded.