John is a respected consultant and trainer to the educational and cultural sectors. His specialties are major gift fundraising, capital campaigns and sponsorship.

John graduated from the New Zealand Drama School and has also achieved a BA in Opera Studies, a Graduate Diploma in Arts Administration, and an MSc in Business Administration.  He is a certified NLP (Neurolinguistic Programming) Trainer, also holding a Graduate Certifcate in NLP; and is currently qualifying for an Australian Certificate IV in Training and Assessment.

After a career in arts management from the late 1970s until 1990, he was appointed to head the Sydney Festival’s highly successful corporate sponsorship programme.  In 1992 he was invited to be the Development Director of the prestigious Edinburgh International Festival and to establish its new fundraising and sponsorship office.  He moved to London in 1995, to be closer to an HIV/Aids charity he had helped found; while there he provided general management to the Open Air Theatre, Regents Park. 

John returned to Edinburgh in 1998 to manage Edinburgh University’s £20M capital campaign for a new medical research institute.  In 2001 he was appointed to complete a £5M capital fundraising programme for Napier University’s new business school campus.

He joined Brakeley as an Associate Consultant based in Edinburgh in 2005; during his time with the firm, he was Resident Consultant/Interim Development Director at both the University of Stirling and the National Library of Scotland.  Additionally he has written cases for support for Heriot Watt University’s Institute of Brewing and Distilling, and for Visiting Arts, an international cultural agency.  From September 2009 to June 2010 he has been Brakeley’s Resident Consultant at the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) in Saudi Arabia.

Whilst in Australia John consulted to the Queensland University of Technology; the University of Technology Sydney; the Batchelor Institute of Indigenous Education, Darwin and Auckland Grammar School.  For Brakeley, John was recently the Resident Fundraising Consultant at KAUST in Saudi Arabia.

Conference presentations have included; the Fundraising Institute of New Zealand Conference, 2008; the South Asian Fundraising Workshop, Jaipur, India 2009; the ADAPE International Conference, Auckland 2006; the (UK) Institute of Fundraising’s Scotland Conference 2005, 2006 & 2007, North-West Conference 2005 and 2006, and Wales in 2006.

In house board and staff training has been conducted for Barker College; the Neurological Foundation of New Zealand; the University of New South Wales (UNSW) Foundation; the UNSW Faculty of Business & Commerce; the Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop; and Craftscotland.  John has recently published a book in Australia: “Artful Major Gift Fundraising”.

He has trained representatives of numerous third sector organisations through various open workshops in Australia, New Zealand and the UK; and has been several times a guest lecturer in sponsorship and fundraising at Napier University, Edinburgh.