I came into this work sideways, which is why I'm useful to people doing the same.
I studied political science, then public administration at the University of Birmingham. Neither of those is a business analysis degree. I ended up here through a mix of curiosity and stubbornness, and I've spent eleven years since in insurance, banking, and government — the last stretch as a business systems analyst working as an acting product owner on Kanban delivery teams.
Along the way I picked up the certifications: CBAP, CPOA, CSM, and Kanban System Design. I'll tell you honestly which of those changed anything and which were mostly a line on a resume.
I also ran a food ordering platform through COVID, which taught me more about requirements than any course did — mostly by getting them wrong in public.
The other career
If I hadn't ended up in corporate work, I'd have wanted a life in football. Playing it, or failing that, analysing it — the tactical side, the shape of a match, why a team that looks fine on paper keeps losing the middle third.
I've come to think that's not a detour from what I do now. It's the same instinct. A football analyst watches a system under pressure and works out which part is failing and why. That's the job description for business analysis too. The pitch is just a boardroom with better weather.
The rest of my viewing is documentaries and crime series, which is the same habit again. I like watching someone assemble a picture from fragments — following the process, noticing the detail everyone else walked past, sitting with a question long enough to get a real answer instead of a fast one.
Outside the work
I serve as Secretary General of the men's fellowship at RCCG Kings and Priests Centre here in Canada. In practice that means governance and coordination — running committees, keeping the record straight, and getting programmes from an idea in a meeting to something that actually happens on a date.
The fellowship runs work in men's health, youth empowerment, community outreach, and support for newcomers settling into Canada. That last one is where most of my mentoring began. I kept meeting people with serious professional experience from home who couldn't get anyone here to take it seriously, and I started answering the same questions over and over. Eventually it made sense to write the answers down and put them somewhere people could find them.
It's volunteer work, and it's some of the most useful work I do.
Curiosity, patience, and a mild obsession with why things break. That's what led me here. If any of that sounds like you, this career might fit better than you think.