About Andrew
Curiosity. The common thread.
From a retail assistant in a chocolate shop, to marketing some of the world’s most recognisable brands across Asia Pacific, to building startups, and now executive coaching, there has been one common thread: curiosity.
What drives people to think, choose and act the way they do continues to fascinate me, whether in a commercial setting or in life.
That curiosity has shaped the way I see the world. And, ultimately, it shaped Parallel Perspective.
Where it started
Why do people do what they do?
As a teenager, I worked in a chocolate shop. I spent a lot of time talking to customers, watching people choose and becoming fascinated by what sat behind those decisions.
Why that chocolate? Why that gift? Why spend more on one thing and walk straight past another? It was a small shop, but a pretty good place to start noticing human behaviour.
Change the context
Discovering how different normal could look.
At 18, I left Australia as a youth exchange student and spent a year living in Germany, attending a German school and becoming part of another family and another culture.
Being the outsider made assumptions easier to see. I asked more questions, listened differently and realised fairly quickly that my version of normal was only one version.
The professional path
Serious businesses. Different perspectives.
Curiosity became a commercial discipline inside global businesses, regional leadership teams and startups where decisions had real consequences. The environments changed, but the underlying work was often the same: understand what is really happening, see the situation from more than one angle, and turn insight into action.
PepsiCo
Leading major brands in Australia before moving to Bangkok to work across Asia Pacific. Working across markets, cultures and a global organisation sharpened how I thought about influence, leadership and the fact that the same idea can land very differently depending on context.
v2food
As founding Chief Growth Officer, I helped build the company, category and brand from near zero. Working with the Board, investors, government and partners while the business raised around A$185 million meant making decisions with incomplete information, competing perspectives and no established playbook.
Parallel Perspective
Bringing commercial experience, curiosity, coaching, facilitation and leadership development together to help people see more clearly, challenge assumptions and move forward with intent.
Learning to move before certainty
Say yes. Work the rest out.
I did not become naturally comfortable with uncertainty. I learned how to get comfortable around it.
Living overseas at different points in my life helped. So did working across cultures and locations, taking on bigger roles and repeatedly finding myself in situations where I did not have every answer.
Over time I learned that confidence does not always come first. Sometimes you commit, step in, and let capability catch up.
A year of travel
Sometimes you have to leave the path to see it clearly.
I was living the corporate life I had once dreamed of, on the trajectory I had worked hard to create. I just was not convinced anymore that it was the life I wanted.
So I stepped away and travelled. I wanted to learn more about myself, but what surprised me was how much more I started noticing about the world around me as well.
The more open my mind became, the more I saw. More unfamiliar places. More conversations. More ways people lived, worked and made sense of the world. And the more perspective I found, the more I wanted.
What travel actually changed
The places mattered. The perspective mattered more.
The further I moved away from familiar environments, the more I learned to observe before assuming, ask questions before judging and look for the context that made someone else’s perspective make sense.
Different cultures, unfamiliar environments and moments where the plan changed made me more aware of how much our surroundings shape what we notice, what we believe is normal and how we respond.
The useful part was never simply being somewhere different. It was bringing that perspective home: looking at familiar situations with fresh eyes, questioning what had previously seemed obvious and understanding how one person, team or system fits into a much bigger picture.
Pushing limits
Kokoda, Kilimanjaro, Everest Base Camp & Kinabalu
Long days on foot have put me alongside fellow travellers, Sherpas, African guides and communities in Papua New Guinea. When comfort and routine disappear, people become easier to observe. You notice how they encourage each other, what happens under pressure, who steps forward, who needs support and how quickly a group can adapt.
Those environments also make your own assumptions more visible. What feels difficult, normal or important can shift very quickly depending on where you are standing and who you are standing beside.
A wider world
Different places. Different assumptions.
Some of the most useful perspective has come from being welcomed into someone else’s world: sharing local transport, spending time in villages, being invited to dinner with hotel staff in Ethiopia, and talking with people whose everyday lives looked very different from mine.
From Ethiopia, Rwanda and Uganda to Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia, the interesting part was never just seeing somewhere new. It was learning to ask why things worked the way they did, what shaped people’s choices and how different values, systems and circumstances changed what made sense.
Even watching mountain gorillas in Uganda became an exercise in observation: noticing social behaviour, hierarchy and how naturally they moved around one another and around us.
Below the surface
Going deep
As a PADI Master Scuba Diver and Rescue Diver, diving has taught me a different kind of awareness. Strong currents in Komodo, equipment problems underwater, changing conditions and supporting anxious or panicked divers at depth all narrow your attention quickly.
In those moments, the useful response is rarely more noise. You observe, separate what matters from what does not, communicate simply and work with the situation in front of you rather than the one you expected.
It is simply part of how I learned to see the world: observe carefully, ask better questions, challenge the obvious interpretation and understand how one perspective fits into a much bigger picture.
Why Parallel Perspective
Learning to see differently changed the way I worked, led and lived. Helping others do the same became the point.
Across my career and life, the experiences that shaped me most were rarely about having the right answer. They were the moments that made me question what I thought I knew, notice something I had missed, or understand a situation differently because I had taken the time to look at it from another perspective.
Over time, I realised that same instinct was creating value in my work. I was often the person connecting ideas that had not been connected, challenging an assumption, asking the question underneath the question, or helping a group see the problem differently before rushing towards the answer.
That is why I started Parallel Perspective: to create conversations, workshops and development experiences that help people step outside their first interpretation, see more clearly and make better choices about what comes next.
And that matters because the value of a different perspective rarely stops with one person. A leader who sees differently can lead differently. A team that understands more can work differently. A person who gains clarity can make a decision that changes what happens next for everyone around them.
That positive ripple effect is the reason the work matters to me.
How it shows up in the work
Across coaching, facilitation and leadership development, the work usually comes back to three things.
Separate assumptions from what is actually happening and understand the context.
Step outside the obvious interpretation and notice what else may be true.
Turn insight into choices and action that genuinely belong to you.
Professional foundation
Curiosity, backed by experience.
The story matters. So do the professional foundations behind the work.
Work with Andrew
Sometimes another perspective changes what happens next.
If something is shifting, stuck, growing or asking more of you, you do not need to know exactly what kind of support you need before starting.
