The story
One Story. Two Games.
This is not the story of a footballer who switched to technology. I spent years being watched, measured, developed, and selected — and now I do that work from the other side, in scouting and in enterprise technology. Same game, seen from both ends of the clipboard.
The milestones — tap to open
- Location
- Birmingham, England
- What happened
- Signed into one of England's oldest academy systems. Trained, measured, and selected against the country's best young players. Called into the England U15 and Nigeria U17 setups.
- What I learned
- Standards are set by environments, not individuals.
- Philosophy
- Talent is the entry fee. Consistency under evaluation is the game.
- Location
- Portugal · Romania
- What happened
- Professional contracts at Portimonense SC in Portugal and Gaz Metan Mediaș in Romania — two leagues, two languages, and a squad place that depended on decoding each new system fast.
- What I learned
- How to enter an unfamiliar system and perform anyway.
- Philosophy
- Adaptation is not a trait. It is a skill you can train.
- Location
- Indianapolis, USA
- Period
- B.S., December 2024
- What happened
- Division I football and a Business Technology & Analytics degree, both at full intensity. Captain in the locker room, analyst in the classroom, second place in the NCAA Crossroads Classic data competition.
- What I learned
- I did not have to choose. The two ambitions reinforce each other.
- Philosophy
- The pitch and the dataset describe the same game.
- Location
- Indianapolis → Detroit
- Period
- 2023 – present
- What happened
- Technology research in Eli Lilly's Digital Office. Analytics and market analysis at SAP. UX research for enterprise AI with Moral Agency. A published article in UXPA Magazine.
- What I learned
- The classroom gave language to things I had already lived. Talent identification became user research. Performance analysis became analytics.
- Philosophy
- Research is scouting for products.
- Location
- United States
- Period
- Now
- What happened
- Appointed Technical International Scout (USA) for West Bromwich Albion — while coaching and running performance analysis at Lawrence Tech and finishing an MSIT.
- What I learned
- I spent years being evaluated. Now I evaluate.
- Philosophy
- Better decisions begin with better observation.
01 · Where it began
Birmingham City
Academy football is constant evaluation. Sessions are graded, touches are counted, and there is always a clipboard somewhere on the touchline. Nobody explains the standard — you absorb it. This is where observation began.
Watched
At an academy, someone is always watching. You learn early that performance is not what you say about yourself — it is what the observer writes down.
Measured
You learn what good actually looks like by standing next to it every day. The standard is set by the environment, not the individual.
Selected
Being scouted teaches you how scouts think — what they look for, what they discount, what they cannot ignore. I have been on both sides of the clipboard ever since.
Before I ever wrote a scout report, I was the subject of one.
02 · The professional leap
Two countries, one craft
Professional football abroad is a fast education in unfamiliar systems. You adapt or you disappear.
Portugal · Portimonense SC
First professional contract. An apartment alone, a language I did not speak, and football suddenly a profession instead of a dream.
Decode the system before the system decodes you.
Romania · Gaz Metan Mediaș
Second country, second league, second culture — and no credit carried over for surviving the first one.
Nobody cares what you did yesterday.
That skill — entering unfamiliar systems and performing anyway — is the one consulting, research, and scouting all run on. The full playing record lives on the Football Operations page. View it →
03 · Where choosing stopped
Butler University
For the first time, football and intellectual ambition stopped competing for the same hours. They started reinforcing each other.
The rhythm
Finish in the classroom. Board the team plane a few hours later. Compete that weekend. Submit on Monday. Repeat.
The captaincy
Leading a locker room is applied observation: who needs pushing, who needs protecting, and when.
The realization
I can do both. Second place in the NCAA Crossroads Classic data competition made it concrete — match instinct, expressed as analysis for the first time.
04 · The second game
Enterprise technology
Watching a clinician work around a bad system is like watching a winger drift out of position. Behavior tells you what the design cannot.
- Eli Lilly
- Generative AI research in the Digital Office — technology assessments that informed adoption decisions.
- SAP
- Market analysis and a centralized analytics library adopted as a single source of truth.
- Moral Agency
- End-to-end UX research for enterprise AI products — study design, usability testing, synthesis.
- UXPA Magazine
- Published on why AI systems fail without human-centered design.
Technology did not replace football. It revealed the same patterns on a different pitch — and gave them names.
05 · The most important section
Two games. One operating system.
Different nouns. Identical process. Step through the four moves — the words change between football and technology; the work underneath does not.
“Watch how they actually perform — not how the report says they should.”
Whether the subject is a player or a product, the operating system is the same.
06 · The current chapter
Both games, same week
I spent years inside academy systems being evaluated. Now I evaluate — from the other side of the same clipboard, while the research practice runs in parallel.
Football
Scouting the American market for West Bromwich Albion. Coaching and performance analysis at Lawrence Tech.
Technology
UX research on enterprise AI in healthcare. An MSIT in progress, finishing December 2026.
Saturday, a match report. Monday, a usability session. The two documents look surprisingly alike.
07 · Looking ahead
Where this is heading
- Technical director
- Football operations leadership
- AI and human-centered systems
- Organizations that make better decisions
The two games are converging. The plan is to be standing where they meet.