About

I read Chemistry at Imperial and worked part-time at The Conran Shop, which is where the interest in design and interiors started. The chemistry left me wanting to know how a thing works before I change it.

My first job was as a supply chain analyst at Tesco, then three years at TripAdvisor on product and CRM analytics. I liked the analysis and disliked being a service function, doing work other teams had already decided on. So I went back to Tesco into supply chain, where the analytics and the operation were the same team.

That is where the work I am proudest of happened. Planners were ordering stock from China on Excel, estimating what would sell six months out and then working out how best to fill a shipping container. We moved general merchandise onto the grocery forecasting models in two stages, store ordering first and supplier ordering once that held, testing in small categories at opposite ends of the sales rate and going into store to stand at the shelf edge when the numbers looked wrong. I led the SQL that turned the forecasts into something a planner could review and act on, proved it in Tableau against real orders, and was then asked to lead the build of the web portal that carried the whole workflow. The relationship between the developers and the planners had broken down by then, and a fair part of the job was getting the planners feeling part of the design rather than it being done to them.

After that I spent two years in Group Strategy, designing the process the Exec used to write Tesco's ten-year strategy, twelve people and roughly ten hours of their collective time, and running the forum for the top fifty leaders end to end, down to the seating plan. I was good at it and did not enjoy it much, because ten years out is too abstract and I would rather be close enough to see whether the thing works.

My last Tesco role was Group Head of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. I took over a programme that had been three months without an owner, three weeks before a strategy launched to 330,000 people, with almost nobody involved reporting to me. I started with one-to-ones with everyone who mattered, put the whole thing on one page with one accountable owner per workstream, and built the governance round it.

I left Tesco in March 2026 and started building. Draped is the main thing. For a while I also did growth at Swoople, a pre-seed proptech, but I don't any more.

What I'm like to work with

I'm a get-it-done person who thrives when there's no playbook, and I get bored when each week is like the last. I prove things cheaply before engineering the long-term version and I run a process by hand before I automate it. If something is in testing I will tell you it is in testing. I don't take myself too seriously at work and I like working with people who don't either.

Outside work it is mostly my family and a few close friends, long walks, and good hotel bars.

Contact

Email is best: ellynfitzgerald@gmail.com. I am also on LinkedIn.