Your topic is called ‘We all need a changing room’, can you describe this in more detail and share a bit about what you will be covering in your talk?

For me, the changing room was literally a changing room. I spent twenty years of my life in them. But when football finished, it took me a long time to realise that what I’d been missing wasn’t actually the room. It was what happened between the people in it.

That’s really what the talk explores.

We all have different versions of those places — at work, at home, in teams, families or groups of friends. I’ll look at what makes those groups become something more, what each of us brings to them, and why some of the really ordinary things we do together might be much more important than we realise.

What has made you so passionate about this topic? How does it relate to you or your background?

I spent twenty years as a professional footballer and was lucky enough to be part of some brilliant changing rooms.

When football finished, I thought I’d prepared really well for what came next. I’d studied engineering while I was still playing and had another career waiting for me. But I hadn’t prepared for how different it would feel.

Eventually I started recognising some of the things I’d missed in completely different places — at work, at home, coaching football, with friends and family.

That got me thinking about what had actually made those changing rooms so important to me in the first place, and that’s really where the idea for the talk came from. Pasted markdown

What do you think people will gain from listening to your talk?

I hope people spend quite a lot of the talk thinking about their own people rather than mine.

Their family, their friends, the people they work with, their teammates — whoever their communities are.

I think we’re quite good at recognising what other people bring. We know who’s funny, who listens, who organises everything, who checks in on people. We’re probably not as good at recognising what we bring ourselves.

How has your TEDxAberdeen journey been so far? Is there anything you’ve learned that you didn’t expect, or any highlights?

Harder than I thought it was going to be!

I think at the beginning I thought I had an idea and just needed to write a talk. I’ve realised the difficult bit is actually working out exactly what you’re trying to say and then being disciplined enough to get rid of everything that doesn’t help you say it.

I’ve written it, rewritten it, moved things around, taken stories out, put some back in and probably bored quite a few people talking about community.

But it’s also made me look differently at things that have happened throughout my life. There are experiences from football, work and family that I’d never connected before, and suddenly I can see a thread running through all of them.

What are you most looking forward to most on this journey? What are you hoping to get out of this?

I’m looking forward to getting it off the laptop and actually telling it to people.

I’ve spent so long writing it and thinking about individual words that I think you can start to lose sight of why you’re doing it.

There are parts of the talk that are really personal to me, so I’m nervous about sharing some of them. But I’m also looking forward to seeing whether those stories make people think about experiences and people from their own lives.

If someone leaves thinking differently about their own communities, or appreciating something they hadn’t really noticed before, then it’ll have been worth doing.

What does being part of TEDxAberdeen 2026 mean to you?

Aberdeen has been a massive part of my life.

I originally came here through football, but it’s now where I live, work and have brought up my family. I’ve had a fairly unusual journey from professional football into engineering and business, and I definitely didn’t imagine a TEDx stage being part of it.

So getting the opportunity to share something I’ve learned along the way, in a city that means so much to me, is a real privilege.