I spent fourteen years in institutional finance, including investor relations at Peloton Partners, a London hedge fund start-up that grew to $2.6 billion AUM, which I was recruited into from Goldman Sachs by founder Ron Beller. Running global multi-city investor roadshows is where the problem became obvious: colleagues operating at the very top of their profession, losing days to travel and treating it as the cost of doing business.
I saw the problem from the traveller’s perspective before I ever approached it through wellness.
I left finance after helping launch four hedge fund start-ups and took a sabbatical in Australia. Bondi at 5am, full of people training before work, showed me how differently health could sit inside a working life. I came back to London in 2008, trained as a personal trainer and launched Liberté Fitness, teaching outdoor fitness in parks with a team of trainers and running beach wellness retreats, featured by Newby Hands in Harper’s Bazaar. I sold the business, and moved into luxury wellness travel, performance and supplements.
One career inside the world of the international traveller, another working on the other side of the same problem.
ALT‑15° was built at the intersection of the two.
2011–2015
The problem was bigger than the hotel gym
I became one of London's early in-hotel personal trainers at The Cadogan on Sloane Street, now The Cadogan, A Belmond Hotel, with guests booked through the hotel concierge. By 2012 my clients included members of UAE royal families and time-poor executives.
By 2015 I realised training alone was not solving the problem. Travel was affecting sleep, nutrition, energy and performance before clients reached the hotel gym, if they used it at all. I began working across the wider journey for a Global Partner at a top-five executive search firm, considering the traveller’s schedule, sleep, nutrition, training and recovery as one experience. It was an early wellness concierge service.
2016–2017
From the hotel to the airport
In 2016 I developed and released a jet lag app on the Apple App Store, tested with athletes at Loughborough University.
In 2017 I extended that thinking beyond the hotel and into the wider travel journey. At the Travel Tech Lab, part of London & Partners, I won its pitch competition, run with Collinson Group, for a personalised airport health concierge built around the traveller’s journey. The judging panel included a director from Heathrow Airport.
WINNER · TRAVEL TECH LAB PITCH COMPETITION, 2017WINNER · 2017
TRAVEL TECH LAB PITCH COMPETITIONLondon & Partners with Collinson Group.
2019–2021
Building for the international traveller
The airport concierge concept needed wearables, personalisation and AI that were not yet connected. So I built what could help the traveller now.
I developed JetFuel, a Travel Performance supplement range, with the late Dr Ian Perry, an Aviation Medicine Scientist and medical consultant of more than forty years who held the rare title of Academician of the International Academy of Aviation and Space Medicine, of which there are only two hundred in the world.
To take JetFuel to market, I raised $650,000, including one of the first R&D loans issued by Virgin StartUp.
I created the formulations with UK manufacturers and launched the range in luxury retail including Selfridges, MR PORTER and NET-A-PORTER, securing every listing directly, without distributors. There I met with Global Beauty Director Newby Hands to discuss developing the range, eight years after she had featured my earlier wellness retreats in Harper’s Bazaar.
JetFuel was also bought by five-star hotels and luxury travel and concierge companies for their guests, in hotel suites, VIP guest experiences, airport lounges and private jets. It was included in the GQ Men of the Year gift bag, and featured in Maybourne Group Magazine, the publication of Claridge’s, The Connaught and The Berkeley.
Selling into luxury hospitality meant being in it. I spent those years inside London’s five-star hotels, in conversation with general managers at Corinthia, Maybourne and Shangri-La, and appeared briefly in the BBC’s A Hotel for the Super Rich & Famous, filmed at Corinthia.
2026
Commercial wellness strategy and Travel Performance
What hotels did not see as their responsibility a decade ago, their guests now expect. As the demands of the international traveller and the luxury wellness market keep evolving, hotels are having to invest across sleep, nutrition, fitness, recovery and technology.
Many are making that investment without a clear commercial case. ALT‑15° works with owners and leadership on the commercial strategy around it: what to lead with, who it is for, and how it is packaged and sold.
