Huw Avelena

Experience

• 

  University of Oxford

  Sept 2014 - Aug 2015

  Research Scientist

  • Working within the world-leading, physiology research department on novel exogenous ketone esters, I supported the program through coordinating the testing, assessment, and analysis of the participants.• I was offered the opportunity to begin a PhD at the University of Oxford. Research paper published in 2016.

• 

  Oxford United Football Club

  Nov 2014 - May 2015

  Sports Science Intern

  • Using key data analytics to support the professional first team football squad during the 2014/15 season, including matchday preparation of pre-match player conditioning.

• 

  SoccerPDP

  Jan 2016 - Jan 2017

  Lead Sports Scientist

  • Further experience with Soccer PDP; analysing and testing training programmes on performance levels of grassroots footballers in Scottish youth teams.

• 

  Active Root Limited

  Jan 2016 - Jun 2018

  Non Executive Director and Co-founder

  Co-founded Active Root, a natural ginger sports drink. The product to this day retails across the country online and on the high street at major health and fitness stores such as Holland & Barrett. Gained a huge amount of experience by launching the company from the ground up. Left the company to pursue new challenges and career opportunities. Entrepreneurial – Led the financing and marketing effort of Active Root in its inception days through a successful Kickstarter campaign raising £6,500 in 30 days. Growth Mindset – Within six months of receiving stock, successfully distributed Active Root to over 30 suppliers in 10 cities. Implemented an e-commerce model. Online sales contributing to 40% of overall sales in first year of trading. Show less

• 

  British Army

  Sept 2017 - Jan 2022

  Led the supply chain logistics team, composed of 40+ specialist supply trade soldiers, that functionally supported 20+ key organisations within the British Army. Achieved a >90% staff deployment quota to support all engagement activities. Developed the collective competence, motivation, determination, wellbeing, and welfare while managing the careers and assessments of the team. End to End Supply Chain Management – Worked with key stakeholders to understand all potential stock requirements based on historical failure rate data. Ensured sufficient parts were always in stock or on order. Relayed back any issues or recommendations. Enabled a weekly deployment of specialists over a 6-month training window resulting in all supply requests being met on time. Collaboration – Provided strategic leadership for the development of the team’s role in future attachments in a very complex organisational structure. Collaborated with multiple departments to understand their needs to ensure the correct support and supply chain networks were in place and readily available. Readiness – Created and implemented a new rapid deployment strategy to support short notice operations to reduce lead time from 3 days to 24 hours, allowing for seamless attachment to any other deploying department. This involved reorganising the team structure and identifying skill deficiencies. Show less Deputy Commander of a front-line logistics Squadron of 173 personnel. Coordinated and synchronised training activity for 4500 staff-hours on a weekly basis. End to end project management of multiple training exercises. This involved extensive planning of the training exercises and monitoring soldier career development. Planning – Successfully coordinated the planning methodology for the department’s role in a joint training deployment with the US Army in naval ports across Belgium and Holland, unloading 300+ vehicles in 48 hours. Development – Designed a new tracking process for the department that could forecast the prerequisite specialist training of soldiers for the large variety of different international deployments. Project Management – Coordinated the training and budgeting of offshore sailing training exercises across Europe. Managed a £500k budget to train 200+ soldiers over 6 months. Show less Direct lead of 35 port operating specialist soldiers improving their individual and team capabilities, strengthening self-discipline and resilience, nurturing wellbeing, while instilling the capacity to endure and win. Lead the team to success on manoeuvres and active-service deployments. Key stakeholder engagement with the likes of Kuehne + Nagel. Launched a beach clean-up initiative for troops when deployed on coastal exercises. Timely Decision Making – Deployed to Oman, Kenya, France, and Portugal, to lead the unloading and re-loading of military cargo vessels. Successfully completed all operations under tight time restrictions in challenging conditions. Decisions made on the ground were all integral to the mission success. Logistic Strategy – Trained in complex logistical operations using data analysis and planning techniques. Deployed to Oman, Kenya, France, and Portugal, to lead the unloading and re-loading of military cargo vessels. Successfully completed under tight time restrictions in challenging conditions. Show less

  • Head of Delivery - Officer Commanding (Captain)

    Feb 2021 - Jan 2022

  • Operations Officer

    May 2019 - Feb 2021

  • Team Leader - Troop Commander

    Sept 2017 - May 2019
• 

  Zoomo

  Dec 2021 - Aug 2024

  Promoted to Senior Operations Manager within a year and given the important responsibility of leading the warehousing, maintenance, logistics, and supply chain departments of the UK central operations. Stakeholder Management – Launched Zoomo’s cargo bike operation that accelerated Zoomo to be the market leader in cargo bike servicing. Set up clear communication channels and customer facing dashboards to provide customers with live and insightful data. Ensured a flexible servicing schedule that adapted to customer demands. This led to Amazon and Evri expanding their fleets by 50% and 400% respectively. Leadership – Pushed a high-performance initiative, using marginal gains theory, to enhance mechanic output by investing in the workplace, promoting internally, and training staff. Examples included; recognising the nationalities of each team member with monthly cultural lunches and training a lead mechanic in SQL who progressed to Maintenace Manager in under a year. Resulted in a rise of 20% in staff eNPS. Bias to Action – Upon taking on supply chain responsibilities, analysed existing storage costs to discover excess parts and retired vehicles not generating revenue. Led a project to implement a new 3PL warehouse at lower cost. Within 3 weeks, moved £2m of parts and set up a resale program of >100 bikes. Within 3 months, saved the business £10k/month in storage costs and created £5k in bike sale revenue. Analysis & Problem Solving – One of Zoomo’s biggest cost was labour. Analysed staffing performance and efficiency, leading to a project that optimised the frontline workforce by understanding true site throughput, team size, and efficient servicing schedules. Resulted in saving £500k a year in staffing costs and increased labour efficiency over 100% from 40 to 85 vehicles moved/FL ratio. Show less Joined Zoomo in their start-up to scale-up period. Built all the logistic operational teams and processes from scratch. This doubled the existing customer fleet uptime and set the framework for other markets. Profitability Focused – Reduced cost of UK logistics P&L by £20k a month (60%) through optimising processes, hiring in-house logistic teams, and removing need for 3PLs. Innovation – Established a new adaptable and flexible process of mobile mechanics, that increased repairs on customer sites from 20% to over 80%. This substantially reduced need for real estate space and logistic cost, all while maintaining customer uptime at 90%. Customer Focused – Built excellent relationships with hyper growth customers to provide an uptime of over 90% for their expanding operations, including during peak delivery season. Warehouse to C-suite – Able to get hands dirty on the warehouse floor then pitch intricate level data to COO. Successfully presented staffing expansion request to COO backed with relevant financial data. Show less

  • Senior Operations Manager

    Jan 2023 - Aug 2024

  • Operations Manager

    Dec 2021 - Jan 2023
• 

  &Dine

  Sept 2024 - now

  Head of Operations