Gavin Poole moved from military leadership into social policy and then innovation infrastructure – three careers connected by an instinct for what existing systems could become.
Gavin Poole joined the Royal Air Force as an aircraft engineering apprentice and left more than two decades later as a Wing Commander.
That could easily have been a career in itself.
Instead, he moved into social policy, becoming CEO of the Centre for Social Justice and working on issues including poverty, disadvantage and modern slavery. It was a completely different environment, but one that still demanded the systems thinking and operational discipline he had developed in the RAF.
Then he pivoted again.
At Here East, Poole took on a physical question: what should happen to the vast international press and broadcast centre built for the 2012 Olympic Games once the Games had gone?
Today it is a campus for technology, creative businesses, universities and research organisations.
The settings have changed dramatically. The instinct has not: look at an existing system, understand what it was built to do – then ask what else it could become.
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