Your supervisor guides your research. I do something different, and complementary. I bring the examiner's perspective your supervisor cannot offer, because they're too close to your work to see it the way a stranger in a viva room will. Beyond that, the support I provide goes further than most supervisors have the time or remit to offer. We meet bi-weekly for focused, strategic sessions built around your specific stage and challenges. I review your documents between sessions with examiner-level written feedback, looking at your work the way your viva panel will, not just your supervisor. I'm available by email when something urgent comes up rather than waiting for your next scheduled meeting. I'll also help you with publication strategy if you want to write from your doctoral work, and I'll show you how to use AI tools in your research without creating integrity risks. Most supervisors, even excellent ones, cannot offer this combination of examiner insight, structured accountability, and responsive support alongside their own research and teaching commitments.

I've examined and supervised doctoral researchers across design, digital health, business, public health, human-computer interaction, and sustainability. I work with candidates at every stage, from those still developing their research question to those preparing for their viva. What matters more than your field is whether you're a working professional who needs someone who understands both the academic requirements and the reality of completing a doctorate alongside a demanding career. If that's you, the discovery call will tell us quickly whether we're the right fit.

Workshops and courses give you general frameworks. What they can't give you is someone who reads your specific chapter, knows your specific examiner context, and tells you specifically what needs to change and why. The reason most working professionals stall isn't lack of information, it's lack of someone who can translate general doctoral advice into a concrete next step for their particular thesis, at their particular stage, with their particular supervisor. That's what one-to-one mentoring does that no course or workshop can replicate.

The sessions themselves are an hour, every two weeks. Beyond that, the time you spend depends on where you are in your doctorate, some stages require more writing, others more reading and reflection. What the mentoring does is make every hour you spend count. Most of my mentees tell me they waste less time going in circles and spend more time making real progress. The structure doesn't add to your workload. It makes your existing workload produce results.

Yes. Some candidates aren't looking for ongoing mentoring; they're close to submission and want one thing: a senior examiner to read the full thesis the way it will actually be judged, or to run a realistic mock viva before the real one.

Because I've sat on the other side of the viva table 45+ times, I can tell you where an examiner's questions will land, which parts of your argument will draw scrutiny, and what to tighten before it leaves your hands. This is preparation and honest feedback from the examiner's perspective. It is never marking or a guarantee of outcome, and it's entirely separate from any institution's formal assessment.

It's a fixed-scope, one-off engagement rather than the bi-weekly mentoring described above. 

If that sounds like what you need, tell me about your thesis and timeline here