Hi, I’m Irene.
Content strategist, design leader, untangler of complicated things.
I go after the messy problems between product, design, tech and organisational behaviour, where the answer is categorically not “write better copy”. Sometimes the fix is in the words. More than often, it isn’t.
Over the past 20 or so years, I’ve shaped the NHS App, tamed BT’s content architecture, and lost count of the GOV.UK services I’ve helped through assessment - from fishing licences to plastic packaging tax. The bit I’m proudest of is the teams I’ve grown along the way.
I’m currently leading content design at HeliosX Group, shaping how patients access regulated healthcare services. My increasing focus is to get content people and everyone around them on the same page about what AI should and shouldn’t touch. Let’s make the machines useful, but let’s not give them the keys.
Career history
2025 - present
Lead Content Designer @ HeliosX
AI governance | Content systems | Design leadership | Digital healthcare
Built a content design function and the systems that helped our teams to create safe, effective content across products and international markets.
2024 - 2025
Principal Content Designer @ BT Group
Craft leadership | Content modelling | Design systems | Headless CMS
Untangled a CMS with 900+ disparate content types, while raising the bar for content design across large design practice.
2023 - 2024
Senior Content Designer @ Vypr (contract)
Information architecture | Knowledge management | Editorial workflows | Content operations
Made Vypr’s product knowledge easier to create and find, with the structures and workflows to keep it useful.
2021 - 2023
Lead Content Designer @ National Highways (contract)
Digital transformation | UX Research | Accessibility | GOV.UK
Helped to take Dart Charge from 8 years in alpha to a live digital service, with inclusive research shaping the end-to-end experience.
2020 - 2021
Lead Content Designer @ HMRC (contract)
Stakeholder alignment | Policy translation | Pair writing | Service design
Made a new national tax service understandable and usable even as the complex legislation underneath it kept moving.
2020
Senior Content Designer @ Defra (contract)
GOV.UK guidance | Prototyping | Environmental policy
Translated emerging land management policy into sensible guidance for farmers, while helping technical specialists adopt content design practices.
2018 - 2020
Lead Content Designer @ NHS Digital (contract)
NHS App | Health literacy | Information architecture | Product design
Shaped the NHS App’s foundational journeys, making complicated healthcare systems feel like one coherent service.
2018
Content Designer @ Public Health England (contract)
Content migration | Intranet redesign | Taxonomy
Restructured a large internal knowledge base and helped teams move from SharePoint to an open-source CMS with a more usable, maintainable intranet.
2015 - 2017
Content Designer @ Environment Agency (contract)
Digital transformation | GOV.UK services | Regulatory content
Turned paper-heavy, jargon-laden government transactions into accessible digital services.
2012 - 2014
Senior Content Strategist @ Sable Group
Team leadership | Content-first design | Conversion
As the group’s first content strategist, I built and led a design team and introduced content-first production across more than 20 corporate services.
2010 - 2012
Senior Content Strategist @ August Sun Projects
Content strategy consulting | Usability testing design | Content strategy training
Helped international and large South African brands get to grips with their content, from audits and taxonomies to information architectures. Also coached emerging content strategists.
2009 - 2010
Content Strategist @ ShowMe Online Media
Content operations | Editorial standards | Digital publishing
Established the editorial foundation for a growing network of local websites, including publishing guidance and a shared content library for franchisees.
Web Manager @ NHS Manchester
Digital healthcare | Accessibility | Web leadership | Web standards
Led the NHS Manchester website redesign through a national restructure, while training more than 60 staff to create accessible web content.
2006 - 2008
2005 - 2006
Web Project Manager @ Stockport Primary Care Trust
Web development | HTML | CMS | Information architecture
Designed and built a new public-facing NHS website, alongside an intranet that departments could manage themselves.