His career in the design world spanned more than forty years. His first job was as an assistant to Don Ashton, the hotel and film designer of the Fifties and Sixties who designed the original Mandarin Hotel in Hong Kong and won an Oscar for "Bridge Over The River Kwai". At his second firm he was made their youngest ever Associate. During the late Seventies and through the Eighties he ran his own substantial design business and latterly set up the UK office of an international firm of architects, ending up as an International Director before retiring from main stream business in early 2009.

Nigel is someone who has always believed that to be the best you need to be with the best – even in his childhood days, when he learned to water ski with the Cambridge University Water Ski Club. From this he became a founder member of his local club where he was chief instructor and club champion for several years, teaching people like Dickie Henderson and Nicholas Parsons.

The natural progression of his life has been towards a combination of excellence and people. He now brings all this knowledge and experience together and runs, with his wife Gilly, Cutts & Cons, a consultancy specialising in coaching, counselling and mentoring business leaders specifically in the area of improving the quality and independence of their thinking and giving that full expression.

Nigel and Gilly live in Surrey and between them they have seven children and nine grandchildren.