Colin started his working life after attending a Naval boarding school, not surprisingly, in the Royal Navy, as an Artificer Apprentice, a most rigorous and comprehensive trade training. He was promoted to a Chief Petty officer at the age of twenty one, routinely taking charge of the machinery and personnel on one of Her Majesty's warships. Those were the days before air-conditioned control rooms and where manual operations were carried out in spaces well over 100°F. Colin then went on to teach automatic controls at the Royal Naval Engineering School to both enlisted men and officers for both the British and foreign navies.

After 10 years in the Navy, he returned to college where he continued his thirst for learning, first with an OND in technology and later an HND in Electrical and Electronics. He has had a varied and exciting engineering career including building and commissioning a thermal power station in Iran, engineering on the North Sea Oil Rigs and Hotel Chief Engineer in a local hotel. He and his wife had their own engineering business in Bermuda for ten years. Always during this time Colin was taking courses and improving on his knowledge.

It was apparent even then that local qualified engineering and tradesmen were difficult to find and this void was being filled by importing foreign labour. Colin felt he could be a part of the solution by joining the Bermuda College as a mechanical engineering lecturer and helping to train our own. He found that the standard of the students leaving high school were not college entrance level and remedial education was required to ensure his students could pass their City and Guilds paid off as they all passed their first year. The programme was then promptly changed to another less recognized and simpler American course where they all completed two years in one. To this day students that Colin taught at the college come up to him on the street and remind him about "the tools for life" that he would drill into their lessons. It was during this time that he studied for an MBA with Leicester University and graduated in 2004.

Colin moved on to teach Design and Technology and Computer Science in Cedarbridge Academy and Berkley Institute where he continued his research into why the students were not performing. He found that many of the students were switched off to education but that given time and the right hands on subject could be switched back on.  At the beginning of each year he would get a lot of grief from the students about extra classes and homework, come the end of the year these same students were volunteering to give up their Saturdays (all day from 8 to 5) to do extra "practicals" and trouble shooting. These same students that were turned off of learning were absorbing what was being taught and done in the classrooms and buying computer books while on vacation for self interest or even practicing to rebuild mom's new computer. (Not always successfully, thus inviting a meeting from Mom!). 

Wanting to see first hand the workings of the private school systems, Colin joined a local private as the Operations Manager. In this position he has tried to be everything to everyone whilst continuing his research in comparing the attitude to learning to that in the public systems. His major accomplishments were to see the gymnasium and classroom building completed and ensuring the school had the most energy efficient and cleanliness record of any school on the island. He has even managed to reduce the electrical consumption of the school year over year even after they added 30% more air-conditioned space.

As any of Colin's former students can attest; his first love is technical education, which is why he is here today. Colin wishes to launch his pet project and would like to share and possibly recruit assistance to make this project happen. It is needed in this island now and it is up to us the people of Bermuda to make it happen.