Draft:Ben Legg

Benjamin George Legg (born 28 May 1970) is a British entrepreneur, mentor, investor and author. Legg is on his 4th career reinvention after a global career living in nine countries and working in sixty. As the CEO of Digital People International, Legg mentors startups and provides thought leadership and investor support.. . In addition to himself being a ‘portfolio professional’, Legg is also the CEO and Co-Founder of The Portfolio Collective, the world’s leading community helping entrepreneurial professionals launch and grow their portfolio careers.

“A portfolio career is where you don’t just have one job, you have multiple jobs and sources of income.”

Legg also co-hosted the world’s first party on Alcatraz.

Legg also speaks on a variety of topics around digital advertising

Early Life
Legg grew up in Kent, South East England, the middle of three boys. His father was an accountant and mother did administrative roles alongside being a stay at home mum. His parents divorced when he was six and then later remarried. He boarded at Welbeck Defence Sixth Form College from 1987 - 1988, before enrolling at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst at the age of 18.

Personal Life
Legg is married with five children, three from a former marriage. He lives in London with his current wife and their two children and splits his life between London and New York, where his wife is from. Legg enjoys running and keeping fit, including taking walking meetings.

Early Career (Army)
In January 1989, Legg started his British Army career at Sandhurst, resigning 10 years later as a Captain in the Royal Engineers. During his service, he led various military engineering organisations in Germany, Canada, Cyprus, Northern Ireland, Poland and Bosnia - including relieving the Siege of Sarajevo, part of Operation Deliberate Force, in 1995. During Legg's time in Northern Ireland, he was responsible for designing many of the bomb proof structures used as defences against IRA bombings.

Big Business Career
In July 1999, after leaving the army, Legg worked as a strategy consultant at McKinsey. He left the army unable to afford to study for an MBA. However, seeing potential in Legg, McKinsey offered him a role at a post MBA level.

From McKinsey, Legg moved in April 2002 into senior leadership roles at Coca-Cola spanning Training & Development, Sales, Marketing & Distribution in Greece, Poland and India

Tech Career
Legg returned to the UK in January 2007 to become COO of Google UK, Benelux & Ireland, and then COO of Google Europe. In this role he wrote the blueprint for Google's monetisation approach - developing, launching and optimising many of the most impactful ads products for Search, YouTube, Mobile, Hotels, SMBs and eCommerce. Legg served as COO Europe since January 2009 and as Director of Operations in the two years before that.

Leaving Google an expert on digital marketing, Legg took on a variety of global C-Suite roles at technology companies.

Legg was COO at European Directories, a pan European Yellow Pages company with 700k SMB customers transitioning from print to digital.



Legg was then Group CEO of Adknowledge, which at the time was the largest ad tech holding company in the US, followed by CEO of AdParlor.

Legg's final full time role was launching OLA - India's pioneering mobility company - in the UK. The business focused on paying drivers more than Uber and on driver safety.

Future of Work Career
While working at OLA, Legg invested increasing amounts of time on his various side hustles. In 2019 he left OLA to focus on these other activities and passions. He started working more with founders as a mentor, investor, board member and consultant. He also increased his support for investors - helping them understand the latest trends and technologies and invest wisely. To top it off, he also taught and mentored aspiring entrepreneurs at Oxford University and was an active public speaker at various conferences

In early 2020 at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Legg's calendar started filling up with meetings with friends who, as part of The Great Resignation, decided they didn't want 9-5 corporate careers and wanted to emulate his success at having a portfolio career. Not wanting to say no, but finding his calendar increasingly full, Legg designed and launched a weekly Portfolio Career Workshop. Legg thought it would die down within a few weeks, but demand for the workshop increased. Realising the workshop was getting more popular and discovering there was a need for a community of professionals for collaboration, Legg launched The Portfolio Collective, which is now a global community of 8,000 professionals. The Portfolio Collective helps portfolio professionals with training, collaboration opportunities and finding work. The company also helps startups and scale ups grow efficiently by leveraging the expertise within their community.

Legg holds multiple board positions, including as Chief Builder at GALLOS Technologies, charged with building new businesses in the security technology industry.

Book
Legg is an award-winning author, having written the book Marketing for CEOs: Death or Glory in the Digital Age , describing what best-in-class marketing looks like in a world dominated by mobile devices, overwhelming data, social media and complexity.