From the hills of north Wales to New York: A journey shaped by resilience

I grew up in the hills of North Wales, between Wrexham (before it was cool to admit it) and Chester, in the village of Hawarden; known for producing a few sporting heroes and being home to a former Prime Minister in William Gladstone.

My dream was to become a professional footballer. Having come through the same school, grassroots, and county pathways as Michael Owen, I was on track to follow a similar route into the professional game. At 12, I transferred from Tranmere Rovers to Manchester United, where I spent four years in the academy before signing professional forms with Aston Villa.

Two weeks before my 18th birthday, in the biggest game of my career to date (a Youth Cup semi-final vs Newcastle) I tore my ACL, MCL, and both medial and lateral menisci in my right knee battling for a through ball against Paul Dummett, who would later represent Wales. To add insult to injury, that evening as I hobbled back into my digs, one of my crutches slipped on a letter on the hardwood floor. It was a call-up to represent Wales U19s.

Doctors warned that, given the severity of the injury, it could be career-ending. They even said I might never walk unassisted again, which was a particularly tough thing to hear for someone whose game relied on pace and physicality. But the injury ended up defining my path rather than ending it.

Education had always mattered as much to me as football. With a teacher for a mother and a judge for a father, I didn’t have much choice. When I realised my Premier League dream was unlikely to materialise, I chose a new route and crossed the Atlantic on a soccer scholarship to Long Island University.

During four years as a collegiate athlete, I built lifelong friendships, created unforgettable memories, earned accolades on and off the field, and graduated with both a Bachelor’s and Master’s in Business Administration. In my final semester, I took on two concurrent full-time (unpaid!) internships, and one helped me secure my first full-time role in New York as Business Operations Manager and Instructor at Barry’s flagship studio in Chelsea.

Fitness had already become a theme in my life, but it grew into a true passion when I could no longer burn energy on the pitch and redirected it into the gym. What began as rehab became discipline, and eventually a career. Barry’s sought to sponsor my H1B visa, but it was rejected, and when my OPT expired in 2018, I was forced to leave New York and my then fiancée, now wife, and return to the UK.

With London serving as my temporary base, I joined the 2020s’ first unicorn, ClassPass, as an International Partnership Development Manager, helping to expand their footprint across five different European markets.

During this time, my wife and I spent 2.5 years long distance as COVID derailed career plans, wedding plans, and just about everything else.

When the world slowly reopened, I secured an emergency visa appointment at the US embassy in Guatemala (one of the few partially operating posts at the time) and returned to the US as Partnerships Manager at Fitnescity. In one year, I doubled the partner network and helped position the company as the leading wellness testing aggregator in the nation.

From there, I joined Fiverr, leading strategic global partnerships for a new division within the company.

Today, I work in enterprise business development at Klarna in New York City, driving growth across a multi-billion-dollar portfolio. Klarna is the world’s largest Buy Now, Pay Later provider, serving over 114 million active consumers and processing roughly $120 billion in annual volume.

You may have seen some questionable takes online suggesting Klarna is just a way to finance a burrito. But I genuinely believe in the product and the people behind it.

I didn’t own a credit card until my wife added me as an authorized user on hers. As a European, it just wasn’t part of my mindset growing up. In the US, credit can feel unavoidable and often predatory. I believe BNPL, when used responsibly, can be a fairer, more transparent alternative. If interest-free installment payments had come first and someone later introduced high-interest revolving credit, we probably wouldn’t have accepted it. It’s just that the credit system came first.

As they say, if you can make it in New York, you can make it anywhere. The city can be exhausting, but it is addictive. My wife and I are currently settled in Brooklyn, though we both work for European companies, so who knows what the future holds. Klarna is Swedish-founded, and my wife works for Louis Vuitton as an in-house architect designing stores across North America. She is originally from Guatemala, which means we live in a mutually inconvenient place for both sets of parents to visit. We try to get home once or twice a year, though I have not returned to Wales as often as I would like.

That’s why I’ve stayed close to the Welsh community in New York.

For the past three years, I have served on the executive committee of New York Welsh, bringing together people with a connection to Wales at our monthly meetups. We have built a strong and growing community here, and I enjoy meeting those who have just made the move across the pond.

We recently hosted our St David’s Day meetup in partnership with the Cardiff University Alumni Group. It was great to see old friends, familiar faces, and plenty of new ones sharing stories about their time in Wales.

If you’d like to join us, search for the New York Welsh group on Facebook for regular event updates. Our chosen watering hole is Liberty Bar on 35th Street, you can’t miss it with the Welsh flags draped inside and out, and a dragon guarding the entrance!

Wales shaped who I am; the resilience, the work ethic, the pride in where I come from.

Now I carry that with me, wherever I go.