
Fred Gifford
Studied at University of Oxford
Works at Sony Group
Successful clients at
Questions? Start chatting with this coach before you get started.
Interested in coaching?
Select a category below to view Fred’s offerings.
About Fred
Pleasure to meet you! Let me give you a bit of my story. Who: I'm Fred Gifford, and am based in London with my wife and baby. What: I've worked in strategy for most of my career, with a deep focus on early stage tech product and AI, but with years spent generally in corporate strategy, innovation strategy, consulting, COO operations and delivery, and product management. A bunch of this was at Sony AI, a frontier AI research group inside Sony. I joined them in Tokyo, then opened their Spain office, then worked for them from London. What else: I'm also an author, and had my debut novel published by Macmillan in 2025. SIKE was written under my pen name, Fred Lunzer, and is about a young couple navigating life with an AI psychotherapist. Anything else? I got my MBA from ESADE in Barcelona, where I was valedictorian. And I'm doing a part-time masters at Oxford. Where: I grew up in London and Tokyo, and have lived about ten years total in Japan. I've also studied and worked in Barcelona for three years, and done short stints in Chicago, Stockholm, Dubai and Calgary. When: Whenever you need me!
Why do I coach?
I coach because I love solving challenges, and I love helping people. Simple as that.
Work Experience

Senior Product Manager
Sony Group
November 2020 - Present
Interviewer
Led product and operations for team building biomedical research app, using AI (knowledge graph models including transformers) to harness biomedical literature evolution and deliver predicted biomedical hypotheses to researchers. Built MVP GUI and API, and supported publishing of research in academic journals. Also led strategy for projects in Gastronomy AI (AI tools for chefs) and AI Ethics (ethical image datasets, and bias evaluation tooling).

Principal in CEO Office
Rakuten
July 2019 - October 2020
Advisor to CEO in group strategy team. Corporate strategy role. Ran projects in telecoms, M&A due dilligence, and Spotify collaboration.

MBA Summer Intern
Improbable
June 2018 - September 2018
Commercial strategy for Improbable's AI products. Looking at applying predictive analytics tools to a range of industries.

Senior Consultant
C space
August 2013 - July 2017
Product development consultancy for big corporates, leading new product development projects in software and physical. Major clients were Jaguar Land Rover, Elsevier, Takeda, Diageo, British Airways. Mastered design thinking, customer centric innovation, vision and mission, product market fit, value proposition, brand strategy, JAWS sales technique, marketing strategy.
Education

University of Oxford
MSt Creative Writing (part time), Literature
2025 - 2027

ESADE
MBA
2017 - 2019
Valedictorian, GMAT 720 Vice President MBA Student Association Vice President Tech & Media Club Founder 'ESADE Tech' speaker series C4Bi case competition 2017 (Hewlett Packard) - finalist C4Bi case competition 2018 (FC Barcelona) - student mentor Leading Futures case competition 2017 (fintech) - finalist and winner of Audience Choice Award Class band | Women in Business Club | Football team | Design & Innovation Club | Consulting Club

University of Leeds
Bachelor's degree, Japanese
2007 - 2011
Focused half on Japanese language, and half on Japanese business, economics, literature, film, and politics.
5 Reviews
Overall Rating
5.0
Fred has helped clients get into these companies: