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Back in the office after a week in San Francisco catching up with Essentials and delivering our half-yearly "Digital Intelligence Review" to Google - our regular stocktake of progress against our advanced analytics learning agenda and one of the highlights of working here.

I’m still jetlagged; our wonderful 17-month-old makes catching up on sleep harder than it used to be. I run a quick internal review of the H2 plans for Android before sharing with Google this afternoon. My job is to interrogate hard and make sure everyone is prepped for our ultra-savvy client.

Then, I check in on our reporting team, who are building out new campaign dashboards. They have prototypes in two competing technology stacks and it’s a close race - whoever wins, it’s going to be transformational. I am convinced that focused reporting can improve the quality of conversations and keep us well clear of "data puke". I get into a deep conversation about the future of data leakage and the role of DMPs in a silo-ed digital ecosystem with our programmatic team - sadly 2015 looks to be the year of the walled garden.

I grab a few minutes with Tomas Salfischberger, founder and CEO of Relay42, the data platform taking Europe by storm. They are based here at Essence while they look for a permanent London home.

With the cumulative lack of sleep taking its toll, I leave early at 5:45. Oxford Circus station makes this moot with one of her rush-hour temper tantrums.

I wake up to big news - Essence has been appointed to run a range of digital and programmatic assignments around the world for Visa. The pitch was a huge amount of work, so this is fantastic result.

Straight in to a stand-up with our EMEA leadership. Resourcing is the topic of the day, and global work balancing is one of the interesting ideas we explore.

Next up, a mentoring session with a colleague in Singapore, though she is currently in Sydney - and we’ll next see each other in Paris – this is a crazy industry!

I spend some more time with the reporting team, working through some thorny reach estimation issues for site-served mobile ads (weirdly still a thing in 2015). We agree to attempt to build a statistical model to estimate reach based on the variables we are able to capture, and early efforts look quite promising.

The afternoon comprises of our fortnightly Global Exec Team catch-up and a work quality and innovation steering session.

I meet with our planning leads to talk about their plans for nurturing innovation in media across the agency. They have some compelling ideas, which I am inclined to broaden to encompass everything we do, not just media activation.

Then, an hour with a client talking about strategic goal setting frameworks, trying to create order in chaos.

I hear from a team who’ve been analysing the effects of the launch of Windows 10 and the Edge browser. Adoption looks to be slowing after the initial spike, which stands to reason.

After a quick one-to-one with a mentee in our New York office, I head home for five straight hours of calls with US clients and colleagues, and am rewarded with sore eyes, ears and back.

First up, I sit in on our presentation of a cross-channel measurement plan for a big brand campaign. Our team have cooked up an interesting experiment using a digital survey to gauge the impact of TV and Out-of-home exposure alongside online. I’m very excited to see how effective this proves in market.

Pitch o’clock! We’re all really excited about this opportunity, launching a new global media proposition that I expect to be transformational in their field. It seems to go really well, lots of  alignment on the future of media and lots of high quality discussion about strategy. If you were in the room and are reading this, I hope you agree :-)

I have a lunch meeting with the Essence Board and Group Executive team. It’s rare that we’re all in the same room, and always powerful. Our poor CFO has to join by hangout at  3am West Coast time. Ouch.

Our global proposition board meets to hear from our head of analytics, and his vision for moving from measurement to prediction. He has some spine-tingling ideas for the future of the practice.

I spend the afternoon with Google and an agency called Potato scoping out a series of systems to help optimise their marketing operations. It’s nice to spend time with such smart people in such a relaxed environment. Everyone just wants to do what’s right.

Our company meeting – a monthly platform for sharing work, culture and other news - is followed by a Caribbean party in the office, where I take on a little too much punch, copious jerk chicken…and all comers at foosball.

Good news hits the press about our appointment as Intuit’s agency of record - a bumper week for new business.

I randomly end up in three separate conversations about ad blocking in the space of a single day - perhaps the hottest topic in our business right now. One ‘Essential’ is writing her Masters’ thesis on the issue, another is running an in-market study with the help of some friendly publishers to get a handle on the problem.

The afternoon is devoted to technology: a reporting scrum, followed by our bi-weekly systems prioritization workshop and a show-and-tell from a team building a proof of concept data visualisation tool in some experimental technologies. 

I can’t think of a better way to end a great week. Except that it’s my fifth wedding anniversary, so Aunty Sarah is babysitting while mummy and daddy go out to play.

Age: 36

Favourite media: The humble banner ad - so simple, much maligned, often misused, but with the right imagination, you can build almost anything with it. It’s the Lego of advertising.

My biggest inspiration: My parents. Whereas I spend my time moving pixels and numbers around, they have devoted theirs to helping young people make the best of themselves - my father through charities and my mother as a teacher.

Dream job: Something in space travel. What I lack in qualifications I make up for in enthusiasm.

Not a lot of people know this about me: I was educated in French, but I am shy about using my first language at work.