Alex Hudson

On mastering the art of Operations

“I’m a full-time pond dweller. I’m swimming in the weeds so that other people can row their boats smoothly across the water.”

That’s how Alex Hudson poetically captures what it means to work in Operations. Since joining Third Bridge in February 2018, Alex and her career path have evolved in tandem with the business, transforming from an Operations Associate into a global leader. Today, as Head of Operations for Credit & Public Equities (CPE), she oversees the "swans" of the company: a powerhouse team that from the surface are gliding seamlessly while working tirelessly underneath to ensure everything from Analyst-led interview production to managing client’s Library and third party platform access remain flawless.

Starting out in Operations

Alex’s journey into the world of efficiency didn’t start with a spreadsheet, it started with canvases. "I studied the classic intro degree to operations," she deadpans, "History of Art at Warwick."

The transition from Renaissance painting to corporate logistics happened thanks to a recruiter with a flair for the dramatic. "I remember them telling me, 'Alex, I’ve got the role for you. This company is going to be the next Google.'" That company was Third Bridge. Alex figured she’d give it six months, find her feet, and move on. "Next month will be eight years," she laughs. "That is officially the longest six months of my life."

What hooked her wasn’t a slick sales pitch, but a refreshingly unscripted interview process. While most companies trigger a reflex of robotic, "stock" answers about team building, Third Bridge asked questions that demanded a human response. "I just had really genuine answers," Alex recalls. "Nothing pre-rehearsed came out."

Once onboard, Alex discovered her true calling: solving puzzles. As an Associate, she recalls feeling a strong sense of autonomy "I’d go to my manager and say, 'I think we could do it like this,' and they actually listened.”.

She spent those early months ripping up legacy processes and rebuilding them to be smoother and more logical. "I remember going home in those first six months thinking, 'I basically get paid to do a puzzle every day.' My job is finding the lowest cost, most efficient way to produce a product." Eight years later, the puzzles have grown in scale, but the joy of fitting the pieces together remains exactly the same.

The art of "process-izing"

Because Alex didn’t come from a traditional operations background, she didn’t arrive with a suitcase full of rigid frameworks. Instead, she learned on the job, developing a key skill she calls "process-izing." Her secret weapon? Entering every room with a total blank slate.

"If you have any idea of what the end product should be going into it, just forget it," Alex says. "You cannot go in with a fixed outcome. You have to go in with the problem you're trying to solve, flesh out the requirements, and speak to every single stakeholder involved."

This approach was forged during Third Bridge’s more nascent years when the business still felt like a startup. It was a time of rapid growth that required a specific kind of bravery, the willingness to admit that just because something is done a certain way now, doesn't mean it’s the way it should be done forever.

Alex recalls a piece of advice from Rudy, one of Third Bridge’s co-founders, as a north star for her leadership style today: "The most junior voice should be heard because they’re the one coming in with fresh eyes. They haven’t been desensitized to the process yet."

It’s this culture of mentorship and on-the-job evolution, rather than formal learning or courses, that Alex credits for her growth. By fostering an environment where no precedent is sacred, she’s ensured her team isn't just following a manual, but constantly rewriting it. "We’ve always fostered this environment where we challenge the status quo," she explains. "That’s how you build something that actually works."

Growing with the business

Unlike her friends in law or medicine, Alex hasn’t spent the last eight years following a neatly laminated career map. Instead, her trajectory has mirrored the explosive growth of the business itself. As Third Bridge evolved, so did the "puzzles."

"I’ve had so many amazing opportunities just by being part of that growth," she explains. "Community launched and it was like, ‘Okay, I guess we’re doing this now.’ Then Primers came out. Then our AI partnerships. My day looks nothing like it did when I first joined."

Her role has shifted from pure execution and “process-izing” to high-level strategy and management. Today, about 40% of her time is spent leading people, while the rest is spent figuring out the practical implementation of the company's biggest strategic moves.

To get it all done, Alex leans into a personality trait most people try to hide: a total lack of patience. "By nature, I am really impatient. I don’t know patience and I have no interest in getting to know her," she laughs. "In my career, that’s been the fuel for getting stuff done."

However, she’s also learned the power of the strategic no, a lesson inspired by leaders and mentors like Mike Grubert. While her younger self might have rushed to the finish line, she now prioritizes integrity over speed of delivery. "If we’re not doing it right, we’re not doing it. If it takes longer that’s fine, we’re doing it right."

Through it all, Alex remains the "full-time pond dweller"of the business. It’s an analogy she uses with genuine affection for the grit required in operations. "I’m swimming in the weeds so that other people can row their boats smoothly across the water.”.

Defining success

For Alex, success is a two-sided coin. On one side, there is the "work of absolute art" that is the CPE operations machine. The numbers tell a staggering story. Between 2022 and 2025, her Analyst-led Operations team managed a 126% increase in interview volume while simultaneously slashing their Cost Per Interview (CPI) by 73%. "That is a very powerful stat," Alex admits. "It’s the data behind the story of how we’ve grown without just throwing headcount at the problem."

But the other side of that coin is what truly keeps her motivated. If you ask Alex what she’s most proud of, she won’t point to a spreadsheet, she’ll point to her team. She views her department as the "swans" of Third Bridge, gliding gracefully across the company lake while working tirelessly beneath the surface to keep everything working as it should.

"I am incredibly proud of how they conduct themselves," she says. "Operations can be hard. We don't always have the glitz of a commercial role. But my team is the scaffolding that holds the building up."

Her pride is particularly evident when talking about the growth of her team in Mumbai. Since April 2024, she has overseen the creation of the Free Follow-Up Operations Coordinator team, a global engine that executes end-to-end tasks so the Client Services teams can stay focused on revenue. It is a true "follow-the-sun" operation, with team members in Mumbai working through the night to cover New York (Meenakshi Gupta and Arunimaa Bahl), London (Satyam Srivastava and Neha Kumari) and Hong Kong (Palak Thakkar) hours. Alex is quick to highlight the grit behind these shifts, giving a special shout-out to LDN-based Josiah Ereku for his marathon coverage during regional holidays.

The Mumbai team’s transformation has been a masterclass in building a well-oiled machine. Alex highlights the arrival of manager Jinali Shah in July 2025 as a turning point, alongside the automation of third-party distribution. This move allowed Somesh Goplani to step into a new Client Operations Associate role, where he has been at the forefront of leveraging new tools to ingest data previously "squirrelled away" in spreadsheets and alleviate the burden of time consuming manual tasks from the Commercial team.

While these are examples of puzzles to be solved, Alex sees these wins very much as human ones, something she takes great pride in. She recalls a recent 1:1 with a team member who had set "confidence" as their goal for 2025. "By Q4, they were telling me about their work with such authority. I just looked at them and said, 'You’re doing it. You’re there.' That is so cool to witness."

Ultimately, Alex’s leadership is rooted in a refreshing dose of reality: the belief that we work to live, not the other way around. "The most fulfilling part of management is supporting people so they can do things outside of work," she explains. "I don’t want a world where the only outcomes are numbers. I need the combination of the tangible data and the human growth."

Capturing the spirit of Third Bridge

According to Alex, there is a specific energy that transcends office locations and time zones. Rather than a culture which can be shaped by the local demands of a global business, she refers to it as the "Third Bridge spirit"- a universal drive for innovation and a shared obsession with simply getting stuff done.

"I don’t know how Talent Acquisition does it, but the people they hire are just great," she says. She also credits the importance of a good sense of humor in the workplace. "Having a human connection makes it so much easier to ride out the hard times; when you can fundamentally just have a bit of a laugh, the work feels less like a task and more like a shared mission."

Alex doesn't just believe in this spirit, she has lived it. While many companies talk about a culture of support at university careers fairs, Alex has seen what happens when the chips are down. During a nine-month medical hiatus, the support she received from the business was so profound that her head medical consultant (a veteran of 35 years) remarked she had never seen an employer as supportive as Third Bridge.

"I don’t want to be defined by that time," Alex says, "but it would be remiss of me not to give a shout-out to the people who were there." Colleagues became not just friends but family, Anna Nicklin, Harry Barnick and Dan Thomas, who traveled across London once a month just to have dinner with Alex and her family during her recovery. Alongside friends, her manager, Mike Grubert, was a constant pillar of support. In the early phase of her recovery, Mike flew over from the US to meet Alex’s family and then continued to call her once a week to check-in on her progress until her return to work in October 2022.

Mike remains an important feature in Alex’s story and she credits him for much of her professional growth, "He’s a phenomenal manager. He’s always pushing me to be better, but he actually takes the time to acknowledge the successes, too. He’s been a huge support throughout everything."

Alex is also quick to shout-out the powerhouse support system of "rocks" and mentors she works alongside at Third Bridge. From Chloe Cameron, who was a steady hand during high-pressure moments when Alex first became a Manager, to early-career champions like Phil Vincent and Aria Georghiou, she hasn't walked the path alone. Today, her right-hand woman in the trenches is Rachel Bloem, who as Alex puts it “was a key driver in setting up the global production process for operations, which means any team member around the globe can pick up a piece of Analyst-Led interview production regardless of region. She’s also just the best business partner I could hope for, from brainstorming new processes to discussing strategy, I depend on her completely.”

Life beyond work

If you ask Alex how she balances her busy role with life outside of work, she describes it as a very specific pie chart of priorities: sauna, reading, sleeping, and yapping. Most often, she is in the sauna as a self-proclaimed addict who clocks in six days a week, with a book in hand, though she warns that the heat does questionable things to the spine glue. When she isn't resetting in the heat, she is "yapping," bringing her full self to every conversation whether she’s sharing a delicious meal with friends or catching up with her family and their dog, Poppy (who is already a Third Bridge celebrity as the reigning winner of best pet Halloween costume!). Recently, she took that energy on the road for her first solo holiday to Finland, where she conquered the wilderness and, highly unsurprisingly, managed to find a sauna overlooking a beautiful frozen lake.

She is a firm believer that some people are rightfully reserved at work, but she finds her greatest success by bringing her "full self" to Third Bridge, even if she jokingly admits that her full self is "a lot." That authenticity is what makes her an open book both inside and outside the office.

Advice for future joiners

For anyone standing at the starting line of their career, Alex’s advice is rooted in the same curiosity that turned her "six-month stint" into an eight-year tenure. “If you don’t have a fixed idea of what you want to do, this is an amazing place to figure it out,” she says. She encourages new joiners to treat the business like a landscape to be explored rather than a narrow track to be run.

She also encourages new joiners to take advantage of the lack of hierarchy “No one’s too senior or too important to spend time talking to you,” Alex insists. Her final word of wisdom? Don't wait for permission to be innovative. “If you see a gap where something could be done differently, your voice will always be heard. Just bring those fresh eyes—and maybe a sense of humor.”

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