Adrian has worked in senior management and as a board member in both museums and the performing arts and as a strategy consultant to leading clients in the cultural, public, and business sectors around the world. He is recognized as having contributed to the cultural sector's deeper understanding of a number of areas including the development of successful cultural building projects, the role of cultural districts in social, economic and cultural development, the capitalization needs of the cultural sector, impact assessment, the creation of new business models and investment strategies for cultural infrastructure, and strategic responses to long-term societal changes in technology, philanthropy, demographics, and the use of leisure time.

He founded AEA Consulting in 1990, and the Global Cultural Districts Network in 2015. He moved to the United States in 1998, setting up AEA’s New York office. Adrian left AEA in 2007 to serve as the CEO of Jazz at Lincoln Center, returning in 2013.

Before founding AEA, Adrian worked in the UK Treasury and Cabinet Office (1981-1986) and for the Conran Foundation, setting up the Design Museum (1986 – 1990). He is co-host of the podcast The Three Bells which focusses on the intersection of cultural and urban life.

His board service includes the National Museum of Wales, Poets House (New York) and the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center (Athens). He has been a Scholar in Residence at Columbia University and has taught arts administration at Columbia, Bocconi, Boston and New York Universities and on the Clore Fellows Programme (London). He has a first class honors degree in Politics, Philosophy and Economics from Oxford University and also studied at London School of Economics.