Kevin is by training and vocation a social anthropologist, but has spent his career in business.

He developed the overseas practice of a firm of consulting engineers and economists, working on major aid-funded projects on Asia, Africa and the Caribbean. He chaired the company until it was acquired by the publicly-quoted WSP Group. He was a founder-director, later chairman, of Applied Research of Cambridge Ltd, a company that grew out of research work within the Department of Architecture in Cambridge, and pioneered computer-aided design and drafting as practical computer applications for use in archtitects' offices. He was a founder-director, also, of the London chain of bookshops, Daunt Books.

He was for nine years a Trustee of Unicef UK, and Deputy Chair for three years. He founded, and was for many years Chair of, SOS Sahel International UK, an NGO working to improve living conditions in some of the poorest parts of Africa. In 2002 he became a Trustee of The Young Foundation. He serves on the Finance and Property Committee and on the Nominations Committee. He contributed an ethnographical study of a south London housing estate, entitled A Niche in the Metropolis to the Young Foundation's survey of the state of contemporary Britain, Porcupines in Winter, in 2006.