[4] He attended Victoria University of Wellington, where he joined marches against apartheid, nuclear weapons and the Vietnam War.

It was here that he first met future Prime Minister Helen Clark, where they were both members of the Princes Street Branch of the Labour Party.

[2] Williams has been an information technology consultant[5] and was a director (until December 2008) of Genesis Energy, the NZ Transport Agency, and GNS Science.

[6] When living briefly in the United Kingdom Williams was invited to fill the role of a campaign manager to David Butcher (an old school friend of his) in the Hastings electorate at the 1978 election.

[8] Afterwards, he rapidly moved into fundraising where he instigated a number of new practices including, a pledge system (whereby supporters agreed to pay a regular amount using the then-new automatic bank transfer system), sending out requests for donations to the party membership, enclosing pre-paid reply envelopes, visiting businesses to solicit donations, systematic canvassing and direct-mailing.

In 2022 Williams revealed such an instance that when a senior official in an electorate was exposed as a paedophile he fired him from his job, despite thinking retrospectively that he didn't have the authority to do so.

[7] In 2009 he became the Chief Executive Officer of the anti-P Stellar Trust, a charity which campaigns to raise awareness of the dangers of methamphetamine.