My Experience

I was among the first generation of professional leaders to sit around a higher education top table. I ran many multi-award-winning university departments over a two-decade senior career.  I worked to develop and communicate an authentic and fully integrated strategic narrative.  My particular skill is to be the bridge that connects leadership with the academic and professional communities in an open, courageous, shared pursuit of a flourishing institution.  

For 11 years I was a member of the senior leadership team at Birkbeck College in the University of London.  I was Pro-Vice-Master for Strategic Engagement, the first Pro-Vice-Master from a professional background in the College’s 200 year history.  I was appointed to help a unique and precious institution that found itself seriously affected by government policy change.  I gathered and shared the compelling Birkbeck story in connected and cost-effective ways.  A powerful integrated campaign was delivered that facilitated government understanding, encouraged policy change, generated philanthropic gifts, motivated alumni volunteering, recruited students in record numbers, enlisted media support and developed an irresistible wave of support.  Birkbeck’s messages and communication channels were gathered, focused and aligned in unprecedented ways. Institutional transformation was advanced.

I spent 3 years as Vice President Global Engagement at CASE (the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education), working with university and school leadership teams across the world to help build institutional resilience and capacity. CASE is a global NGO, a ‘not for profit’ and a membership association that develops externally facing professional teams including student recruitment, communications, marketing, fundraising and alumni relations.  My teams were based in London, Singapore, Mexico City and Washington DC.  I worked with mature communities of practice in the US, Canada, UK and Australia and with fast-developing and emerging markets in the Middle East, Latin America, Africa, China, Asia and Europe.  I learned quickly to grasp the challenges leaders face in very different geographies and cultures working with Presidents, Vice Chancellors, Heads, Rectors, Deans and professional service leaders to find the best, most cost-effective solutions and advise on the development, deployment and integration of professional expertise and resource.

In 2019 I founded my own consultancy and coaching practice. I have worked with inspiring universities, schools, membership associations and education businesses across the globe. As a consultant, I have worked with leaders and senior teams helping them tackle urgent change agendas.  I have facilitated large and small-scale team development projects, both face to face and via video conferencing.  Creative, empathetic and impactful consultation projects have helped envisage, facilitate and deliver transformational change.  As an executive coach, I have worked one-to-one with all levels of staff from Chairs of Boards, Heads of Institutions and senior leaders to newly arrived interns.  An experienced coach seems particularly invaluable in these covid-affected times, helping people make sense of the crisis they have lived through and how to survive and thrive in the new workplace - from my experience, burn out and exhaustion are real risks of recent times.

I am particularly proud to be a Fellow of Birkbeck College, the recipient of the CASE Europe Distinguished Service Award and to have been short listed twice for the Guardian Higher Education Inspiring Leader Award.