Experience

Tricia King was among the first generation of professional leaders to sit around a higher education institution’s top table.  She has run many multi-award-winning university departments over a two-decade senior career.  Her skill is to be the bridge that connects leadership with its academic and professional communities in a courageous, shared pursuit of a flourishing institution.  

For 11 years Tricia was a member of the senior leadership team at Birkbeck College in the University of London.  She was Pro-Vice-Master for Strategic Engagement, the first Pro-Vice-Master from a professional background in the College’s 200year history.  She was appointed to help a unique and precious institution that found itself seriously affected by government policy change.  She worked to gather and share the compelling Birkbeck story in connected and cost-effective ways.  She forged a powerful integrated campaign 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.  In Tricia’s time, Birkbeck’s messages and communication channels were gathered, focused and aligned in unprecedented ways. Institutional transformation was advanced.

More recently Tricia spent 3 years as Vice President Global Engagement at CASE (the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education).  She worked 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.  Tricia led CASE teams based in London, Singapore, Mexico City and Washington DC.  She 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.  She learned quickly to grasp the challenges leaders face in very different geographies and cultures.  She worked 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.

Tricia is proud to be a Fellow of Birkbeck College and to be shortlisted twice for the Guardian Higher Education Inspiring Leader Award.