| Kirsty Marrins, Digital Communications Freelancer and author of A wellbeing guide for Comms professionals
Kirsty is a copywriter, accredited trainer and consultant working in the charity sector. She has a regular column in Third Sector where she writes about all things digital and was named one of the 100 most influential people in the charity sector. She won Best Trustee in the Social CEOs Awards in 2017 and is a proud trustee of CharityComms.
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| Shay Savage, Head of Sales, Natives
Shay brings a wealth of experience and knowledge in advertising, media and account management. With 8 years' experience working within advertising, social listening and market research technology, Shay is no stranger to navigating her way through complex enterprise, governmental and educational institutions. This allows her to be well equipped to understand the complexity and key goals of your organisation and work with you to define and implement your marketing and campaign strategies.
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| Steven Bourner, Chief Media Officer, Department for Education
Steven has worked in the communications team at the Department for Education (DfE) for over four years, with the last two of those spent managing the government's Higher Education portfolio, responsible for media and communication activity in this area. This includes creating media stories, strategic planning of communications activity, acting as Press Secretary to the Universities Minister and providing advice to the Education Secretary, while coordinating this with other work across government.
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| Michael Thompson, Deputy Director of Communications & External Relations, Universities UK
Michael Thompson is Universities UK’s Deputy Director of Communications and External Relations. He heads up the organisation’s media, digital and campaigning teams, and helps to develop its overall strategy for promoting the positive impact of universities.
Michael has more twenty years’ experience dealing with complex issues in a variety of communications and public affairs roles with The National Lottery, The Law Society, Metropolitan Police Service and the Portman Group, whose members are the UK’s largest alcohol producers.
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| Fiona Samson, Campaign Director, Study UK, British Council
Fiona joined the British Council eighteen months ago to lead on the Study UK campaign. Most of Fiona's career has been in central government where she led marketing programmes for Department of Health; Defra, and finally at the Department of Energy & Climate Change. Her most recent role was at the Royal Academy of Engineering where she worked with the engineering faculty across a group of universities on a programme to promote engineering to young people as a career.
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| Kitty Jones, Social Media Officer, GREAT Campaign, British CouncilKitty joined the British Council earlier this year and works in the GREAT campaign team managing the Study UK social media channels. Her role involves working with an agency to create compelling social media content and supporting on the wider global digital marketing campaign to promote the UK to international students as a great place to study. Kitty's career to date has been in the charity sector, before joining the British Council, she worked in the social media team at Cancer Research UK, implementing social media campaigns across fundraising, marketing, health and policy.
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| Jonah Duffin, Chief Marketing Officer, IDP Connect
Jonah
joined IDP Connect in 2017 after 11 years in various roles at Birkbeck,
University of London, including Director of External Relations and Head of
Marketing and Recruitment. He brings together all digital marketing disciplines
across the Higher Education and International channels as well as B2B
marketing, creating a strategic platform for growth.
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| Charlotte Urwin, Head of Standards, IPSO
Charlotte Urwin is Head of Standards at the Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO), the regulator of the majority of the UK's newspapers and magazines. Her responsibilities include developing guidance for journalists, monitoring compliance with the Editors' Code of Practice, and developing and overseeing IPSO's Standards Investigation procedures. Charlotte previously worked for the Health and Care Professions Council as Policy Manager and has also worked for charities and for the Department of Health.
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| Tamsin Starr, Head of News, University of Cambridge
Tamsin Starr, Head of News, University of Cambridge Communications Office Tamsin Starr is head of news of the University of Cambridge, overseeing communications on education and teaching in addition to reputation management. She oversees the University's widening participation and access communications as part of her current role and was responsible for designing and delivering the current 'Get in Cambridge' social media campaign to attract underrepresented students to Cambridge, which drove 500+ 'hard to reach' students to the University's open day bookings earlier this year. She has held senior communications roles in higher education institutions including St George's medical school in London and in external relations for one of the government's largest departments. This followed a career as a national news journalists for outlets including the Guardian group, BBC and Daily Mail Trust.
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| Louella Houldcroft, Senior Communications Manager, Newcastle University
Louella jointly leads the press team at Newcastle University and is also responsible for all communications relating to the Faculty of Science, Agriculture and Engineering. After more than a decade in regional and national print journalism, she moved to become Head of Communications for Northumbria Healthcare NHS Trust before moving to Newcastle University.
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| Claire Whitelaw, Head of Communications & Engagement, Durham University
Claire is head of communications for Durham University, leading the corporate and research communications teams, and has won numerous industry awards for campaigns. She was previously media relations manager for Durham and Newcastle universities. Claire is a qualified journalist and spent the early part of her career as a researcher for national BBC TV and as a reporter for regional newspapers in North East England and Yorkshire.
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| Gavin Colborne, Managing Director, Little Forest
Gavin Colborne is passionate about communications and how digital channels help to make the world a smaller and smarter place to live. He leads the team at Little Forest in their mission to help organisations improve their websites through Digital Governance. Gavin has 25 years of experience in web technology and has helped hundreds of brands in this time. His current interests are Accessibility, Auditing Web Estates and Content Policy. Being a father of 5 children keeps Gavin busy when he is not at work.
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| James Erskine, Managing Director, Rocket - Powered by The Big Shot
James Erskine, is Managing Director of 'Rocket - Powered By The Big Shot'. Over the last 10 years, Rocket have become recognised as a leader in marketing, creative and content to reach youth and children's audiences. They currently work for 7 Universities, ITV, Merlin Entertainment , Penguin Random House, NUS Extra and many others, creating content and delivering engaging marketing as well as delivering a number of other entertainment properties. James pioneered content marketing in his work at Omnicom agencies nearly 20 years ago. Outside of work he has two children which explains the bags under his eyes.
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| Nicola Marsh, Associate Director, Social and political research, Savanta ComRes
Nicola heads up the Social and Political Research team at ComRes, helping her clients to use data effectively to guide internal decision-making and strategy on communications, reputation, stakeholders and membership, and public policy.
Nicola has extensive experience of conducting mixed method research, with expertise in conducting research on complex and divisive topics, such as those which are determined by embedded value and cognitive frames or driven by political views. She has applied research findings to advise clients in the post-18 education sector on topics including student funding, the perceived value of international students amongst the general public and parliamentarians, the successes and challenges of apprenticeships, and perceptions of specific universities across a number of stakeholder groups.
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| Rachel Hewitt, Director of Policy and Advocacy, Higher Education Policy Institute (HEPI)
Rachel joined HEPI in November 2018, as Director of Policy and Advocacy and has written about a wide variety of HE policy issues, including the financial stability of universities and the well-being of staff. Prior to joining HEPI, Rachel held a number of roles at the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA), focused on data policy and governance and gathering requirements for information that could be met from HESA data. Rachel also lead on the review of data on graduate destinations and designed and implemented the new Graduate Outcomes survey.
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| Nicky Old, Director of Communications and External Relations, Universities UK
Nicky Old is Director –
Communications and External Relations leading the in-house communications and
external relations team which covers UUK’s media, government and political
affairs, social media, digital and campaigning activities.
Before joining Universities UK, Nicky was Chief of Staff for the CEO and Head
of Corporate Communications for the Education Funding Agency, part of the
Department for Education. She also led on public affairs for the Building
Schools for the Future programme. Before working in government, Nicky was a
Head of Press and Information for the University of Oxford. She originally
trained and worked as a print journalist.
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