Susannah is a Higher Education consultant who works with institutions to help them thrive. Her wide-ranging expertise includes improving the student experience, building new academic developments, creating better policy, meeting OfS requirements, ensuring effective service design, managing collaborative provision, investigating student or staff cases and much more.
With an evidenced reputation for thoughtful and people-focused solutions, she is highly familiar with the ins and outs of institutional life, and particularly skilled at untangling complexities. Since 2021, she has worked with around 20 clients on substantial projects through to one-off short pieces of work. Multiple clients have re-engaged Susannah to undertake additional projects.
Prior to setting up her consultancy, Susannah was Director of Student and Academic Services and Registrar at City, University of London (2013-21). As a member of the Executive Committee, she worked alongside colleagues through a substantial period of strategic development. She led initiatives that resulted in improvements to the student experience through embedding technology, creating student-facing policy, revising service design and building a strong relationship with the Students’ Union. She also led City’s registration with the Office for Students, oversaw the first TEF submission and took a pivotal role in steering the University through the pandemic. During her time as a Director, City was shortlisted for the Times Higher Education Most Improved Student Experience (2017) and teams in Susannah’s Directorate were shortlisted (2016, 2018) for or winners (2019) of Times Higher Education Leadership and Management Awards.
Throughout her career, and as a music graduate, Susannah has established strong engagement with specialist HE arts institutions as well as with larger universities. She is currently a Governor of the Central School of Ballet, and previously held similar roles with the National Centre for Circus Arts and the Conservatoire for Dance and Drama. In consultancy, she has worked with seven of the UK’s specialist HE arts institutions.
Susannah’s contributions to the HE sector were recognised in 2021 by being awarded Fellowship of the Association of Higher Education Professionals.
Outside her consultancy work, Susannah is the Founder and Presenter of Job Shadowing HE, a podcast that provides insight to HE roles and the people behind them. Launched in November 2023, the podcast audience now spans over 70 countries and has received sponsorship from various organisations connected with the HE sector.