Sam is a Senior Lecturer at Manchester Metropolitan University within Manchester Fashion Institute, focusing on education through curriculum content and design, collaboratively working across multiple areas to support the student journey and deliver the strategic objectives of the Department and Faculty.
During her time at Manchester Met, Sam has developed and run award-winning programmes, including the BA/BSc (Hons) in Fashion Business and Management. The Chartered Management Institute, in recognition of her leadership and professional engagement, awarded Manchester Fashion Institute with the prestigious Higher Education Partner of the Year award. The success of the course has seen it franchised through international collaborative partners, further enhancing the profile, reputation and credibility of the programme and department.
In addition, over the last few years, Sam has undertaken strategic programme reviews and acted as Section Head for Fashion Business for the department.
Sam's knowledge of marketing strategy, practices, data, and analytical thinking has facilitated a career in marketing across industries, including fashion retailing, banking, insurance, and travel, in some of the largest corporates in the country. Hence she embeds her knowledge and experiences within her teaching and learning practice.
Currently, she is co-authoring a new book on Global Fashion Brand Management with research specialisms in Entrepreneurship, Digital Brand Marketing and Analytics.
Sam takes a student-centric approach and proactively shares her knowledge and expertise with students through teaching and learning at undergraduate and postgraduate levels. She has developed and run new innovative units in business analytics, customer experience, customer journey and entrepreneurship. Given her specialist knowledge, she has taken up several posts as an external examiner and undertaken external roles in programme validations during her academic career.

Academic and professional qualifications

Gained a Master of Science in Fashion Marketing from Manchester Metropolitan University and Bachelor of Arts with Honours in Business Studies from the University of Salford

Previous Employment

Sam spent over 15 years working for some of the major corporates in the UK. Her primary expertise was data-driven marketing, applying customer insights to profitably retain and grow customer bases within some of the largest multinational organisations in the UK. In addition, she has built expertise in nearly all marketing channels, leading teams and working with some of the UK's most respected and well-known marketing agencies in creative, media planning, branding, market research, digital marketing and strategic planning.

Sam has worked in fashion for companies such as N Brown and Shop Direct within the marketing function. In addition, early in her career, she worked within advertising agencies where she was involved in several groundbreaking projects, such as developing UK's first online grocery sales initiative for Tesco PLC.

Below is a sample of some of the other roles she has worked in.

Senior Marketing Manager at Santander UK PLC & Alliance and Leicester, where Sam managed a multi-million-pound budget to initiate & develop cost-effective business & marketing strategies for loans, savings and international payments. Her achievements included a 23% growth in sales of international payments within the first year. Spearheading consumer and B2B marketing, she worked with some of the UK's major advertising agencies to design integrated campaigns, digital, direct marketing, and branch POS in a multichannel environment. A significant part of the role was managing the agency relationships for strategy development and media planning, instigating online marketing campaigns including social media, Pay Per Click, Search Engine Optimisation, banner advertising and email marketing. Working closely with the data analytics team to develop strategies for gaining customer insights, profiling, and segmentation, she also led a crucial re-branding project.

Head of Marketing Department NST Travel (Holiday Breaks PLC), appointed to lead the marketing function through a turnaround strategy, developing and taking forward marketing plans to facilitate and fulfil the company's growth objectives. During the 18 months in the role, Sam achieved a 12% performance improvement, managed the development of a new website, improved targeting through profiling, segmentation and analysis of the database, improved department efficiencies by introducing best practice, gained consensus at board level with the ability to influence significant decisions such as implementing a re-branding strategy.

Consultant Direct Marketing Manager Swinton Insurance, where the role included managing the direct marketing function, improving mailing plans, effective targeting and enhancing creative processes, which resulted in an 8% uplift in performance. Sam controlled a multi-million-pound marketing budget, using data-driven CRM strategies to activate and reactivate existing customers. This included detailed campaign analysis to improve future performance.

Marketing Development Manager Bank of Scotland, now part of Lloyds Banking Group, where Sam managed integrated campaigns, including PR, TV, radio, digital, press, exhibitions, direct mail and sales force. She oversaw the marketing team and coordinated a groundbreaking car finance website launch. Managing Joint venture activities with Sainsbury's, she worked on Sainsbury's Bank campaigns, launching new products across the store network. Working with some of the most well-known advertising agencies, including M&C Saatchi and WPP, she developed multichannel campaigns and qualitative and quantitative research, applying findings to influence product development and enhance marketing activity.

Academic service (administration and management)

Apr 2021 – Sept 2022 Interim Section Head Fashion Business
Jan 2020 – Sept 21 Programme Leader BA(Hons) Fashion Promotion
Mar 2015 – Jan 2020 Programme Leader BA(Hons) Fashion Business & Management

External examiner roles

Invited by London Metropolitan University as a panel member to validate their suite of business undergraduate courses, including the Fashion Marketing and Fashion Business courses. The suite of Programmes was successfully validated in July 2020

From 2014 to 2018, External Examiner at the University of Central Lancashire for the BA(Hons) in Fashion Promotion, BA (Hons) Fashion Brand Management, BA (Hons) in Fashion Promotion with Styling and BA (Hons) Eastern Fashion.

Currently External Examiner for The University of the Creative Arts MSC Fashion Business & Management programme.