Victoria Holbrook

WORK HISTORY

EDUCATION

ABOUT VICTORIA HOLBROOK

An impactful, thoughtful and compassionate senior leader and consultant, with twenty years experience in public policy, higher education and not-for- profit/charity management as well as several non-executive directorships. I thrive getting things done with diverse, energetic teams and pride myself on trying to practise what I preach. You never stop learning. I joined Advance HE in 2019 (leading member relations) as one of the first external senior appointments after the organisation’s creation by three-way merger. In 2020, I was asked by the CEO to additionally lead the development of our first strategy, working closely with the whole Executive team, the Board (of which I formed a working group), staff, and stakeholders via our Strategic Advisory Groups. The strategy was published in May 2021. My varied and extensive experience across the spectrum of HE policy areas (research, widening participation, teaching, funding, regulation, quality and standards) is now brought to bear in my leadership of Advance HE’s consulting, insights and Board work. This role sees me combine business development, commercial acumen, internal and external collaboration, member-relations and client consulting with plenty of programme and resource/budget planning and management. I lead a team of twelve comprising our governance, consulting and insights (research and surveys) functions, to bring out the capability and potential of these areas to deliver growth and excellent service for our members and clients. Additionally, I lead transformation projects supporting the delivery of our strategy and growth plan. I am a member of our internal EDI coordination group. I also develop and lead cross-sector projects and programmes with organisations such as Universities UK and GuildHE. In 2022, the Supporting Inclusive Boards initiative I developed was shortlisted for Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Initiative of the year by the Chartered Governance Institute UK and Ireland.