Role
Hannah is Collaborations and Partnerships Team Leader within the Centre for Academic Development & Quality.
The purpose of the Collaborations and Partnerships team is to widen access to higher education to enable social mobility and change through partnership. Hannah’s role is to provide direction for the team, manage stakeholders, ensure quality management processes are risk-based, lean and lead to stronger partnerships, whilst offering high quality learning which provides assurance that NTU meet OfS requirements.
As a leader, Hannah is always looking for different ways that the team can add value and she strives for continuous improvement. Hannah takes a coaching approach to ensure that everyone in the team is able to lead in their respective their areas and provide an excellent service for all stakeholders.
Career overview
Hannah’s career has been focussed on ‘making a difference’ and she has been primarily concerned with creating structures and services that increase access to high quality education and life-long learning. Hannah started her career in SMEs which provided CPD for school staff. Her roles involved getting new projects off the ground and were very outward facing. She found working at an SME was a great way to build a wide range of skills, from project management, finance, marketing, copy writing, relationship building and even conference production. Hannah was motivated by feedback from teachers and school leaders about the impact of the courses on them and the children they taught. After working for a short period in the NHS as a clinical services procurement assistant, Hannah found her career ‘home’ in higher education in 2014, when she started working at de Montfort University as a Partnerships Officer. She moved to Nottingham Trent University in 2016, starting as a Collaborations and Partnerships Senior Standards and Quality Officer before being appointed Team Leader in 2019.
Since 2016, the work of the team has changed considerably. Their remit has expanded to encompass partnerships in its broadest sense, both internal and external. Hannah has looked closely at how the team change their approach to quality management to suit a much broader and more varied portfolio, and expand their services to add value in new areas.
External activity
Hannah is a qualified coach and supports colleagues through the NTU Coaching Academy. Coaching has had a powerful impact on Hannah, at work and beyond, and she is always excited to work with clients on their own journey. Through coaching, Hannah helps clients to identify and overcome self-limiting beliefs, achieve increased self-confidence, productivity and job satisfaction.
Hannah is also co-Chair of the Parent and Carer Staff Network at NTU, which was established in 2023 to provide help and support to those juggling the demands of work outside the home with the pressures of their role as a parent and/or carer. She is particularly interested in how workplaces can work for those who need to work flexibly, whether full-time or part-time, for health or caring reasons.