Ian is an experienced campaigner, coach & facilitator. He has 20 years’ comms experience in agency, in-house and consultancy, and nearly 10 years’ experience as a coach and workshop facilitator.
Most recently, Ian has worked with global education movement United World Colleges, helping to boost their PR and other communications, and the arts charity Stagetext to champion access to the arts for deaf and hard of hearing audiences, where he has offered strategic advice and PR support since 2018 on its annual Captioning Awareness Week campaign.
Ian gained his coaching qualification through International Coaching Federation in 2013. Since then, he has coached both individuals and organisations, including those dealing with personal and professional challenges during the Covid-19 pandemic. He has also coached on a leadership programme at a global enterprise, which involved leading and co-leading workshops in London, New York and Vienna.
Ian co-led our campaign for Community Business Weekend from 2017-19 and consulted the University of Reading on a major new teaching and research facility, offering advice on stakeholder engagement, public affairs and other communications activities from 2017-18. He was also Media & Messaging coordinator at Extinction Rebellion during its global campaigns in 2019-20, working as a full-time volunteer, where he also supported the press and political teams.
Ian used to head up campaigns at Universities UK (UUK), lobbying to remove international students from the net migration target, running Universities Week, and working with Martin Lewis of MoneySavingExpert to prevent a drop in university applications, following an increase in fees in 2012.
Ian is an expert in campaign planning and delivery, stakeholder management, social media, media relations and large-scale events – most notably at the Natural History Museum for Universities Week, which attracted c. 28,000 people in June 2014.
He is also a former press officer and has experience in advising on communication strategies, including on a 2016 social mobility report for the UK government at the request of the Prime Minister.