Cara Attenborough
Consultant
Cara’s expertise varies from improving pastoral support for students through personal tutor resources and Student Services policies, to defining a strategy to improve student transition and retention.
Cara has over 8 years of experience working in universities on projects characterised by changes to ways of working and using technology to improve the student experience.
She was the Product Owner for the launch of King’s College London’s Student Services Online platform, and designed a strategy for the university’s student-facing content, mapping online resources and then influencing multiple support services and academic faculties to commit to new ways of working.
Prior to joining SUMS in August 2023, Cara worked at The Open University, adapting a change management methodology to support their Student Services Portfolio’s agile delivery framework. In addition to caring about how colleagues are supported during change, Cara is passionate about qualitative data analysis, specifically maximising what we can learn from written feedback received from students and staff. She has previously designed and led a Student Feedback Internship, which recruited three students to analyse and produce reports on the trends in their university’s NSS and PTES open comments.
An alumnus of The University of Leeds, Cara has a Masters by Research in corpus linguistics and is a Prosci Certified Change Practitioner. She is Co-Director of The Skeleton Fund, a Community Interest Company that donates its profits to charitable causes targeting different types of poverty and environmental issues.
Cara lives in South West Scotland and when weather permits, she’s outside building a self-sufficient garden with the help of her partner, two dogs and three chickens.