Gary Hughes
Associate Consultant
gary.hughes@reading.ac.uk
Gary is a performance-driven external relations specialist with over 15 years of executive marketing leadership across a range of universities, most recently at Aston University.
His earlier career was in London working with corporate organisations with turnovers from £100m to over £2bn. He has significant experience in working at executive levels to create University strategies, connecting corporate / business strategy with marketing and brand to drive performance, reputation and engagement.
His fields of expertise in HE include building high-performing student recruitment pipeline from enquiry to enrolment; expert specification of Power-BI to provide integrated performance; communication strategies, internal and external, for maximising the value, reach and impact of content, as well as strategic reputation management in UK & global league tables. Gary has led on multiple transformation and enterprise level projects in universities scaling from 4,000 to 40,000 students, to drive engagement and marketing performance, including Microsoft Viva and Dynamics 365 strategy and implementations.
Completing Advance HE’s Top Management Programme in 2015, Gary is also a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Marketing.
Outside of work, he is an avid football, rugby and racing fan, as well as becoming a convert to running, recently completing his first half marathon.