Advisory Board

Helen Curtis 

Helen is founder and Managing Director of Coterie Marketing.  Coterie is a specialist global agency that focuses on ecosystem marketing and uses a unique, university-driven and industry-recognised, methodology for end to end partner marketing solutions. They have been recognised for their achievements with numerous accolades including short list for the CIM best partnership campaign 2019 and won small content marketing agency of the year in 2020. They are headquartered in Huddersfield at the 3M BIC with team members around the world and 60+ global tech clients in India, US and Europe.

Coterie was launched in 2013 and prior to that, Helen spent 20 years in the IT and telecoms industry. She was a Head of Global Proposition Marketing at British Telecom, a channel sales lead at Intel and started her career at global systems integrator Fujitsu.

Helen is a Huddersfield alumni, has worked closely with the University on joint research into eco-system marketing and also spent three years as a guest lecturer at the University.

Olga Watterich  

Olga is Associate Regional Director for Yorkshire & the Humber at the CBI. Her role primarily involves working with the organisation’s member companies across the region to support them to become more prosperous and sustainable, but also includes raising the profile of the region’s firms and engaging with key stakeholders such as local authorities and LEPs on issues affecting business.

Prior to joining CBI she worked at Business in the Community for 19 years where she advised companies on their community investment strategies, and latterly managed the organisation’s national community and education programmes and partnership development.

Salma Yasmeen

Salma brings a wealth of knowledge of health and care systems and leading innovation and change in organisations and across systems with people at the centre. Salma started her career as a Mental Health Nurse and works in the NHS where she is the executive lead for strategy, change, communications and inequalities.

Prior to this she was the Director of Nursing and Transformation for a large Medical City in the middle east. During this time, she led the development of the Medical City’s approach to transformation and building capability across the diverse workforce. 

Salma has led policy development and implementation across systems in parts of Yorkshire and London in the area of equalities, integrated approaches and services to improve health and well-being. She was also CEO of an award winning mental health community development charity in an inner city area that she established from a pilot project. It was recognised nationally for developing ground breaking approaches to engaging people from diverse communities to co-produce solutions to better mental health and address health inequalities.

Salma is passionate about public services and the role that they play in addressing inequalities and enabling every person to live a  safe, connected, meaningful and healthy life. Salma was born in Huddersfield  a place she will always consider home and remains committed to place and people.

Steven Michael

Steven Michael OBE FRSA has been part of Huddersfield Business School's Advisory Board since its inception in 2010. He held the position of Chair between 2016-2022. 

Steven is an experienced healthcare leader and manager and now works as an independent consultant, having previously been the CEO of South West Yorkshire Partnership NHS Foundation Trust, a post he held for nine years. His career has also encompassed clinical leadership roles and work in the charitable sector.

In addition to chairing Huddersfield Business School's advisory board, Steven is chair of the advisory board of Implementing Recovery Through Organisational Change( ImROC), a national and international project supporting recovery and organisational development in mental health. He also recently chaired Greater Manchester's Mental Health Implementation Executive at a critical stage in the devolution process and has recently been both chair and interim CEO of the NHS Confederation's Mental Health Network. He is also a trustee of Spectrum People, a Wakefield based charity and an associate of Harvey Nash, specialising in board level recruitment.

Steven gained an MBA in 1996 and has also completed his Doctor of Business Administration program with us here at Huddersfield.

Steven was awarded an OBE for services to healthcare in the Queen's Birthday Honours in 2014 and has also been appointed as a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.

Katie Mallinson

Katie is the Global Marketing Director for Untha and former Managing Director of Huddersfield based company Scriba PR.

Katie graduated from Huddersfield Business School in 2008 and went on to establish her own organisation in 2013 with the help of The University of Huddersfield Enterprise Team. She has since provided a range of pro bono support for other students and young entrepreneurs, via guest lectures, ‘ask the expert’ sessions, competitions, and work placements.

James Clarkson 

James is founder and Chief Executive Officer of Adventoris.  Adventoris is a software business which was first to market with a cloud-based platform, called SwiftCloud, which allows small and medium-sized companies to receive sales orders directly from their B2B customers via a mobile app, web ordering or email attachment.  Adventoris has over 200 clients in the UK and overseas and has a team of over 40.

As a Chartered Accountant James previously spent over 20 years in finance, primarily as Finance Director of a range of companies and has experience in Manufacturing, Distribution, FMCG, Healthcare and Financial Services.  Following his time with KPMG, James had senior and board appointments at Marshalls Plc, Matthews Foods Plc, Ultralase, and CP Group.

James has a first-class degree in Economics from the University of York.

Victoria Goddard

Victoria Goddard is a property development lawyer having spent all of her career at Pinsent Masons LLP, an international law firm with 26 offices and over 400 partners and a legal team of over 1800. She has been a partner for the past 14 years and heads up their Global Education team. All of the clients she works with are universities and her specialism is on-campus redevelopments, and student accommodation projects in particular.

Victoria is passionate about education, being the first in her family to go to university. She did a law degree at the University of Bristol and then went to Chester Law School. She is a trustee of Student Minds, has been a school governor for 5 years at Leeds West Academy in Bramley, Leeds and led the reciprocal mentoring programme at Pinsent Masons which aims to increase gender diversity. Pinsent Masons is a recognised leader in diversity and is the highest ranked professional services firm in the Stonewall Workplace Equality Index and is ranked among The Times Top 50 Workplaces for Women 2021. David Isaacs, a former Pinsent Masons partner is currently Chair of the UK Equality and Human Rights Committee.

Jonathan Thompson BSc (Hons), ACIB

Jonathan is co-founder, executive director and CEO of Bank North, a new fintech/regtech enabled bank which was granted authorisation with restrictions by the PRA in 2021.

Bank North combines the latest cloud-native banking technology and with expert banking teams in key regional centres across the UK, to disrupt the UK market for committed SME finance. The bank has raised over £30m of capital to date from private and blue chip investors, including Greater Manchester Combined Authority, Channel 4 Ventures, LHV Group and Skipton Building Society, and was one of JP Morgan’s top 200 female powered businesses in 2021.

Prior to that, Jonathan was a Divisional Managing Director at Santander UK, having been a director in Deloitte’s Debt Capital Advisory business, and started his career in Lloyds Banking Group.

Martin Leeming

Martin is CEO of Trak-Rap Limited, an innovative business that has developed a new lower cost, more environmentally friendly, packaging system for Food Manufacturers that supply the major Supermarkets. Before becoming an entrepreneur, Martin was a Corporate warrior, having spent 15 years at Asda holding Director roles in Buying and Supply Chain and 4 years as a Consultant at PwC. He began his career at Holset (Cummins) after graduating with a degree in mechanical Engineering at UMIST and completed his MBA at the University of Huddersfield. He is now combining his passion for Eco-innovation, Retail and Engineering to make a real difference.

Tommaso Agasisti

Tommaso Agasisti is a full Professor of Public Management at Politecnico di Milano, Italy - where he teaches “Data Analysis for Public Managers”.

His research interests deal with various topics: (i) evaluating the efficiency and performance of schools and universities, (ii) studying the governance models for Higher Education institutions and systems, (iii) applying new theories and methods in the area of Learning Analytics, (iv) assessing the role of digital learning in innovating educational process, and (v) evaluating the effectiveness of financial literacy programs. He has authored more than 100 publications, which have appeared in international, peer-reviewed academic journals. Between 2016 and 2021, he served as Associate Editor of the academic journal Higher Education Quarterly. He currently participates on the Editorial Boards of journals like Educational Researcher, the International Journal of Educational Management, and Tertiary Education and Management.

Since 2020, Tommaso has been Associate Dean for International Relations at PoliMi GSOM - Graduate School of Management. Since 2019, he has been a member of the Governing Board of Politecnico di Milano. For 2021 and 2022, he has been appointed to the Expert Group of the European Commission for Quality Investment in Education and Training. Since 2014, he has been a member of the Evaluation Committee of the Educational System in the Autonomous Province of Trento, Italy. Between 2010 and 2019, he sat on the Institutional Evaluation Committee of various public and private Italian universities.

Louise Jones

With 27 years of working in sustainability, Louise is the founding Director of independent advisory firm Think EJ. Think EJ supports organisations, from across the private, public and education sectors, to develop and deliver their organisational purpose. With a specific focus on sustainability and equity, Think EJ specialises in working with organisations to create systematic change which creates real and lasting impact.

Louise has a vast experience in working in Higher Education, prior to establishing Think EJ Louise worked for 18 years at the University of Leeds. Louise held a leadership role as Director of Sustainability, prior to which she held an academic post with the University’s Sustainability Research Institute where she specialised in Business and Sustainability. During her time at Leeds Louise designed and lead the first MSc programme specialising in Sustainability and Consultancy.

Louise has also had experience working at the consultancy firms Deloitte and Mott MacDonald. Louise currently holds various non-executive director and board roles.

Professor Alistair Sambell

In 2023 Alistair became interim Dean of Huddersfield Business School. 

Alistair joined the University of Huddersfield in October 2020 as Pro Vice-Chancellor International. Prior to this, he had worked at Edinburgh Napier University for 8 years, where he was the Senior Vice-Principal and Deputy Vice-Chancellor with a wide-ranging remit that included responsibility for all aspects of academic strategy development and delivery. He was also previously Pro Vice-Chancellor and Executive Dean for the Faculty of Arts, Computing, Engineering and Sciences at Sheffield Hallam University, and was the founding Dean of the School of Computing, Engineering and Information Sciences at Northumbria University. He brings a wealth of international experience from these previous roles including the development of partnerships and programme delivery in China, Malaysia, South Korea and Vietnam and was a director of an innovative new partnership of eight European Universities that came together in order to build research and teaching collaborations.

Alistair is an Electronic Engineer by background, graduating with both a First Class honours and DPhil from York University. He was appointed to a Professorship in Engineering at Northumbria University in 2001, and was research active in engineering for the 2001, 2008 and 2014 research assessment exercises. He has over 100 publications in electronic engineering (microwave antenna and solar cells) as well as pedagogy in Higher Education (innovative assessment) and has been an investigator on research projects exceeding £850k in value.  He is a Chartered Engineer, Fellow of the Institution of Engineering and Technology, a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (now Advance HE) and a Chartered Companion of the Chartered Management Institute. He has served as a Director for FE Colleges and Training organisations in Newcastle, Sheffield and Edinburgh and made national contributions to HE through roles as an assessor for the inaugural Teaching Excellence Framework, membership of the QAA Engineering subject benchmarking groups and an academic accreditor for the IET. 

Liz Towns-Andrews OBE

Liz trained as a chemist, and received her BSc and PhD from Sheffield University. She has an MBA from the Open University and is a Fellow of the Institute of Physics. Liz has extensive experience of working at the academic-industry interface and worked in the Science and Technology Facilities Research Council (STFC) for 25 years. She was Director of Innovation for STFC before joining the University of Huddersfield and led the development of the national Science and Innovation campuses at Harwell in Oxfordshire and Daresbury in Cheshire. Liz is 3M Professor of Innovation and Director of External Engagement in Huddersfield Business School and was, until December 2020, Director of Research & Enterprise at the University. She led the development of the University’s research and enterprise strategies, and established the 3M Buckley Innovation Centre.  Liz has secured significant amounts of external funding to support University/Business engagement and has supported academics to identify opportunities for collaborative research and strategic partnerships. Liz has extensive networks and was Chair of the Yorkshire Universities Industry Strategy Group until September 2020 and was a member of the Leeds City Region Local Enterprise Partnership Business Innovation and Growth Panel. She received a Queen’s Award for Enterprise Promotion in 2013 for establishing the 3M Buckley Innovation Centre. In 2016, she was the winner of the Yorkshire, North East and Scotland Forward Ladies/HSBC Women in Business STEM award and was elected Chartered Companion of the CMI in 2017. Liz received an OBE in the 2020 New Years Honours list for services to Business, to Enterprise and to Public and Private Sector Collaboration.

Nikki Hill

Nikki Hill has worked in Business Development and External Engagement and for Huddersfield Business School since 2019 and holds the post of Research and Knowledge Exchange Manager. She is an active member of School and University-level Committees and Steering Groups with a passion for driving business improvement through partnerships and knowledge sharing. Prior to this, Nikki was employed with Kirklees Active Leisure and Kirklees Council and she is an alumnus of Huddersfield Business School.