AoC Marketing and Communications Conference 2025

Steve wears two hats, both fueled by a passion for education's future. As Director of EduFuturists, he hosts a podcast that explores the evolving learning landscape through insightful interviews. On the other side, he's a CEO of Primary Goal, an independent training provider running digital apprenticeships for the education and commercial sectors in England.
Beyond the tech, I'm deeply invested in fostering the right environments and culture within organisations. He believes strong leadership hinges on bravery, vulnerability, and creating psychological safety within teams. Whether it's on the podcast, guiding Primary Goal's mission, or anything he does, he's here to spark conversations, champion innovation, and empower leaders to shape the future of education and work, together.

Holly Anderson is the Director of Marketing, Communications and Learner Recruitment at The Sheffield College. With a career spanning over a decade in marketing within the education sector, Holly brings a wealth of experience and insight to her role. Specifically, her communications experience includes strategic communication and leadership, crisis communications, stakeholder engagement and communication and brand and reputation management. In addition to her professional role, Holly is an active member of The Sheffield College's Governing Body, contributing to the institution's strategic direction and development. She is also the Chair of the AoC’s Marketing and Communications Yorkshire and Humber group.

Nicola Meredith has worked as a senior manager in the FE sector for almost 30 years. Almost all of those years, she has had senior responsibility for marketing in colleges and currently leads a high achieving marketing team at Warrington & Vale Royal College. The team have received multiple accolades including; going viral on TikTok(!), receiving Business Support Team of the Year and most recently securing a FE First silver award 2024 for Marketing Team of the Year and Highly Commended FE First award 2025; Low Budget Campaign for their career vision board initiative, #Dream it Do it.

Sarah joined BDF in 2022 as the lead for the Business Partner Team and is now Head of Memberships, overseeing the successful delivery of our Member and Partner offers, ensuring all our stakeholders are maximising the benefits we offer, better including disabled employees, customers and service users in their organisations. Sarah is also responsible for the recruitment of new Members and Partners into BDF Membership.

Sarah began her career in education, teaching for more than 15 years in mainstream and special needs settings. She has significant experience of leading projects and teams, supporting people with disabilities to be successful in employment and enabling employers to create workplaces that ‘work’ for everyone.

With a decade of experience in marketing and five years specialising in Further Education, Kristian Mansfield is the Digital Marketing Lead at Inspire Education Group. Passionate about digital transformation, he drives innovation-led projects that enhance websites, communications, automation and reporting. Recently, he led a website development project that won Gold at the FE First Awards 2025, recognising the impact of his work on user experience and engagement.

Kristian’s approach prioritises innovation to eliminate inefficiencies, streamline processes and drive performance, ensuring the organisation's brands are presented at their best while equipping the team with the tools to create and engage effectively.

Nicola Meredith has worked as a senior manager in the FE sector for almost 30 years. Almost all of those years, she has had senior responsibility for marketing in colleges and currently leads a high achieving marketing team at Warrington & Vale Royal College. The team have received multiple accolades including; going viral on TikTok(!), receiving Business Support Team of the Year and most recently securing a FE First silver award 2024 for Marketing Team of the Year and Highly Commended FE First award 2025; Low Budget Campaign for their career vision board initiative, #Dream it Do it.

Karen O’Reilly joined South Staffordshire College as Assistant Principal – HR in March 2020 (3 weeks before the national lockdown) after spending 10 years at a previous College. Prior to that Karen worked for 2 transport businesses one being National Express where she was HR Director on the NX Coaches Board and the other was Veolia Transport. Before that her career was in Brewing having worked for Wolverhampton & Dudley Breweries (previously Banks’s now Carlsberg/Marstons) as Head of Management Development following a stint in core HR and training.

Throughout Karen’s career she has won multiple awards for training and development personally and on behalf of organisations and is a two time winner of the Employee Benefits Awards – one for best Public Services Awards and the other for Large Employer (NX) and the Grand Prix Award.

Hannah joined South Staffordshire College as the Director of Commercial, Marketing and Events in December 2018.

Prior to her current role, Hannah accumulated over a decade of marketing experience, working at Sandwell College as the Head of Marketing, at the University of Wolverhampton as Undergraduate Marketing Manager and in the private sector as the Marketing Communications Manager at global workplace product and services supplier Lyreco. Hannah has also held marketing management positions within several international manufacturing and engineering companies.

Hannah is passionate about creating impactful marketing campaigns that deliver results for the college.

Under Hannah’s leadership the marketing team at South Staffordshire College has won numerous accolades which includes Business Support Team of the Year 2023/24, 5 FE First Awards and the Orlo ‘Grafters’ team award.