Make Light Matter®

I created Make Light Matter® (www.makelightmatter.co.uk) to explore, connect and help educate individuals and organisations around light’s impact on health. We exist to make light matter to everyone, so that we can all improve our health, happiness and productivity to live our fullest lives. We are a social enterprise, so social impact, stakeholder engagement and investing our profits back into our purpose is central to what we do. 

I work part-time, engaging with stakeholders, developing our vision and strategies, managing our advisory board and consumer panel, developing our website, researching and writing articles, leading our governance, communications and marketing, and developing products and services.

Make Light Matter builds on my previous work running my personal perspective Little Light Room blog and events, and serving on the Seasonal Affective Disorder Association (SADA) committee for nearly three years.

Founder

We Are UMi Network

As a member of UMi's content, marketing and events team, I support across UMi's campaigns, contracts, corporate communications and Sat Nav product. My main duties involve interviewing and writing up profile, expert and case study interviews; researching and writing advice-led content for businesses; writing press releases, our bulletins, partner sales copy and various other formats. I also currently lead on content planning for our bulletins and publications, 

I joined UMi's team as an associate while working freelance in September 2018 and became a part-time employee in February 2020.

Digital Content Journalist

INVOLVE NORTH EAST

Experts in patient and public involvement, Involve North East works with service users, communities and harder to reach groups to gain the insight needed to help commissioners design the best, most responsive and cost-effective services. My role as Trustee and Director is to support the charity's strategic development and financial governance.

Trustee and Director

Echo Corporate Communications

I provided a copywriting and marketing consultancy service to a small number of retained clients.

Copywriter and Marketing Consultant

Silverbean

I created and led a Customer Insights service from research and conception to commercial launch and delivery within this leading North East-based digital marketing agency.
Key Achievements:
- I developed, beta-tested and launched a flexible and scalable customer insights service. This supported Silverbean’s end-to-end client journey and gave existing channel services the customer insights and strategy foundations they were often missing from the clients to improve performance.
- Introduced and embedded a customer-centric mindset to the agency, requiring change management and excellent communication skills: delivered presentations, training workshops and one-to-one support across the agency.
- Contributed to winning/retaining business through providing useful content for the Commercial Team to share as well as proposal, pitch and strategy development insights. Took Silverbean through my insights process, which led to a much-improved focus and success in outbound sales.
- Working across travel, retail, education, B2B and wellbeing sectors, I led clients through audit, segmentation, customer workshops, research and performance analysis, culminating in customer personas, customer journey maps and strategy development. I also integrated with our Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO) team to conduct on-site surveying, develop hypotheses from my insights, produce UX personas and wire-frame UX tests.

Customer Insights & Strategy Manager

Seasonal Affective Disorder Association (SADA)

I am delighted to have served on the SADA committee for almost three years, using my background in strategic marketing and customer insight to help raise awareness of Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) among all the Association's audiences. Just as importantly, I used my personal experience to support members and help people to understand and learn to manage the symptoms so they can lead a fulfilling life.

Committee Member - Publicity Officer

I returned to freelance work while taking a short sabbatical after taking voluntary severance from my previous role. I worked on projects including:
- Wrote/edited case studies for a research publication
- Wrote a series of in-depth course descriptions for a university
- Attended professional events, captured and wrote up detailed summaries and blog posts
- Wrote a new brochure for a financial services listing website 
- Provided strategic marketing consultancy for a new business start-up

Freelance Copywriter and Marketer (part-time)

Northumbria University

Working as part of the University's digital marketing team, my day-to-day responsibilities included content production and management, social media strategy and management, customer service for internal clients and externally for students, as well as campaign development and implementation. 

Key achievements included: 
- Developed customer personas with information from Marketing Intelligence and a visual customer journey map, with questions and concerns across the journey and recommended content to satisfy these, as well as proposing a new way to organise the customer journey across the website
- Led on an SEO project working closely with a specialist agency to improve Northumbria's visibility in organic search for Clearing and led on the development of the web pages, establishing optimised content for website visitors. The site was launched in May 2015 and by August 2015, had reached top 10 ranking for key Clearing terms and was the top university result.
- Involved in the development of the University's brand new website: stakeholder engagement sessions, wire frame and user journey testing, content audits, content development and management for the Faculty of Engineering and Environment
- Led on student and alumni profiles - developed forms, communications and processed profiles - the project generated over 1000 responses
- Co-managed University's organic and paid-for social media and a founding member of the Social Media Project Group, shaping the University's social media strategy
- Developed a number of well-received guides on various student journey points

Digital Marketing Coordinator

In this role I worked with internal and external customers providing marketing and recruitment support to Engineering and Environment at Northumbria University.  I had a broad remit: producing printed and digital marketing materials and adverts, web development and content management, developing news stories, producing printed and e-newsletters, managing the Faculty's social media presence and contributing to marketing strategy - for example conducting market and competitor analysis and marketing audits.  

Key achievements include: project managing the development of a new website for the Faculty, working directly with the Executive Dean and Faculty Business Manager; developing and implementing a digital media plan; developing a new undergraduate brochure; leading on communications for the annual show and trialing innovative social media techniques; trusted to proof and sign off Faculty sections of University prospectuses and other key publications.

Marketing Executive - Engineering and Environment at Northumbria University

Responsible for assisting with all elements of marketing and recruitment for the Law School.  The majority of my role was events management - assisting with organising open days, attending careers fairs, co-ordinating the academic school visits programme and organising school taster days.

Marketing Assistant - Northumbria Law School

A qualified copywriter, I worked on a part-time freelance basis, providing a variety of marketing services. Projects included the production of e-newsletters, press releases, leaflets, social media training, website copywriting and article writing.

Self-employed

Nigel Wright Consultancy Ltd

I was responsible for the operational marketing of Nigel Wright Recruitment's UK Consumer and international teams.  My activity included the production of a range of publications, including a brand new industry magazine, distributed to 13,000 UK and international clients; provided market research for and supported new division launches, managed direct mail projects (online and print), booked and helped to develop advertising, wrote press releases, worked with the customer relationship management (CRM) system daily; managed translation projects, pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns and contributed to the development of the company's new website and ongoing maintenance and analysis.

International Marketing Executive

I'm the Founder and Director of Make Light Matter® (www.makelightmatter.co.uk) - the home of light nutrition - a UK hub for everyone to learn, connect and collaborate around the impact of light on human wellbeing. Light is something we don't often think about. It's just... there. But it has a significant impact on our physical and mental health. We help people and organisations to understand how to get the right kind of light at the right time for them as individuals (light nutrition) and to support employees and service users in this. We want to help people avoid or manage conditions such as Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) and Winter Blues, Vitamin D deficiency and sleep problems, so they can live happier, healthier and more productive lives. In addition, we connect different industries and professions around the topic. Our work is supported by a cross-industry/professional advisory board and a consumer panel.

I was diagnosed with Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) in 2003. From 2012 to 2020 I ran Little Light Room (a personal perspective blog and events) and was a Trustee of the Seasonal Affective Disorder Association (SADA) for nearly three years before developing Lightopia CIC T/A Make Light Matter.

In addition, I work three days a week as a Digital Content Journalist for UMi - helping businesses to do more and go further. I am also a trustee and director of Involve North East, which specialises in patient and public involvement, giving the people of the North East a voice about their health and wellbeing services.

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