Bio:

Kate leads the marketing and engagement activity for the Digital Manufacturing on a Shoestring unit within IfM Engage, helping the research project to transition into a sustainable community programme. Shoestring’s mission is to provide small- and medium-sized manufacturers an easy, low-cost, low risk way to embrace digitalisation.

Expertise

Kate likes to use her communication, organisation, leadership, sales and partnership skills to enable different communities to work together and encourage cultural change. Kate has worked across a wide variety of industries, from publishing, education and cultural travel to life sciences with experience overlapping the technology and healthcare sectors. Her knowledge of working in varied markets helps with managing engagement with Shoestring’s diverse audience of stakeholders, ranging from funders, business and regional organisations, the further education sector to Shoestring’s primary end user audience of manufacturers.

Highlights

Having started out in media, taking on a range of positions that spanned editorial, sponsorship, sales and marketing, Kate ended up as Marketing Director for the UK arm of global technology media company, International Data Group (IDG). More recent roles have included product and marketing lead for a cultural study tour company and helping set up marketing, sales and customer support for a new small company that manufactured low-cost laboratory equipment primarily for the academic market.

Kate has been with IfM Engage since 2020, initially part of the management team for the Pitch-In project which was run by a consortium of four universities and focussed on promoting the adoption of the Internet of Things (IoT) through collaboration between academia (HEIs) and industry. As Project Operations Manager for Pitch-In’s manufacturing theme, Kate worked with many of the IfM’s research groups including the EPSRC-funded Digital Manufacturing on a Shoestring project team.