Ravensbourne University London
Thank you for your interest in joining Ravensbourne University London in the newly created role of Director of Student Recruitment, Wellbeing and Marketing.
You will join my Executive Team who together, deliver our agreed strategy, work closely with our academic leaders and professional services colleagues, role modelling our values and associated behaviours and setting high-performance standards for ourselves and our teams. I’m looking for an exceptional individual who can bring commercial imagination and a sophisticated understanding of contemporary marketing while remaining deeply focused on students and their success. You will need to be an inclusive and empowering leader, comfortable moving between strategy and delivery, able to bring creative and passionate people together around our clear sense of purpose.
This is an exciting time to join us. Ravensbourne is a distinctive university with a proud history in the creative disciplines and a growing position at the intersection of creativity, technology, and business. Our 2025–2030 strategy sets out our ambitious next chapter: expand our academic portfolio, deepen our relationships with industry, and create opportunities for an increasingly diverse community of lifelong learners.
We describe Ravensbourne as a convention-defying space for world-changing collaboration. That ambition is rooted in a very practical purpose. We create bold new thinkers who shape the industries in which they will work. We learn with industry, industry learns with us and together we transform lives.
The Director of Student Recruitment, Wellbeing and Marketing will play a central role in turning that ambition into reality.
This is a broad and diverse, connected portfolio. It brings together the way we understand our markets, develop our academic offer, how we tell the Ravensbourne story and attract students from both the UK and around the world. It also encompasses the partnerships through which we extend our reach, combined with the services and support that help students thrive and the relationships we build with our graduates beyond their time with us.
In contemporary terms, the role spans the full student lifecycle. It begins with insight: understanding what students, employers and industries need, where new opportunities are emerging and how Ravensbourne anticipates and responds. It continues through the development and positioning of relevant new courses, the strength and consistency of our brand and the experience of prospective students as they consider and choose us. Through attraction, recruitment, enrolment, wellbeing and student support, your portfolio will extend into alumni relationships, advocacy and lifelong connection with the university.
Bringing these activities together creates a significant opportunity for the right person. We want to build relationships with our students, from their first encounter with Ravensbourne to their lives and careers after graduation. We want market insight, student voice, and industry to influence our decisions more directly. This role will provide the strategic leadership and connective thinking to make that happen.
Our current location on the Greenwich Peninsula places us within one of London’s most dynamic areas and close to many of the industries we serve. Yet, our outlook and ambitions extend far beyond our campus. We want to grow our national and international profile, develop imaginative partnerships with schools, colleges, and other institutions, and create new routes through which students can access a Ravensbourne education.
There is plenty to build on: talented students, committed colleagues, strong industry relationships, and a university with a genuine appetite to evolve and change. With real scope to think differently, this is a chance to shape how Ravensbourne presents itself to the world, how we grow and how we support every student to make the most of their talent. We are ‘built for the bold’.
If you share our belief in the transformative power of education and are excited by the opportunity to connect creativity, technology, business, and student success, I would love to hear from you.
Ravensbourne University London is a distinctive, industry-focused university with a community of more than 5,000 students. It offers pre-degree, undergraduate, postgraduate and professional courses across the creative, technology and business disciplines.
The university’s academic portfolio includes design, fashion, film and television, architecture, computing and emerging technologies, digital media, advertising, business and management. Its community represents more than 100 nationalities, bringing together students and staff with a wide range of backgrounds, experiences and ambitions.
Ravensbourne has a long history of developing talented people who go on to shape their industries. Its alumni include David Bowie, Stella McCartney, Olympic torch designer Jay Osgerby and Oscar-winning producers Simon Egan and Gareth Ellis-Unwin. Today’s graduates continue that tradition, working as practitioners, entrepreneurs and innovators across creative, technological and commercial fields.
Ravensbourne’s 2025–2030 corporate strategy describes a university in the midst of a metamorphosis. Building on its established creative strengths, Ravensbourne is developing its position as one of the UK’s leading universities at the intersection of creativity, technology and business.
Its ambition is to become a convention-defying space for world-changing collaboration. The strategy is centred on three clear statements:
The strategy provides the foundation for the next stage of Ravensbourne’s development. This includes growing and diversifying the academic portfolio, strengthening the university’s national and international profile, extending its network of educational and commercial partnerships and continuing to improve the experience and outcomes of its students.
Industry engagement is central to Ravensbourne’s identity and educational approach. Students work with employers and practitioners from the beginning of their studies, gaining experience through live briefs, collaborative projects, professional facilities, industry-led teaching and direct access to networks within their chosen fields.
Recent collaborations have given students opportunities to work with organisations including Tate, Kopparberg, Epson, the Independent Print Industries Association and Uncommon Creative Studio. Ravensbourne’s courses also benefit from relationships with professional and industry bodies including the Chartered Institute of Marketing, RIBA, BCS, ScreenSkills, the Association of Photographers and Ukie.
This approach is designed to ensure that students graduate with relevant technical knowledge, professional confidence, practical experience and a clear understanding of the industries they are entering. It also allows employers and industry partners to engage directly with emerging talent, research and new ideas.
Ravensbourne holds an overall Silver rating in the Teaching Excellence Framework, recognising the quality of its student experience and outcomes. In 2026, the university also achieved its strongest National Student Survey results to date, marking five consecutive years of improvement. More than 90% of respondents were positive about the academic support they received, while more than 85% responded positively about teaching and learning opportunities.
Ravensbourne combines the energy and connections of a London university with a scale that allows students to be known and supported as individuals. Its commitment to widening participation and social mobility is reflected in a diverse student community and a determination to remove barriers to creative, technological and professional careers.
Ravensbourne occupies an award-winning building on the Greenwich Peninsula, beside the O2 and overlooking the River Thames, Canary Wharf and Maritime Greenwich.
The Peninsula has developed into one of London’s most dynamic creative districts, bringing together businesses, cultural activity, public art, entertainment and new residential communities. Ravensbourne’s position within this environment connects students and staff to the energy of the capital and places the university close to many of the industries it serves.
Designed by Farshid Moussavi of Foreign Office Architects, the Ravensbourne building opened in 2010 and is wrapped in a distinctive mosaic of 28,000 aluminium tiles. Its open, flexible spaces were created to encourage interaction between different disciplines and reflect the collaborative character of the university. The building received the RIBA award for best higher education building in 2011.
Prospective candidates can take a virtual tour of the Ravensbourne campus.
Sustainability at Ravensbourne encompasses the university’s estate, teaching, partnerships and day-to-day decisions.
The Greenwich Peninsula building achieved a BREEAM Excellent rating and incorporates natural light, energy-efficient heating and cooling systems and a green roof which supports biodiversity and helps regulate the building’s temperature. Ravensbourne has also moved to a 100% renewable energy tariff, reducing its carbon emissions by an estimated 51%.
Sustainability is increasingly embedded within the curriculum. Students work on live projects that explore environmental and social challenges, applying creativity, technology and commercial thinking to develop practical responses. Ravensbourne is also a signatory to the UN-supported Principles for Responsible Management Education, reflecting its commitment to responsible leadership, ethical practice and sustainability across its growing business and management provision.
Ravensbourne is shaped by the diversity of London and by a community drawn from across the world. Its students and staff bring together different ethnicities, nationalities, identities, cultures, religions, experiences and ways of thinking. This diversity strengthens the university and enriches the creative, technological and business industries with which it works.
Inclusion and transformation are central to Ravensbourne’s values. The university wants every member of its community to feel that they belong, can participate fully and have the opportunity to succeed. This means celebrating difference while addressing the structural, cultural and practical barriers that can prevent people from accessing higher education, thriving within it and progressing into their chosen careers.
This is particularly important in the industries Ravensbourne serves, where access, opportunity and representation remain uneven. The university sees education as a catalyst for social mobility and has a responsibility to help diversify the creative, technology and business sectors. It works with students, staff, alumni, schools, communities and industry partners to widen routes into these fields and create more equitable opportunities within them.
The diversity of Ravensbourne’s student body gives this work real significance. Its 2025–2029 Access and Participation Plan records that 83.6% of its UK undergraduate students were from at least one group underrepresented in higher education. This included students from lower-income communities, mature learners, disabled and neurodivergent students, care-experienced students and students from the global majority.
The plan sets measurable objectives across the student lifecycle, from access and enrolment through to continuation, completion, degree outcomes and progression into employment or further study. Ravensbourne is candid about the gaps that remain and committed to understanding their causes, evaluating its interventions and holding itself accountable for progress.
Current activity includes outreach and careers programmes for young people, portfolio and application support, bursaries and financial assistance, inclusive curriculum development and targeted academic, wellbeing and transition support. The THRIVE programme, for example, provides enhanced support for students from backgrounds underrepresented in higher education as they prepare for and settle into university life.
Ravensbourne’s commitment extends to its staff community and employment practices. The university is a Disability Confident Employer and is committed to attracting, supporting and developing disabled colleagues. Its wider work encompasses inclusive recruitment, leadership development, staff learning, reasonable adjustments and the continued development of a workforce that reflects its student community and the society it serves.
Further information about Ravensbourne’s commitments, action plan and published reporting can be found on its equality, diversity and inclusion pages.
Developed in consultation with our staff community, our values describe how we work together and what people should experience as members of Ravensbourne. They guide our decisions, shape our culture and provide a shared framework for delivering our 2025–2030 strategy.
They are practical expectations rather than statements of intent. We expect colleagues at every level, and particularly our senior leaders, to demonstrate them through their decisions, relationships and everyday behaviour.
Academic/Professional Services Staff
Job title: Director of Student Recruitment, Wellbeing and Marketing
Department: Executive
Pay Band: Executive
Line Manager: Vice-Chancellor
Role Purpose:
The role of provides strategic Executive level leadership in marketing, student wellbeing and partnerships. You will drive high levels of market awareness of the Ravensbourne brand: our history, our journey, what we stand for, our USP; this in turn leading to increased growth in business engagement in its broadest sense and student numbers in line with our expectations.
Duties and Responsibilities:
Other
Key working relationships (i.e. titles of roles, both internally and externally, with which this role holder interacts on a regular basis):
Resources Managed
All of the following criteria will be considered essential.
Knowledge and Experience
Education
Professional qualifications/experience
Higher Education knowledge
Core personal skills, abilities and behaviours
Management and leadership
Equality, Diversity & Inclusion
Communication
Organisational Values
This Job Description may be reviewed, and duties amended aligned with Ravensbourne’s requirements, any changes will be made in collaboration with the postholder.
Our Values
Anderson Quigley is acting as an advisor to the University. An executive search process is being carried out by Anderson Quigley in addition to the public advertisement.
The closing date for applications is noon on Monday 19 October 2026.
Applications should consist of:
Should you wish to discuss the roles in strict confidence, please contact Ed Pritchard at ed.pritchard@andersonquigley.com or +44 (0)7980 817 927 or Carolyn Coates at carolyn.coates@andersonquigley.com or +44 (0)7825 871 944.
www.ravensbourne.ac.uk 