Profile
Sophie Smith
Senior Impact and Partnership Development Manager - Head of Business School Programmes
4308
01392 724308
Innovation Centre
Innovation Centre, University of Exeter, Rennes Drive, Exeter, EX4 4RN, UK
Overview
Role
Sophie is Head of Business School Programmes in IIB where she leads a team working on corporate engagement with research, impact and professional education. Seperately, Sophie is also responsible for the Business Transformation sector, creating opportunites for collaboration and innovation between organisations and the academic community around the real world issues that businesses face relating to productivity, transformation and resilience in the face of global challenges.
Sophie’s team focus on: creating ongoing strategic relationships between external organisations and specific academics and colleges. She works with academics with commercially funded research through mechanisms like contract research, consultancy and Knowledge Transfer Partnerships. She also drives the impact of innovative research beyond academia.
Profile
Sophie Joined the University in April 2017 from Amazon. In her previous role she was responsible for setting the diversity recruitment strategy and project managing diversity programmes across the EU. Prior to this, her work history included time spent in Executive Research in the pharma and retail sectors and programme management for a national sports charity.
Sophie has a Combined Honours in Social Sciences BA Hons from Durham University. Throughout her career her focus has been on creating long term, strategic collaborations with partners from across industries and sectors.