HELOA National Conference 2025 Live Programme

HELOA uniquely provides great opportunities and genuinely wants everyone to do the best for the students we support. Jonny loves the philosophy that you get back what you put in, and this is never more true than with HELOA. The skills and opportunities he got in return for the effort he gave, saw him start the chair role as a recruitment officer and develop into an events and hybrid delivery manager. Without HELOA Jonny would not have had as much opportunity to build experience in strategic decision-making, budgets and leadership. The chance to work with 100s of HEIs and their members has been vital as he has moved into a role supporting the sector, now working with 27 Higher Education Institutions to deliver leading virtualised personalised experiences through the Vepple platform.

From there, I became head of Outreach at the National Film and Television School. Throughout my career I have loved the creativity of what we do. I was lucky in all of my roles to create new programmes, in my current role, from scratch as outreach was not formally done in my institution before I started. I became a member of HELOA back in 2005. At my first meeting, I was overwhelmed with the knowledge and confidence in the room and never would imagine I would be any more than a spectator at occasional meetings. The fact that I ended my HELOA career as UK Chair still blows my mind (even if my legacy is that I had the shortest term of all UK Chairs!).

My favourite part of being involved in HELOA was without doubt the people. That knowledge and confidence I saw at that first meeting was more accurately passion. I was always in awe of HELOA colleagues for the amount of work and enthusiasm given, especially taking into account they are volunteers it was amazing to be around such a special group of people.

Robbie spent five years on the HELOA Executive from 2014 to 2019, first as HELOA Vice-Chair Finance and then as UK Chair. During this time HELOA started its transition to charity status, and its membership increased substantially – partly due to a large increase in the size of the sector.

My favourite thing about being part of HELOA is the chance to meet so many brilliant people: our fantastic members, our brilliant partners, and people up and down and all around the country with an interest in Higher Education. It’s a great privilege to do a job where we aren’t stuck at a desk, and get to be the face of our institutions. Over the years I’ve seen so many colleagues get promoted, change institutions, or start new and brilliant careers in a wide variety of sectors, and I believe HELOA is often the foundation and springboard that drives those opportunities.

He represents the University on external Boards including People and Skills Workstream Group with Lancashire LEP, Skelmersdale Ambassador Board and works collaboratively with Wigan Council, Wigan and Leigh College and Wrightington, Wigan and Leigh Hospital as part of a recently established Civic University Agreement and partnership group.

He served as Group Chair of HELOA Northwest between 2007-2010, before serving two terms as UK Chair from 2010-2014.