Lindsey Birtwhistle

Project Delivery Manager leading global learning and development initiatives across business wide cross functional teams. Enabling Xero to meet their long term strategic objectives through successful project delivery of OKR Initiatives. Responsible for:

• Project management of initiatives using agile and waterfall approaches ensuring they are delivered on time and budget. Accountable for dependencies, scope, stakeholder management, change, risk and issue management, progress monitoring and reporting, work-stream leadership and development of project KPI’s.
• Leading multiple key project ceremonies such as WIP’s, stand ups, workshops, training, internal/external presentations and steering committee feedback.
• Leading design, strategy and execution of several multi-modal live and in person learning and development programmes to thousands of accounting partners and small businesses across the globe. Assuming responsibility for instructional design incorporating current trends in learning and development along with accounting industry trends.
• Extensive stakeholder management across a number of global departments across different timezones including legal, regional and global marketing, teams, global events, global brand and community, CX and senior leadership teams to to align learning and development initiatives with strategic objectives, whilst also maximising buy-in to programmes and events.
• Evaluating, reporting, and presenting progress and feedback against defined project targets and strategic initiatives to Steerco and members of the senior leadership team. Using these lessons learned to improve processes, tools, and techniques for future initiatives

Key achievements:

• Project management of the education breakout stages at Xero's flagship accounting conference Xerocon working with 30+ work streams including external sponsors, external speakers and panelists, to deliver work class, L&D content to over 9k attendees across three global locations each year.
• Using my exception planning and interpersonal skills to streamline Xerocon processes to help accelerate the growth and quality of the event. Lifting event satisfaction scores from 7.3 in 2022 to 7.73 in 2023.
• Development and implementation of Global Education Month, an extensive annual global education and training initiative delivering approximately 47k hours of training content across 7 different regions.
• Identifying and implementing creative and instructional design changes to improve the customer experience of education month, exponentially driving up event registrations and attendance, achieving 100k registrations in 2022 (annual increase of 5%), and NPS score of 57+
• Forming part of the project team to implementing a new LMS system, allowing Xero to improve efficiency and scale.

Project Manager for Inspiring Enterprise. The University of Winchester’s student enterprise programme which helped over 1000 students and graduates explore the opportunity of running their own business and becoming self employed through a tailored learning and development programme. Responsible for:

• Development, execution and management of the $2 million learning and development project in order to meet University employability targets, enhance quality and ensure accessibility and inclusion for all students.
• Planning, scoping and co-ordination of logistics, promotion and delivery of the programme. Including Instructional and curriculum design along with budget and risk management, progress monitoring and marketing strategy whilst ensuring the overall success of the project.
• Creating strategy and vision for delivery during the academic year, undertaking extensive training needs analysis and with learners and key stakeholders to co-design a customised and fit for purpose learning and development solution for individuals across all levels.
• Extensive communication and negotiations with multiple stakeholders including widening participation and careers departments across multiple universities, SLT, local businesses, entrepreneurs and public sector organisations to enhance employability and improve graduate outcomes.
• Bid writing, financial control, procurement of external content providers including tender documents and SLA agreements.
• The design and implementation of a marketing strategy to promote the programme focusing on diversity and inclusion whilst maximising recruitment including social media pages, University website and intranet pages
• Evaluating, reporting, and presenting progress against defined project targets and strategic goals and objectives to the Lead funder and members of the University Senior Leadership team.
• Recruitment, motivation, training and line management of a project team of three, and vast number of participants, mentors and facilitators.

Key achievements:

• Established a new L&D initiative within the university implementing new systems and processes. The project initially generated $1m for the organisation and was due to run for 3 years. However at this point the project participant numbers were 25% above target therefore I successfully negotiated a project extension of 3 additional years and an extra $1m in funding. I used my strong recruitment and coaching skills to train the team to hit the ground running, ensuring we met all targets within budget by the end of the project.
• The project was completed on time and within budget. Participation was high, with training delivered to over 1000 students from various Universities. Many of these have gone on to establish successful businesses or have been able to utilise the skills they have obtained from the programme to secure graduate level employment. The University of Winchester was also recently reported as having the best graduate employability outcomes of any University in the area,
• Using excellent interpersonal and public speaking skills to market the project at numerous internal and external events, and to potential sponsors of our events. This generated an extra $20,000 in sponsorship revenue for the project
• Continuously analysing graduate outcomes, national student surveys, student and employer feedback to produce detailed quality analysis to accelerate the growth and pace of the project and deliver exceptional learning outcomes and customer service.

Solent EBP was an Education Business Partnership, brokering mutually beneficial links between schools, colleges, businesses and the community. Responsible for:

• Planning and delivery of cross functional learning and development projects involving substantial numbers of students and adults. These initiatives included work related learning and enterprise programmes, alternative curriculum provision for at risk students and government funded employability initiatives.
• Account management of 37 local schools and colleges that subscribed to yearly service level agreements.
• Extensive communication with local government bodies, schools, parents, businesses, journalists and media organisations to build and foster a wide range of mutually beneficial relationships to deliver optimal results.
• Recruitment, motivation and training of vast amount of facilitators including university student team leaders and business mentors.
• Business development with existing and potential Head Teachers, Governors and Principals.
• Management of seven Account Managers with responsibility for recruitment, training and motivation fostering a culture of continuous improvement.

Key achievements:

• Empowered my team to resolve issues independently. By using my excellent coaching and mentoring skills, I up-skilled the team to be able to identify problems, troubleshoot and find their own solutions using a mentoring and scenario based training approach. This reduced down-time and improved confidence and morale.
• Using my excellent planning and event management skills to deliver large scale L&D events involving substantial numbers of school students and adults. These included residential summer programmes, careers events, launch/information events and team building activities.
• Championing equality and inclusion across all projects. Coordinating diversity training across the organisation, and designing inclusion plans to be included as part of project plans. This resulted in one of my projects ‘Learn to Grow’ being awarded a diversity and inclusion champion award.
• Creating robust monthly reporting incorporating the requirements of multiple funding bodies with varying complexity. Allowing stakeholders to obtain a clear overview of project milestones, risks and budgets and progress via scheduled steering group meetings.
• The curriculum design and project management of ‘Enterprise week’ at one of my designated schools. This involved the planning and delivery of 5 days of different enterprise related L&D activities involving 750 students, 55 volunteer ambassadors and 25 members of staff. Using my excellent knowledge of the UK education system and teaching and learning best practice to ensure activities were fun, interactive and engaging.
• Providing maximum media exposure for projects and schools by representing the company at numerous conferences and national events, Preparing press releases which were featuring in several local and national media publications.

• Coordinated planning, implementation, and assessment of NCEA subjects within the commerce faculty (Business, Accounting, Economics.
• Managed a department budget, made strategic recommendations, and facilitated professional development.
• Represented the school on the strategic planning committee for the new NCEA Business Studies syllabus.
• Line Management Responsibility for 4 members of staff.

• Direct accountability for five members of staff including recruitment, training and appraising.
• Facilitation of shared resources and best practise to enable a culture of continual learning and development.
• Coordinated planning, delivery, assessment, and analysis of senior subjects in the commerce faculty.
• Managed a department budget, facilitated shared resources, and made strategic recommendations.
• Delivered AS and A2 Business Studies/Economics/Accounting and IGCSE ICT.