Lydia McClelland

Lydia McClelland is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Marketing, a Chartered Marketer and a qualified Executive Coach. Lydia has 16 years' senior management experience working across a range of sectors including economic development, the arts, higher education and visitor attraction/science centre sectors in Northern Ireland.

Lydia has been a board member of Ards Business Hub since 2018 and became vice-Chair in June 2020. Lydia has worked with the CEO and Chair of Ards Business Hub to improve the Board effectiveness over the past 12 months.  A board skills audit was undertaken, skills gaps identified, a new Committee Structure developed and clear roles and responsibilities given to each Board member. New Board members have been recruited to address the skills gap. A new board induction process has now also been implemented to support new Board members to settle into their role. Aligned to this, Lydia is supporting the CEO with a new strategic plan to support ambitious business growth over the next number of years.

Lydia McClelland has also held the following NED positions:

• Chartered Institute of Marketing Ireland – Vice-Chair  (2013-2017)
• Audiences NI (2008-2012) - an audience development agency for arts organisations in Northern Ireland.

With both NED roles, Lydia has worked in her role as a Board member to bring leadership and good governance to the Board.

At Audiences NI, Lydia worked with the Chair to define roles and responsibilities within the board and identify skills gaps. Lydia supported the Chair to recruit and induct new Board members to the Board.

At CIM (Ireland), with the Chair, Lydia championed the strategic direction of CIM’s work in Ireland through the development and delivery of a new strategy for Ireland and the recruitment of a Regional CIM Manager. On the CIM Board, Lydia was the CIM Education and Outreach Champion and ensured positive engagement with local stakeholders in the delivery of accredited CIM Qualifications in Ireland and the development of new educational pathways with one of the local universities in Northern Ireland.

With regards to her professional career, Lydia was, for six years, Head of Marketing and Market Engagement at Ulster University. Reporting to the Director of Employability and Marketing and Pro-Vice-Chancellor (PVC) for Learning, Teaching and the Student Experience she led a team of 16 staff located across four of Ulster’s campuses; she worked at a strategic level to market to and recruit students from UK and Ireland. In 2018 she took on the challenge of leading the £5m refurbishment and restructuring of W5, Northern Ireland’s science and discovery centre. Reporting to the CEO of the Odyssey Trust Company she had P&L responsibility (£3m) for 60 FTE Staff and the visitor experience of 285,000 visitors annually.

In 2019 Lydia established LMC Associates to provide Business Consultancy, Strategic Planning, Strategic Marketing, Executive Coaching, Mentoring, Interim Management, Training design, development and delivery.