Sara Lloyd

Sara is an experienced publishing and communications professional and Executive board director with many years building and developing teams, driving commercial results, focusing on strategic planning, change management, marketing and communications, brand identity, audience insight and development, stakeholder management, and digital and business model innovation.

She currently manages all marketing, brand development, consumer insight and communications for the consumer publisher, Pan Macmillan, responsible for a team of 40+ and the group’s promotional budget. Her remit covers BTB and BTC comms and she also leads the company’s brand development strategy incorporating author, illustrator and corporate brands.

Her career over the last 27+ years has spanned newspaper, academic, reference, STM and consumer publishing and she has played a key role in transforming many publishing businesses from print to digital, and leading change projects more broadly, driving and delivering cultural as well as structural and process change.

She is a regular presenter and writer on many topics including innovation, change, leadership and marketing, looking to share and inspire others.

She has been selected as one of the Top 100 Most Influential People in Publishing by The Bookseller for the last ten years, she was named Futurebook Leader of the Year in 2016, and she is one of the “Futurebook 40”, a list of the top 40 innovators across the publishing industry, published for the first time in 2018.

Not having grown up in quite the ‘right sort of family’, I can still acutely remember the feelings of isolation and exclusion I experienced over 27 years ago upon entering what appeared to be the secret, privileged London-based club that was publishing, with its shared, private language and networks. This has, in part, driven my motivation to make Publishing a more welcoming and inclusive place to work and thrive, and has focused my attention on regional and class barriers in addition to the focus on ethnic diversity which currently preoccupies much of the industry. New Writing North is a beacon organisation in the talent landscape of the North and their vision inspired me to get behind the team’s ambition to put this region on the map for the entire publishing world, and to open doors for writers, readers and young people from all backgrounds.