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2015

Hilary Cross

Director of strategy and engagement

British Council

Hilary Cross joined the British Council in January 2016 after spending just over eight years as director of marketing and communications at Macmillan Cancer Support. She took the charity from relative obscurity to a spontaneous awareness rating of 29%. She was instrumental in the charity’s rebrand in 2006, which she says “lit up our world”. The organisation now operates more like a brand than a charity. As one of the UK’s best-known charitable organisations, Macmillan Cancer Support consistently tops YouGov’s CharityIndex based on consumer perceptions and it was crowned brand of the year by The Marketing Society in 2014. Cross says the best advice she has ever been given is to keep trying. “You learn more from mistakes than from success,” she adds.

Biggest challenge: “Driving digital and data, which are not my original areas of expertise but have become fundamental to delivering great engagement. I am learning and loving it."