Group Director of Marketing and Operations
👤 Tayyaba Zia
BA (Psychology & Sociology), MSc (Marketing), Extended Diploma in Strategic Management and Leadership (EDSML), Graduate Award (CIM), FHEA, CMBE, (PhD-Marketing-Consumer Behaviour)
Short Bio
Group Director of Marketing & Operations
Tayyaba Zia leads marketing and operations at Knowledge Edge, bringing over a decade of experience across higher education, marketing, and management. She holds a BA in Psychology and Sociology, an MSc in Marketing from the University of Hertfordshire, a Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM) Graduate Marketing Award, and an Extended Diploma in Strategic Management and Leadership (level 7). She is currently completing a PhD in Marketing–Consumer Behaviour. She is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA) and a certified Management Business Educator (CMBE) of the Chartered Association of Business Schools (CABS). Her research and professional background centre on student recruitment, social media marketing, and student satisfaction within private higher education — precisely the terrain Knowledge Edge and its partner institutions operate in.
📄 Full Profile
Tayyaba Zia brings a distinctive combination of academic marketing expertise and direct, practical experience recruiting and marketing to students within private higher education — the exact sector Knowledge Edge exists to serve.
Her marketing career began as Administrator/Marketing Manager for an overseas students’ recruitment agency in Lahore, Pakistan, where she developed integrated marketing plans to recruit international students for British, Australian, Canadian, and American universities, ran competitor analysis to sharpen competitive positioning, and built advertising campaigns within cost-managed annual plans. She went on to hold a coordination role at Bedfordian Business School, working directly with the school’s Marketing Director to set and review intake marketing targets, alongside broader responsibility for the school’s operational and quality performance.
Since 2020, she has taught business management across a range of UK higher education providers and their university partners — including Oxford Business College, Bucks New University, the University of West London, Ravensbourne University London, UKCBC, and Anglia Ruskin University — giving her an unusually close, current view of how private and partner-delivered higher education actually recruits, retains, and satisfies students. She has also served as a part-time HR Manager, developing recruitment strategy, onboarding, and performance management systems — experience that supports the people-management side of building out a marketing function.
Her research profile reinforces this practical grounding: she is the author of multiple peer-reviewed papers specifically on social media marketing and student choice of higher education institution, student satisfaction with admissions and induction in UK private higher education, and comparative quality assurance in private higher education — placing her research agenda squarely inside Knowledge Edge’s own areas of consultancy. She serves as an Editorial Board Member for the International Journal of Private Higher Education UK and peer-reviews for journals including Education Sciences (MDPI) and Academia Mental Health and Well-Being.
She is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA), a CIM Affiliate member, and a Certified Management and Business Educator (CMBE).
Areas of Expertise
Marketing Strategy & Student Recruitment Marketing strategy and planning · international student recruitment · competitor analysis and market positioning · advertising campaign development
Digital & Social Media Marketing Social media marketing for higher education audiences · digital marketing foundations · student-facing brand communication
Research-Informed Marketing for Private HE Student satisfaction and admissions research · social media’s role in student institutional choice · quality assurance considerations in marketing private higher education
Management & Operations Team management and performance management · HR recruitment and onboarding processes · budget and operational planning
What She Brings to Knowledge Edge
| Focus Area | What It Covers |
| Marketing Strategy | Building and running Knowledge Edge’s marketing strategy across its sub-brands (IBIIC, IDEAS, IHEART, IGROW, and partner institutions) |
| Student & Partner Recruitment | Applying direct, agency-level international student recruitment marketing experience to Knowledge Edge’s own recruitment pipelines |
| Research-Backed Positioning | Grounding marketing decisions in her own published research on what actually drives student choice and satisfaction in private HE |
| Digital & Social Media Presence | Leading digital and social media marketing activity, an area she has both taught and researched directly |
| Cross-Team Collaboration | Drawing on HR and operational management experience to build a marketing function and work effectively across other Knowledge Edge teams |
📬 Contact / Enquire
Ready to talk about doctoral admissions, supervision, or researcher development? Contact the Knowledge Edge team.