Leigh is a highly proficient tutor, lecturer, facilitator and learning mentor, with over 28 years teaching experience at UK Universities. Her teaching specialisms include entrepreneurship, innovation, creativity and curiosity, strategy, leadership, action learning and reflective practice. She has taught at undergraduate, postgraduate, post-experience, and doctoral levels, and has designed and delivered leadership and management courses for public and private sector organisations. She has also created online and in person learning interventions, including hackathons, for budding entrepreneurs. Most recently Leigh has taught ‘Strategy and Innovation’ for a Senior Leader Apprenticeship programme and Enterprise Skills for a Masters programme in Culture, Creativity and Entrepreneurship. Leigh is also a qualitative researcher, and has written about experiential learning in entrepreneurship education.
Leigh is a Panel Tutor for the Undergraduate Certificate in Entrepreneurship: Venture Creation (Module Three). As a previous Head of Student Enterprise Development (at the University of Huddersfield), Leigh has extensive experience of supporting nascent entrepreneurs to create and articulate their new venture propositions. She has designed and delivered 'boot camp' and curriculum interventions for market research, opportunity spotting and business model development, business planning, reflective practice, and pitching skills.
Throughout her career Leigh has taught across disciplines including arts and cultural industries, biotech, engineering, and health and social care. Wherever possible, Leigh ensures that learning methods are experiential and aligned to the learner context; she does this by embedding and prioritising reflective practice throughout the learning process. Leigh also uses Lego® Serious Play® interventions to support reflection, and employs freewriting, photo elicitation, and regular journaling to enhance the development of enterprise skills, including curiosity, creativity, problem solving and goal setting.
Leigh is an advocate of learning from, for, and through action. She has published venture creation teaching case studies about coffee roasting and vertical farming, demonstrating how theory can be used to make sense of practice. She creates learning spaces to support curiosity, experimentation, and self-awareness, for the purpose of personal development. Her aim is to enable learners to initiate and sustain their learning journey for new venture creation and personal transformation.
