Emma Isaac

Emma began her career as a graduate trainee at British Airways, rising through commercial roles before finding her way into marketing. Learning firsthand that brands are built from the inside out led her to train as an Executive Coach and run a leadership coaching practice, before joining the top team at two leading brand consultancies, Serac and Circus.

Client side called again when Barclays came with a brief to rebuild trust in 2012, uniting the whole organisation behind one Barclays brand. She then took on another challenging transformation at NatWest Group, working across ten brands including NatWest, Royal Bank of Scotland and Coutts.

With the Group returning to profit and privatisation, Emma moved into retail to lead Marketing at Waitrose & Partners - delivering the award-winning Food to Feel Good About platform and earning the Chairman's Award for her stewardship of the John Lewis Partnership's purpose.

She was pulled back to financial services as CMO of Virgin Money to reignite growth, before steering the brand through its acquisition by Nationwide.

Her belief in potential over background isn't theoretical - it's lived. It runs through her mentoring of emerging leaders, her active membership of WACL, and her trusteeship of the Virgin Money Foundation, which tackles digital poverty in some of Britain's most underserved communities.

Emma has been recognised as one of the UK's top 100 marketers, is a member of the Marketing Society and a Fellow of the Marketing Academy.