About me
Melanie has over 20 years of experience spanning fashion, marketing, business and finance. She began her professional journey in a career in finance at HSBC before transitioning into the fashion industry, where she worked in product development for major global brands, including NEXT, M&S, and Nike.
As a business and marketing consultant, she has helped brands navigate market complexities, refine their strategies, and drive innovation. She also serves as a consultant and advisory board member at the Research Intelligence Unit, contributing to industry insights and applied research.
Melanie has founded and built two successful fashion businesses, each thriving for over a decade and catering to a global clientele. Her ventures reflect her deep understanding of brand development and marketing, consumer behaviour, and sustainable business growth.
Her industry expertise is complemented by a strong academic foundation, including a MA in Fashion Entrepreneurship and Innovation from the London College of Fashion and a Level 7 Postgraduate in 'Strategic Leadership Marketing' from the Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM), UK, where she is also a 'Chartered Marketer' and a 'Fellow'.
Committed to entrepreneurial education and leadership development, she has completed team leadership coaching training with Akatemia UK, a coaching methodology designed to foster collaborative learning in higher education. She integrates this approach into her teaching and mentoring, supporting students and entrepreneurs in developing innovative and sustainable business models. She is also a Fellow of Higher Education and has a Postgraduate in HE.
Prior to joining the University of Westminster, Melanie has delivered marketing training to companies and also been an academic at the London College of Fashion, Istituto Marangoni, and the Fashion Retail Academy.
She is currently pursuing a PhD, her research explores how team dynamics, psychological capital, and wellbeing influence innovation and long-term business success.
Research
Melanie’s research centres on human-centred and responsible innovation, with particular interests in entrepreneurship, marketing, responsible fashion, sustainability, psychological wellbeing and the ethical implications of emerging technologies.
Her doctoral research investigates psychological safety as an enabler of innovation within early-stage entrepreneurial teams.
Her wider research extends these interests into the fashion industry. Recent work has examined the wellbeing of female garment workers within the ethically positioned apparel sector. More recently, her research has explored responsible artificial intelligence within fashion supply chains, considering how technological innovation can be aligned with worker wellbeing, responsible governance and credible ethical practice, as well as how misalignment between organisational claims and practice may contribute to risks such as ethics washing.
She has contributed chapters to The Business of Responsible Fashion: Ethical & Sustainable Strategies for International Business and The Business of Responsible Fashion with Artificial Intelligence, and is currently developing further research around marketing claims, responsible practice and ethics washing.
Across these areas, Melanie’s research focuses on human-centred and responsible innovation, exploring the intersections between sustainability, ethics, psychological wellbeing, entrepreneurship, marketing and artificial intelligence. A particular emphasis of her work is understanding how innovation and technological advancement can create value without losing sight of their human and societal implications, and translating academic research into meaningful insights for organisations, industry and society.