Sam Bacon Email & Phone Number

Bradford, England, United Kingdom

I'm currently the Director of Active Bradford, a charity that works to make Bradford a healthier and more prosperous place to live and work.Our vision is for physical activity to be an everyday part of everyone's lives, and we work to support adults, children and families to get active, and to dismantle the barriers that prevent them from moving more. My role provides leadership of both Active Bradford and our multi-million pound Sport England funded programme JU:MP. In this role I:• Provide strategic and operational leadership for Active Bradford as it evolves to become the lead organisation for place-based physical activity in the district.• Provide day to day leadership for the organisation and provide ultimate responsibility to the board and funders for delivering our multi-million pound programme JU:MP, and running an effective and efficient organisation.• Influence and develop the strategic work on physical activity across the Bradford district, working in close partnership at a strategic level to build relationships and draw down investment to support the district wide Physical Activity Strategy Group and delivery of our “Every Move Counts” strategy. • Provide oversight for JU:MP’s broadening work across Bradford District, including expanding successful initiatives beyond their current scope, and reaching an additional 50,000 children aged 5-12 in the next three years.• Develop the vision, strategy and investment plan to enable Active Bradford to evolve as an independent and financially sustainable organisation.• Manage and coordinate the Active Bradford team, including chairing our SMT and providing line management to senior managers, and overseeing all aspects of organisational delivery, development and day to day operations.

Leeds, England, United Kingdom

In this role I led corporate strategy, planning and performance for the Combined Authority, leading a directorate of approx. 30 staff. Specific responsibilities included:• Working with the CEO, COO and senior WYCA Directors to develop and implement a new multi-year corporate planning and performance framework for the organization.• Manage a department of approx. 30 staff and a multi-million pound budget to deliver organizational functions including strategic finance, strategy and corporate performance. • Responsibility for solving organisation-wide problems through cross cutting policy development, new devolution opportunities and building a ‘people first management’ culture.• Manage relationships with senior government and regional partners to identify. policy and political developments, and develop proposals and advice to the CEO/COO, WYCA Directors and Mayor on how to respond and enable strategic impact.

I led on the day to day delivery of a major reform project in Further Education Adult Skills. Having led the project to deliver a consultation on these reforms in the summer, my role then changed to focus particularly on leadership, project management, policy development and stakeholder relationships. Specific responsibilities included:Leading the operational running and policy development of the Department’s Further Education reforms, which will repurpose approx £1.4 billion worth of adult skills spending. Developing the strategy, comms and day to day operations to deliver two government consultations on FE skills in 15 months, and leading a team and the division in working practice and enhanced productivity to deliver our reforms to the challenging and ambitious timescales of Ministers.Building and sustaining strong relationships with DfE Ministers, Spads, Directors and with No 10, Treasury and externally to drive large scale change, including risk management, mitigation and problem solving.

Pre-pandemic, I was one of three directors of the University of Manchester Students Union and ran the largest directorate in the organisation serving 40k students. This involved:Being one third of the organisation’s Senior Leadership Team, responsible for cross organisational strategic planning and objectives, managing cross-directorate projects, budgets and the strategic future of the organisation. Managing and being responsible for a directorate budget of approx £1.3 million and managing three departments of appoximately 40 total staff.Implementing a restructure across my directorate bringing the organisation’s marketing and communications department into my team, and developing a new matrix management environment and user led, evidence based culture of decision making across the Directorate.Responsible for a number of high level stakeholder relationships and partnerships with figures in the university and in local and national government, leading to a number of positive policy changes for students.

Set up and ran my own consultancy business, and secured work with a number of high-profile Labour MPs, providing bespoke strategic advice on communications and press management. This included: - Working with Chris Bryant MP to successfully change the law to create a new offence of assaulting an emergency worker. Developing a communications and campaign plan to secure government backing and get the Bill into law (achieved in September 2018).- Developing media and campaigns training for charities, MP’s staff and businesses as a freelance consultant, and as an expert for the training company ‘Parli-training’.- Advising Jo Stevens MP in her role on the DCMS Select Committee, developing a strategy for her Committee work, a work plan for her parliamentary office, and providing leadership and management support to help build her staff capability and campaigning effectiveness.- Delivering bespoke training for Anna McMorrin MP and her staff on how to run her Westminster and Cardiff offices, how to manage staff effectively, and how to build and develop strategic political priorities and effective policy.

Special Adviser to the Shadow Leader of the House of Commons - Developing and delivering training sessions to up-skill Labour staff and other Political Advisors in the Shadow Cabinet on how to use Parliament, media and advocacy techniques to further their campaigns.- Working with the Chief Whip and her advisers to achieve campaigning, policy and political aims through parliamentary processes.Special Adviser to the Shadow Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport - Managing the DCMS Shadow Ministerial team and staff, and developing political strategy for the team including overall responsibility for media strategy and delivery, policy development, insight, research and analysis.- Briefing over 50 national news stories in three months securing coverage worth over £250,000.Senior Adviser to the Shadow Minister for Immigration David Hanson MP - Developing policy and advocacy campaigns for the party and providing political advice to the Shadow Immigration Minister and Shadow Home Office team. Writing the shadow minister’s speeches, briefings, media quotes, press articles and releases, and managing the complex internal and external stakeholder relationships.

Roles and key responsibilities for a series increasingly senior roles for the Labour Party:Special Adviser to the Shadow Secretary of State for Wales - Developing the strategic communications strategy for the Shadow Wales team and managing multi-tier stakeholder relations; working with Welsh Assembly government ministers and advisers to align and agree priorities, policies and aims. This resulted in securing agreement for Welsh priorities in Brexit negotiations.Deputy Campaign Spokesperson and Head of Press for Owen2016Approached to set up and manage the press office for Owen Smith’s campaign to become the Labour Leader, including acting as Deputy Spokesperson for the campaign. My key responsibilities included:- Establishing, recruiting and running a press office in a matter of weeks. Part of the campaign’s senior management team , responsible for creating operational plans and delivery, and the day to day management of the press office staff and volunteers and developing comms strategy and briefing journalists.- Crisis comms management and preparing and briefing spokespeople for interviews.Deputy Head of Labour In for Britain (Secondment) Headhunted to act as the Deputy Manager and to lead press for the Labour Party in their campaign to remain in the EU. Key responsibilities included:- Working as acting Head of Labour In for Britain to cover a period of paternity leave including managing the daily running of the campaign, acting as a point of senior sign off and working with the Leader of the Labour Party and his office and others to develop campaign strategy.- Operationally coordinating the press campaign for Labour’s campaign stay in the European Union. Working with internal teams and significant national external stakeholders to developing and implement our press strategy.

Senior External Relations Manager for the largest arts centre in Europe, the Southbank Centre. This involved:- Managing the external affairs team, and holding internal and external stakeholder relationships.Working with the board, senior management team, the artistic director and others to create a new data and performance driven advocacy strategy. This resulted in the first comprehensive change in influence operating model and strategy for five years.- Responsible for ensuring legal compliance with regulations and for developing a culture change project to transform public affairs thinking in the organisation.

Developed and managed high-level public affairs, public engagement and campaign strategies. I managed a campaign budget of £75,000 and a team of ten staff and 120 volunteers; engaging over 100,000 UK residents in our campaigns in 12 months and successfully influencing the government to announce an extra £100m for polio eradication over five years.

Led the MP’s Westminster office and drafted speeches, briefings and developed research and analysis on a variety of issues.

Provided public affairs advice and wrote advocacy strategies for various Macmillan campaigns.

Project managed and commissioned research papers and data insight to produce evidence-based policy for our national campaigns, and delivered operational campaign activity that successfully influenced Treasury officials, government ministers and others.

Established a new regional office for a community organising charity in Ohio, USA, leading programmes to engage over 40,000 residents and empower volunteers to lead grassroots political advocacy and lobbying campaigns in their cities.

Worked with diverse former industrial local authorities across the UK, their Chief Executives, elected politicians, local charities, business groups, MPs and trade unions to build consensus and support for a variety of policy and campaign issues.

Graduate management trainee in a number of departments of North Yorkshire Country Council writing briefings, reports and a handbook for staff on equalities legislation and the importance of diverse teams and inclusion.

Bootcamp, Web Development, 97%

Learning HTML, CSS, React, JavaScript, the MERN stack & more to be able to understand both front-end and back-end web development.

Bachelor Of Arts - Ba (Hons), Culture, Media And Communication

Master Of Arts - Ma, Social Anthropology

Pgdip, Local Government Management