Sarah Gilchriest

Helping businesses navigate complex growth challenges, with practical, experience-led guidance and real-world insight.

• Key Experience
• Strategic Thinking to Operational Excellence: Translating your CEO’s vision into an actionable plan, and guiding the business through rapid growth by aligning your team and keeping business priorities on track.
• Functional Expertise: Using my experience of creating and leading high growth organisations to help your business navigate challenges with clarity and confidence.
• Problem Solving Abilities: Acting as a change agent, by solving complex challenges with creative and resourceful thinking with a fresh perspective that internal teams might lack due to ingrained habits or company politics.
• Network and Connections: Unlocking new connections that create strategic advantages and accelerate growth
• Scalability: Experienced commercial resource for businesses that aren’t yet ready to hire a full time executive.
• Talent Attraction and Retention: Builder of award winning cultures that attract and retain the best global talent

PE-backed corporate training business

Post-acquisition leadership role focused on business integration, people strategy, and commercial re-alignment across newly merged global entities.

Key Achievements

• Integrated three businesses into a single, unified organisation — aligning leadership, teams, and cultural identity
• Delivered £6.5m in cost reductions through team restructuring, streamlining, and operational redesign.
• Supported US market entry building out local capability and cross-regional leadership alignment
• Rebuilt the company’s EVP and talent proposition re-energising leadership across a post-merger environment.
• Contributed to GTM strategy repositioning reshaping the go-to-market model to improve commercial focus across the group
• Supported brand repositioning: Played a key role in the QA brand relaunch, contributing to messaging strategy and internal rollout

EdTech Scale-Up | Acquired by QA Ltd, July 2021

Strategic and operational partner to the founders of this fast-growth, digital learning business. Spearheaded international expansion, team scaling, commercial performance, and investor readiness from early stage through to acquisition. Focused on translating high-level vision into practical, cross-functional execution — with deep ownership of growth, people, and operational systems.

Key Achievements

• Scaled globally. Grew team from 22 to 150+ across the UK, US, Australia, and Singapore
• Drove commercial growth: Revenue increased from £3.5m to £13.3m; delivered £4.4m EBITDA from a pre-profit base
• Built enterprise-grade client base: Delivered global learning programmes for Nike, Lego, Coca-Cola, Unilever, P&G, Heineken, Sanofi, and Adidas
• Led operational transformation: Designed and implemented systems and structures to support international growth and delivery at scale
• Created award-winning culture: Built a high-performance, people-first culture recognised in national rankings and industry awards
• Worked closely with the CFO on financial planning: Investment prioritisation and cashflow management within a bootstrapped high-growth environment, balancing rapid scale with operational discipline.
• Delivered impact at scale: Upskilled 600,000+ learners across 150 countries

Leadership Journey at Circus Street

• Global President & COO (Nov 2022 – Sept 2023)
• Global Chief Operating Officer (Apr 2018 – Nov 2022)
• EMEA Chief Operating Officer (Apr 2016 – Apr 2018)
• Business Consultant (Jan 2016 – Apr 2016)

Held full P&L and strategic leadership across two major business units: first leading four flagship B2B media brands (Marketing Week, Creative Review, Design Week, New Media Age), then the Legal, Finance, HR, and Marketing events portfolio. Accountable for commercial performance, product development, team leadership, and multi-platform delivery across digital, print, and live experiences.

Further history with Centaur Media (1996–2011):

• Publisher: Marketing Week (2009–2011)
• Associate Publisher: MarketingWeek.co.uk (2008–2009)
• Commercial Director: Finance Week (2006–2008)
• Associate Publisher: MoneyMarketing.co.uk (2005–2006)
• Recruitment Manager: Marketing Week (2003–2005)
• Recruitment Manager: Design Week (2002–2003)
• Classified Manager: Creative Review (2000–2002)
• Classified Sales Executive : Creative Review (1996–2000)