Marilyn has served as a Trustee of Groundwork London since January 2017 and has Board responsibility for Groundwork’s Safeguarding Policy and Practice.
Marilyn Baxter has worked in the field of marketing and brand communications for over 30 years, providing strategic analysis and advice with a particular focus on measuring effectiveness and delivering results for a wide range of clients in both the private and public sectors. During most of that time, Marilyn worked at senior management level, holding roles including Executive Chairman and Vice Chairman, and non-Executive Director. As a leading member of the advertising and marketing industry, she has chaired industry committees, published reports on industry issues, and has spoken at many conferences and events.
At Saatchi and Saatchi Advertising, where Marilyn was for 12 years as head of the Strategic Planning Department and as Vice Chairman, she worked with many dozens of client companies and organisations, helping them to identify marketing and communications problems, developing strategies to solve them, and developing tools and techniques to measure their effectiveness. She also served as an elected Trustee of the Saatchi Pension Scheme.
As Chairman of Hall and Partners, a specialist brand and communications market research agency, where she worked for 6 years, Marilyn’s role was to lead and guide the management team in running the business; to be the company figurehead, using her reputation to gain publicity for the company and to win new clients; and using her communications expertise to improve their research techniques and to train research executives.
As the Non-Executive Director of the Central Office of Information (COI), the Central Government Department responsible for publicity for Government Programmes, Marilyn’s role was one of ‘critical friend’ to the executives running the Department, providing challenge and encouraging scrutiny of working practices and finance, coaching them to work together better as a team, improving their management professionalism, and as Chair of the Audit and Risk Committee guiding the implementation of Risk Management in the Department.