Zoë Arden is passionate about the power of communications to help achieve business goals. She believes that truthful stories powerfully told can be transformational, build resilient brands and create fruitful relationships with stakeholders.
She is an inspirational contributor who excels at both face to face delivery and online learning facilitation. She supports change agents in business to build compelling narratives and programmes that drive action.
Zoë has supported existing leaders and high potential individuals in many global brands:
“Zoë was outstanding as the programme lead, providing meaningful and challenging contributions. This inspired and motivated me to really go for the full learning experience.”
Leadership Lab participant
Fellow, Cambridge University Institute for Sustainability Leadership
Zoë is a fellow at Cambridge University’s Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL) and has taught storytelling to senior business executives on post grad programmes there since 2014.
She is the convenor and head tutor of two Cambridge University 8-week online courses for existing and aspiring leaders called Communicating for Influence and Impact and High Impact Leadership. They cover topics such as communicating with influence and how to lead with purpose in a volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous world.
Zoë designs and delivers face to face and online training programmes for a range of organisations.
Board Trustee, Bioregional
Zoë is a board trustee of environmental charity Bioregional which created the One Planet Living Framework.
Strategic Advisor, Hubbub
Zoë is a strategic advisor to the charity Hubbub which focuses on behaviour change in communities.
In her early career, Zoë spent many years as managing director of PR brands in global marcoms agencies including Weber Shandwick and Golin. She was vice president of San Francisco-based agency Access Communications, working predominantly with Apple.
She’s also worked in-house as Director of Communications and Sustainability at British Telecom where she lead a team of over 50, responsible for both employee engagement, external PR, all social media channels, as well as being the key liaison with charity partners and customer advocacy groups.
She reported into the Managing Director of Consumer and was a frequent contributor at board meetings. She spearheaded the sustainability strategy and was the CEO’s representative on the pan-BT Environment and Climate Change Taskforce.
In her capacity as Associate Director, she has contributed to numerous CISL reports and has been published in the journal Organisation and Environment. The article entitled Making It Personal is based on her Masters’ research which looked at the impact of experiential learning programmes on business leaders’ attitude to sustainability.
Zoë also spent three years as a Director at the think tank SustainAbility where she specialized in stakeholder engagement and led research initiatives including how to embed purpose into business.
She has conducted workshops with groups of up to 100 but also enjoys smaller and one-on-one coaching engagements. This gives her the opportunity to both help strengthen the leadership skills of senior leaders and ensure their narrative is delivered authentically.
“Zoë provided a great example of what powerful storytelling looks like. I also loved that I had the pleasure of 1-1 coaching time with her.”
Director, Farfetch