Yvonne Hawkins

Governor Profile

Yvonne Hawkins has 30 years strategic experience of the higher education sector. Yvonne was a founding Director of the Office for Students where, from 2017 – 2020, she led its work to identify and promote effective practice in delivering a positive student experience through impactful and sustainable approaches to student welfare, wellbeing and safeguarding. As Director of Teaching Excellence and Student Experience, she led both the development and delivery of the UK’s Teaching Excellence and Student Outcomes Framework (TEF) and the methodology that allocated some 1.4 billion teaching funding per annum.

Previously she was a Director at the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) where she oversaw the development, implementation and delivery of the Council’s strategy and relationship management with key stakeholders. This involved managing the Council’s engagement with Heads of Universities across England, as well as leading relationships with government and representative bodies to ensure that HEFCE’s strategy was informed by an overarching national policy framework. She joined HEFCE in 2008 as an Associate Director.

From 2005 – 2008 Yvonne was Director of Knowledge Exchange and Evaluation at the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC). She joined the AHRC from the Arts and Humanities Research Board (AHRB) where she was Associate Director of Research and Postgraduate Programmes from 2001-2005, having previously been the founding Head of the AHRB’s Research Directorate from 1999.

Yvonne joined the University of Southampton in 2020 to lead the development of its strategy. In 2022 she became its Executive Director of Governance, Legal and Strategy Implementation, responsible for corporate governance, legal services, and implementation of the strategy that was launched in 2022.