About Scholar Influence

Closing the gap between expertise and visibility

Scholar Influence is a specialist consultancy that helps established academics strengthen their positioning, visibility, recognition, esteem, and professional influence.

It was founded on a simple observation: scholars spend years building expertise, but very few understand how to build the strategy and visibility around it.

Academic reputations develop through research, publication, teaching, leadership, collaboration and contribution to a field. Yet that expertise can be represented inconsistently across institutional, professional and digital channels.

Scholar Influence closes that gap by bringing personal brand strategy, academic positioning, digital presence and thought leadership together around the substance of a scholar's work.

The result is a clearer professional identity, greater consistency and discoverability and stronger foundations for recognition, esteem and influence as a career develops.

Meet Alexandra Lees | Founder of Scholar Influence

A cross-sector perspective on expertise and influence

I founded Scholar Influence after more than two decades working across academia, public-sector strategy, private-sector consultancy, entrepreneurship, brand development, PR and business advisory.

My academic experience includes serving as a Visiting Senior Lecturer at the University of Sheffield, where I taught undergraduate and postgraduate students, examined student work and contributed to the development of postgraduate course content.

Before this, I held senior consultancy and public-sector roles, including Associate Director at Turley Associates and Principal Urban Designer at Birmingham City Council, working on complex multidisciplinary development and regeneration projects.

Working across these environments gave me an unusual perspective on professional expertise: how authority is built within specialist fields and how that expertise can be communicated effectively to the people and organisations that matter.

Building brands, audiences and recognition

I later co-founded and grew a service-based business into an international wellness media brand, generating more than 10 million YouTube views, 100,000 subscribers and 875,000 podcast downloads.

I led brand strategy, PR, content and audience development, securing BBC Radio coverage and national newspaper features including The Guardian, The Telegraph and Evening Standard.

That experience reinforced something fundamental to the Scholar Influence approach:

Expertise creates substance.
Positioning helps people understand it.
Visibility allows it to travel.

Today, I bring those strands together through Scholar Influence, helping academics build the strategy and visibility around the authority and contribution they have already established.

Connect with Alexandra on LinkedIn →

Scholar Influence in practice

I currently work with Professor Joseph M. Cheer, an internationally recognised academic based at Western Sydney University. My work has included brand strategy and positioning, website strategy and development, professional messaging, media positioning and thought-leadership strategy.

Professor Cheer also provides strategic input as an advisor to Scholar Influence, bringing the perspective of an experienced international academic to the development of the consultancy.

Visit Professor Cheer's Website →

We don't manufacture academic authority.

We make established authority clearer, more visible and better positioned to influence.

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