Gill Morris joins Habia as partnership director

Habia, the government-approved standard-setting body for beauty therapy, has appointed Gill Morris to the newly created role of partnership director.

Morris runs GMT business training and was a founding director of Habia in 2000. She will take up her new role from next week and will be in charge of forging stronger partnerships between industry and education.

A key focus will be boosting corporate partnerships and promoting Habia’s professional registers to suppliers and training providers.

“I think suppliers have fallen off the radar a bit and I want to bring them back on board, because every salon does training with brands,” Morris told Professional Beauty. “FE colleges and private training providers can be endorsed by Habia. Therapists on the Professional Registers can then get CPD points for their brand training.”

She added that she hopes this will bring more cohesion to training, as well as making sure therapists can be confident that the training they pay for is worthwhile.

Habia marketing manager Kate Evans added, “We do work with quite a lot of brands already via corporate memberships and via adverts in Habia News but Gill will be taking it to the next level with the new things we’ve got. The registers are new. We’ve always endorsed training but we’re now relauching endorsement, working with Skills Active to offer a new product.”

Morris continued: “My remit is to bring education and industry more closely together for mutual benefit. Sometimes they can be a bit disjointed and I have a background in both, so I’m going to be that bridge and look after commercial relationships. I’m so excited about it; I feel as though my career to date has brought me to this point.”