Wesleyan
Building the Team Behind Transformation
Wesleyan, a 180-year-old specialist financial services provider serving doctors, dentists and education professionals, engaged Propel on an exclusive, retained basis in 2025 to support a confidential restructure of its marketing function. Propel delivered 7 hires across 6 months, from senior leadership through to a newly formed in-house creative studio.
A confidential search that built a marketing function from senior leadership down to a fully staffed team.
The Challenge
Wesleyan is a 180-year-old specialist financial services provider serving doctors, dentists and education professionals, built on a reputation for deep sector expertise and long-term relationships rather than short-term wins. Under a new leadership team, the business set out on an ambitious next chapter: modernising its marketing capability, sharpening its brand, and shifting from a traditionally advice-led, event-driven model of engagement towards a more strategic, partnership-led approach to growth.
Delivering that shift meant consolidating six previously separate functions, Brand, Growth Marketing, CRM, Product Marketing, Creative, and Business Development & Partnerships, under a single Head of Marketing. Restructures of this kind are rarely comfortable: existing ways of working had to be unpicked before new ones could be built, and the process demanded real conviction to see through. But it was viewed internally as necessary groundwork, disruption in service of a stronger, more focused function built for what came next.
Given the sensitivity of reshaping a function while people remained in post, the entire search was run under strict confidentiality. Roles couldn't be publicly advertised, meaning Wesleyan needed a partner able to work discreetly and deeply into the market to identify the right people without compromising the process.
The Approach
Propel ran the search as a confidential, retained engagement, conducting deep market mapping and working closely with Wesleyan's team to agree on approach before going to market. Each candidate went through two screening conversations to assess skills, suitability and motivation, ahead of a three-stage interview process, with background checks completed before any placement was confirmed, a deliberate final step given the seniority of the roles involved.
Communication ran on a structured, weekly rhythm throughout: regular catch-ups with key stakeholders, ongoing reporting against each open role, and market insight to help Wesleyan understand what the wider talent pool was telling them. Once the Head of Growth Marketing was in post, Propel began sourcing her wider team ahead of her start date, so candidate profiles were ready to share the moment she was onboarded, keeping momentum through what would otherwise have been a naturally staggered build.
The Results
Propel placed two senior leadership hires, Head of Growth Marketing and Head of Business Development & Partnerships, as the first step in Wesleyan's restructure. From there, Propel built out the Growth Marketing team with four Growth Marketing Managers, three placed within a month of the new Head of Growth's start date, and the fourth, a more specialist role, following shortly after. The final hire, a Creative & Copy Studio Lead, joined in December and began work immediately on Wesleyan's brand refresh, which launched in May 2026. In total, Propel delivered 7 placements for Wesleyan across 6 months.
TESTIMONIALS
"We partnered with Propel during a major digital transformation at Wesleyan. It was an incredibly complex and sensitive project, but Propel handled it exceptionally well. They consistently delivered high-quality talent while managing the entire process with the discretion, efficiency and sensitivity that the project required."