Ucheora Obi-Wheeler

Senior Manager, Brand StrategyHSBC

Ucheora is an award-winning leader known for her authenticity, warmth, openness, and ability to connect the dots. She currently works as a Senior Brand Strategist within the Group Brand team at HSBC. Ucheora leads on the ‘re-imagining’ of the bank’s brand strategy. With the sponsorship of HSBC’s Global Executive Committee, this involves working across the organisation to set up the bank’s approach to its brand positioning for the next 5-10 years. This also includes evolving HSBC’s brand channels strategy, clarifying target audiences and designing a commercially impactful operating model to drive implementation.

Ucheora joined HSBC in 2018 and has worked in Brand, Customer Insight and Customer Experience roles within the bank’s Global functions and Retail Banking business. Before HSBC, Ucheora held Insight and Strategy roles across agencies and clientside, including at Ipsos MORI, Sparkler (now PA Consulting) and Macmillan. In all her roles, Ucheora has used deep insight and marketing expertise to transform businesses, and make tangible, long-lasting changes that improve the customer and employee experience.

Ucheora is passionate about bringing a human-centred approach to leading teams and designing solutions for customers. This drives her DE&I work within the bank and beyond – she truly believes that understanding each other better helps to foster richer working relationships and outcomes. In this vein, in 2022 Ucheora was elected Chair of Rugby United, an RFU initiative designed to widen rugby participation amongst those from under-represented backgrounds.

Away from work, Ucheora enjoys playing rugby and has done so for almost 20 years. You’ll also catch Ucheora running as part of the Fly Girl Collective – a health and wellness collective for Black women; with whom she ran the London Marathon this year. Beyond sport, Ucheora is a ‘culture vulture’ and loves making the most of what London has to offer, from its theatres to music gigs. She also enjoys travelling and soaking up the world’s different cultures.

Ucheora was named a Future Marketing Leader in Marketing Week’s inaugural 2023 list.