Suzie originally studied violin at the Royal College of Music and holds an undergraduate degree and postgraduate diploma in Music and Music Teaching. More recently, she has completed an MA in Applied Linguistics from the UCL Institute of Education (Distinction). She holds a Cambridge DELTA and is a Cambridge CELTA tutor. She is also a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.

She has previously worked on Pre-sessional and EAP courses at UCL and the University of Portsmouth and also worked for many years as an EFL teacher and teacher trainer in the UK, Hungary, Egypt, Ethiopia and Australia, largely for the British Council and International House. In Ethiopia, Suzie spent a year and a half in a remote village, working for Volunteer Services Overseas on an English language project in a teacher training college.

Her research interests include teacher identity and development, collaboration between EAP and subject experts to develop student discipline-specific academic skills and the use of English as a medium of instruction in developing countries. In her freetime she enjoys hiking, pilates and scuba-diving.