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a trait that every successful leader
has. For her coming second or
making an attempt to change
societal values was simply not
Multimedia Wall:
enough. She would relentlessly
pursue her campaign until she
got her way, or was intellectually Please view the multimedia below to fi nd out some more...
convinced to do otherwise. Her
attitude and determination was
on display, and felt as vibrant at
60, as it must have been when she
was 20. The world clearly hasn’t
dampened Mrs Hewitt.
Needless to point out that
Patricia was successful in
having the men’s colleges at
Cambridge open up for women.
Another successful campaign she
embarked on at Cambridge was
altering the “drop dead” fi nal
exams with a supplementary
dissertation for all fi nal year
students. In the late 60’s these
were radical ideas. One simply Aug 2009: From politics to business, Patricia is June 2009: Patricia is to step down at the
couldn’t come to Cambridge and now the chair on the UK Indian Business Council. next election. She has planned to leave the
be a ‘revolting’ student at that, Commons to spend more time with her family.
to point out that the curriculum
needed improvement. She
organised hundreds of students,
petitioned, lobbied sympathetic
demand for change, how to
academics and heads, and even
create effective campaigns, and
organised a meeting, cloak
It was
and daggers style between
sympathisers and students. The “
ultimately infl uence. Thirty
minutes into the interview
we’d all realised that Patricia
curriculum at Cambridge was
as a Press
had cultivated extraordinary
changed. While changing the
leadership skills by simply
world at Cambridge, Patricia also
Offi cer
becoming active as a student.
acted as a freelance journalist for
She has become inadvertently
several newspapers in Australia,
an ideal case study for other
which she thoroughly enjoyed that she
ambitious students to learn from.
and felt that this could be a career.
ran into
And just like many bright able
Patricia openly tells us that
graduates, Patricia too didn’t
campaigning at Cambridge laid
know what she wanted post a
the foundations for her successful
politics
Cambridge education. She had
political career and recently as
consciously decided not to follow
the non-executive member of
the board at BT. She learnt how
to build alliances, formulate
”
her mother into academia, or her
father into the civil service. She
didn’t have an appetite for the
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HPD Sept ‘09 - Feb ‘10