50th Anniversary Celebration
Professor Heather McGregor, CBE: Stand up and be counted
Professor Heather McGregor, CBE, was appointed to the post of Executive Dean of Edinburgh Business School, the Graduate School of Business of Heriot-Watt, on September 1 2016.
Heather was an unconventional academic appointment; although she has been engaged in academic research almost all her adult life (her undergraduate degree at Newcastle was followed by postgraduate research at the University of Bradford’s School of Management, an MBA at the London Business School, and a PhD at the University of Hong Kong’s School of Business and she was a visiting professor at Cass Business School for six years until 2012) she is perhaps best known for being a former investment banker, an entrepreneur and for the last 17 years, the person behind the pseudonym ‘Mrs Moneypenny’ in the Financial Times.
But it is her work in the area of diversity that really gets her out of bed in the morning, and for which she was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of East London, and a CBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List in 2015. In 2007 she was standing next to UEL’s Business School, talking to the then Vice-Chancellor, Professor Martin Everett, and looking across London City Airport to Canary Wharf, an epicentre of finance. Professor Everett challenged her to find a way for more people from places like UEL (17,000 out of 20,000 students are minority ethnic) to find jobs in places like Canary Wharf. So she went back to her desk and devised, and funded, a ten week professional development course which so far has provided paid training and helped get jobs for more than 200 people.
Diversity also extends to gender, and in 2010 she joined a small group of women to launch the 30% Club, a campaign to get more women onto boards of companies, and accelerate their careers. To support this work, she authored ‘Careers Advice for Ambitious Women’, published by Penguin in 2012 and translated into multiple languages. The 30% Club has since extended its work all over the world, including in the GCC and Malaysia, where Edinburgh Business School now plans to offer more scholarships to women.
What is her vision for Edinburgh Business School? “Not only are we here to serve our 12,000 current students, and our future students, but also the 20,000 alumni who have graduated from Edinburgh Business School since it started. These people will have Edinburgh Business School and Heriot-Watt on their CV for the rest of their lives, and it is our duty to them to ensure that we have and maintain a brand that they can be proud of, and which acts as a testimony to their capabilities and potential.” She is keen to develop more on-campus teaching in the three Heriot-Watt University campuses in Edinburgh, Dubai and Malaysia (“I want to teach more students myself! ”) and develop Edinburgh Business School research competencies that mirror those of Heriot-Watt University. Will Edinburgh Business School maintain its two founding principles of access and flexibility? “Of course. They are the cornerstone of its success. We will be adding to, not taking away from, the Edinburgh Business School experience.”
During the last six years, Professor McGregor has had her own TV show and done two seasons of stand-up comedy at the Edinburgh Fringe. Will this in any way inform her leadership? “Believe me, performing at the Fringe is not a sound business proposition, more a guaranteed way to lose money. I hope Edinburgh Business School will provide tomorrow’s business leaders with the skills to make the most of tomorrow’s markets, rather than to do stand- up at the Fringe. But I also hope we will make it fun for them.”
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Heather’s first day meeting the team at Edinburgh Business School.
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