INTERVIEW


Creating the link


Dana Brown’s reputation within the world of academia and business is a highly impressive one. After just over a year as Principal of Leicester Castle Business School, she spoke with Business Network Editor Nathan Fearn about her time in the role and what lies ahead.


The relationship between education and business is not a new one but it is certainly one that is seemingly gaining in importance and necessity. To this end, universities and business schools are


continuing to play an ever-prominent role in preparing work-ready students and equipping them with the skills they need to be successful and, ultimately, add value to the businesses that make the country tick. As Principal of Leicester Castle Business School, Dana


Brown is clearly perfectly suited to the challenge of delivering on this, given her extensive background in the area. “I have worked in academia all my life and have always


had a great interest in business and how business is created,” explains Dana. “Even as a teenager I was working for a new start-up,


which was founded by the former CEO of F.W. Woolworth, so I have always had a keen interest in business. “At university, I studied politics and took that as my academic route and in between my Masters and PhD I went to work for Amazon.com, so I took in a little bit more business, returned to do my PhD, which was focused on political economy, and ended up going to a business school as the resident expert on the political economy and global expansion, so that was a really interesting mix of business and politics; I have always tried to bring the two together.” Was the idea of heading up a business school and


devoting a period of her career to harnessing the link between education and business something she had thought about? Certainly, it is an area that has always been of significant interest to Dana, as she explains. “Having a career as an academic in business schools, I


was doing a lot of research on CSR in business and business investment. Working on executive education, I started to gain an interest in the leadership of business schools, what they were doing, their strategy and their place in the world, because I realised that we were telling future business leaders how to run their business; it was a very influential position to be in.” So why the East Midlands and Leicester Castle Business


School in particular? “I was at Oxford University running the Masters of Business


Administration (MBA) programme, but when the opportunity to come here and really kick-start the business school presented itself I grasped it. It’s a great opportunity to build something new and fresh in a very complicated era,” says Dana. “It was also a combination of the current success and


increasingly positive reputation of De Montfort University (DMU). A lot of business schools distance themselves from their university but when you do that you have to replicate all the student support and opportunities that you have at


30 business network September 2017


a university. Here, there is such a strong student focus and an infrastructure to deliver an amazing student experience. This gives the possibility to build a world-leading business school that draws on those resources, knowledge and support systems for students and that, in my mind, makes for a very powerful combination. “While we are building a new entity, developing new


programmes and thinking about who our clients are going to be, which is really exciting, I am also working with a base through DMU, which I like.” Created by DMU last year to meet the needs of 21st


Century business, Leicester Castle Business School’s first impression hits you before you even enter the premesis, with students hosted in the Great Hall, off the main university campus. The building has, in the past, entertained dukes, and kings, including Richard III. In a complex and ever-changing world, business schools


will undoubtedly come into their own and Dana is clear as to the priorities of Leicester Castle Business School moving forward. “The big priority is to build a business school that is


recognised as a world-leading business school for reasons that others are not,” outlines Dana. “What makes a world-leading


business school that you would see, for example, in the Financial Times top 20 ranking? A lot is based on how much people earn after they’ve finished at the business school and other traditional measures of success. What that incentivises business schools to do, for example, is to choose students who are likely to be high earners; they’re already selecting from a restricted pool of talent. “What DMU does really well and what I want


Leicester Castle Business School to do well is to draw on an array of talented individuals from varied backgrounds who may not look like the traditional business leader, or might not have thought of themselves as a future CEO of a major corporation. I want to give these people the same opportunities they would get at an elite business school and allow them to thrive. I want an educational model that prepares these individuals for the business world.” But what of the integral relationship between education


and business? With regards to the latter, Dana feels its reputation can be enhanced and believes education has a role to play in allowing this to happen.


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