Hult Alumni Magazine | Page 11

Huge congratulations on the recent triple accreditation of the school. Do you see it as being your biggest success to date, and what are the benefits of triple accreditation for alumni, current students, and faculty? What technological trends do you believe are having the biggest impact on today’s business world? How are you helping to shape and realize Hult’s vision of being the world’s most relevant global business school? As a member of Hult’s Leadership Team, giving new and exciting meaning to what it means to be relevant is a frequent topic of conversation and something we all take very seriously. Our curricula, the way we teach and enable students to learn, our academic quality and standards, and our research and other academic activities all need to align to realize this exciting vision for Hult. As CAO, I am responsible for making all of the pieces of the academic puzzle align in a meaningful way. Providing excellent teaching has been, and will always remain, one of Hult’s staunchest commitments. Our next Global Faculty Summit is on Innovating Pedagogy. Disruptive technologies are already impacting everything we do and there is no doubt that they will continue to do so. However, I think we have a tendency to overestimate short term impacts and underestimate longer term consequences. AI, for instance, regularly dominates news headlines, but so far, it is not much more than the curve-fitting of big data through machine learning. There is no inherent intelligence near it. Yet there is no denying that nanotechnology, gene editing, AI, and many other technologies are evolving rapidly because of the massive computer power now available and the fact that fewer regulations govern these developments in some countries. While five to 10 year cycles have always been discernible, I am a strong believer in longer cycles. History would attest that after a period of sustained growth, there are usually decades of decline. It is a BIG win for Hult, and one that would not have been possible without the commitment of a very engaged faculty and professional staff across all campuses, including Ashridge. What we achieved in so little time still blows my mind and it is a real honor to have led the team that enabled a great school to secure this hallmark of quality. We are no longer an academic underdog and are now considered a serious hitter in the business school world and are much more prominent in people’s thoughts. Two intensive years of hard work crowned a decade of even harder work to make Hult what it is today—a great and differentiated global business school. The benefits of triple accreditation are pretty universal. You get the bragging rights that come with the achievement, as well as the positive impact it has on bolstering your attractiveness and building your reputation. It will undoubtedly help attract great faculty and professorial staff, and improves our academic credibility. It will help our marketing, recruitment of great students, and build our brand. We also have a solid research strategy, an innovative incentive scheme, and a wonderful body of professional staff who help faculty initiate and deliver research projects. But we need more faculty to engage in this process and not fall out of the habit of doing intellectually stimulating and useful research. Driving this research agenda also helps our accreditations, which in turn supports our rankings. 11