Our OU Business School Associate Lecturers come from a wide range of backgrounds, experiences and specialisms. Showcasing the true ethos of The Open University, open to people, places, methods and practices.
I teach because I enjoy sharing knowledge, supporting students to find their lightbulb moment where a theory finally makes sense, or referencing suddenly becomes easy!
After over a decade as a detective working on serious and complex investigations, I moved into academia where I now teach, supervise dissertations, and lead research projects that bridge the gap between theory and practice.
Mintzberg believed that to become a good manager, as well as gaining academic knowledge, you would also need to learn management skills and practice from hands-on experience of managing: effective managers need to be able to draw on a wide range of experiences.
I became an AL because I vividly remember the wonderful student experience I benefitted from when studying my MBA with the OU. I really wanted to replicate my experience for others and when the OU were recruiting ALs for a postgraduate module called Leadership in Healthcare, I thought that was an area where I could translate both my professional experience in OD and leadership into a tutoring experience for this module, bringing practice and theory together.