Our staff stories

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. 

I enjoy the flexibility and variety of working at the OU and the wide range of different people both as students and colleagues that one meets.

I knew that OU had been teaching remotely, successfully for decades and I could learn from their success.

Leadership is an area that I kind of fell into teaching, through being involved in research around teamworking and health services management.

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.

What is especially rewarding for me is being able to bring some of my practical experience of financial markets into discussions with students.

Supporting students achieve their potential and seeing them make the critical ‘learning connections’, linking theory with application.

What I cherish most about my time with the OU is the flexibility it offered, allowing me to pursue my degrees while maintaining a full-time job.

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.