I was a student at the University of Nottingham, 1982 through to 1985.It was a great time to
be here. I read Economics and Agricultural Economics actually, as a joint honours degree,
and I was at Wortley Hall, which is an old hall, doesn't exist any longer, but was a
boys' only hall. I think we had for each block of bedrooms, fourteen bedrooms had just one
bathroom so very different from today's luxury that everybody gets access to.
Great camaraderie, interesting time to be at university, Margaret Thatcher was Prime
Minister. We just had, we were in the middle of the Miners' Strike. There was a lot of
controversy around things like deployment of nuclear missiles. There was apartheid in
South Africa: it was a very politically active era, and so being a student in that time naturally
made it exciting, and I, I thoroughly enjoyed it. I loved the campus and I loved the experience.
So I graduated in 1985. I was lucky enough to be offered a job by Glaxo, actually from
the milk rounds. So I was interviewed on campus went down to see them in their headquarters
and I was offered a job, so I started just a couple of months after graduation working
for Glaxo and since then I've worked in all sorts of different parts of the business.
I've probably had, I don't know sixteen, seventeen, maybe twenty different jobs at the company
over that period. And I've worked in the UK obviously where I started; I went off to South
Africa had a fascinating three years leading our African business; then went to America;
then to Singapore and ran our Asia-pacific business and then came back to be president
of our European business before finally becoming Chief Executive in 2008.
So really an exciting journey and, and although it's been one company all the way through,
because of different merges and the growth of the business generally it's always felt
like a very different, different environment. Every five years it feels like you're working
inside a different company and of course it's given me the chance to have amazing experiences:
geographically having worked in almost every continent in the world and of course in different
job functions, all sorts of different experiences that I've built up. So it's been a great experience
for me and obviously the start point to that was an interview here at the campus.
No, I certainly never expected to become the Chancellor of the University. I was absolutely
shocked and honoured two years ago to be given an honouree degree, which I thought was far
in excess of anything that was ever going to happen to me. To then get a phone call
a couple of years later to say would I think about doing this, was really breath taking,
and I'm super honoured to be asked very, I, I regard it as a great privilege.
I think universities, generally, are remarkable institutions. I think in Britain we are so
lucky to have a few of the world's greatest universities and I always felt I was lucky
to be a student at one of them. To now have the chance to hopefully give a little bit
more back, to help maybe, help the Vice Chancellor and the Council think about things, to help
it continue to be so successful is a real honour and it's a great opportunity. I look
forward to it enormously, never thought it would happen. Didn't take me too long to say
yes because it, you know I have such a strong affinity to the, to the institution.
Well in the role of Chancellor it doesn't have any power. It's very much a ceremonial
type of position, but it does allow me I think to be engaged in conversations with a variety
of different key decision makers here. So I think the kinds of areas which I can
bring something from my own personal experience would be on the internationalisation agenda.
Obviously with both the Chinese and the Malaysian campuses, Nottingham is already a significant
player on the international scene, but I think more could be achieved and I know there are
ambitions to try and do more and I think I can help there.
Secondly, Alumni. I think that as we see the revolution of funding of universities in the
UK continue to play out as we've seen over the last couple of years, the role of alumni
become more, more important in the way that they are in America. That is again something
which I think the Chancellor can help to just stimulate some of the questions about how
do we need to move Alumni relationships forward.
And then I think the third area, is if I think about universities as part of the economy.
How can I help perhaps build bridges and stimulate the
University of Nottingham to be what it really is, which is a driving force of economic progress
and growth for the East Midlands. How can it help the city of Nottingham continue to
prosper, how can the University be not just a teaching institution, but also a source
of start-up companies, new jobs, new technologies, which I think is going be very much part of
the future agenda of governments to help try and drive a more balanced growth in the British
economy.
This is a tremendous institution, but it's a tremendous institution because all the people
who went before us left something of themselves behind in the way in which they laid down
the professionalism, the standards of teaching, the quality: they gave something back. Sometimes
it was money, but very often it was they gave something back in terms of their legacy from
a teaching or a learning perspective, and so I think what we all have to really remember
is for this to be seen as a great institution fifty years or a hundred years from now depends
on people like us to do the same.
We have to keep those high standards, we have to continue to modernise but build, but modernise
in the shape of a legacy. So it's not just modern for another month or a year but actually
steps it forward as being a globally relevant, competitive, super high standard teaching
institution, which in my view has a capacity to be an important part of the economic fabric
of the country.