Management Department Advisory Board

Exterior shot of the Charles Thackrah building

The Management Department receives external guidance and support from its board of business leaders and senior executives.

Management Department Advisory Board members volunteer their time to support our activities through sharing their experience and expertise that inform our programmes, curriculum and research areas.

The role of the Management Department Advisory Board

  • Providing strategic, independent and professional perspectives on future strategy, ensuring continued relevance to the business world
  • Advising on current trends in business and management
  • Assessing course and module content and its relevance to industry
  • Giving advice on building and maintaining stakeholder relationships
  • Helping to ensure our research, research areas and proposals are industry-relevant and have future applicability
  • Steering the employability strategy for our students and future graduates

Board members

Advisory Board members come from a range of industries, reflecting the diversity of our taught programmes and research areas.

Laurence Olins – Former Chairman, Poupart Ltd

Laurence is a retired former Managing Director, Chairman and Non-Executive Director of a wide range of food, distribution, marketing and farming companies with a combined turnover in excess of £1.5bn. The companies were mainly international, operating and farming across the UK and Europe as well as the USA, Caribbean, Australia and in Africa. The products ranged from meat, fresh produce, arable, and branded drinks, sauces and canned goods. His responsibilities extended to Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in some of the companies with which he was associated. He is an investor in two start-up companies related to the produce and farming industries and remains a minority shareholder in his former group of companies. Laurence initiated the annual City Food Lecture at Guildhall, London and is currently the Master of the Fruiterers Livery Company in the City of London, a post he also held in the year 2000.

Susan Paul – Executive Coach and CEO, First 4 Health Group & Executive Director Stratford Primary Care Network

Susan Paul is a British Asian Executive Coach and businesswoman with over 29 years' legal, management and business experience. She has worked with boards, CEOs, executives and senior managers.  A specialist Employment Solicitor and CEDR Accredited Mediator, Susan was a UK Employment Judge for over five years before retiring from the Judiciary to expand her career and work alongside other business leaders. 

Susan is the Chief Executive of the First 4 Health Group, an NHS group of GP practices in East London with a multidisciplinary team of over 100 healthcare professionals and support staff. 

She is also an Executive Director of Stratford Primary Care Network and CEO of Healthcare Leadership Systems, an NHS Healthcare focused management and coaching consultancy.

As an Executive Coach with over 25 years' experience, Susan has an effective, compassionate and systems focused approach to supporting female leaders, as well as men in leadership roles who actively support female leadership within the NHS, industry and academia. She runs a coaching programme for 'Noisy Women'. It's a safe space in which female leaders get to fully appreciate and embrace their own unique brand of leadership with freedom and joy.

Haijian Si - Former CEO of Hanergy thin film power group, and former President and Executive Chairman of China New Energy Chamber of Commerce

Haijian has a bachelor’s degree in accountancy and an MBA. He has over 20 years’ industry experience, including 12 years as a CEO, and extensive experience as CFO/ Finance Manager. He has obtained ACCA, CICPA and CIA certificates, and was elected as steering member of ACCA China for 2014-2019.

Haijian is a successful business leader in the new energy industry in China. A natural “problem solver”, he has led the successful development of several large companies, including LINUO, Hanergy, Huanyu Power and others, and developed excellent experience and knowledge in business management, strategy and operations.

Haijian also served as President and Executive Chairman of the China New Energy Chamber of Commerce, which is China’s largest new energy chamber of commerce with more than 1,000 new energy enterprises. He has led delegates from the new energy industry of China to Europe, Australia and Japan, discussing industry development and problem solving with NGOs, governments, universities and research institutes.

Graham Staples - Company Secretary, Schroders plc

Graham has over 30 years of experience of the financial services industry. He is currently Group Company Secretary of Schroders plc, Europe’s largest independent listed asset management company, where he is responsible for the Group’s governance framework and advising the Schroders Board and Executive Management team on all governance matters. He is also chairman of Schroder Investment Management (EU) SA.

Graham started his career as a graduate trainee with the NFU Mutual Insurance Company. He subsequently moved to TSB Group where he held a number of roles in the legal, compliance and company secretarial departments. He was Assistant Company Secretary for NatWest Group for six years prior to their takeover by the Royal Bank of Scotland. He was responsible for the European share plan administration business of Computershare, the global registrar, prior to joining Schroders in 2004.

He holds a law degree from the University of Leeds, an MBA from Henley Management College, and is a Fellow of the Chartered Governance Institute.

Richard Stoppard - Group Co-President and Chief Strategy Officer at The Conversion Group Inc & CEO of Nexus Media Events Ltd

Richard is a senior marketing and strategy executive with 25+ years’ international blue-chip experience across a number of sectors including: Events, Media, CPG, Retail and Consumer Electronics. Richard has a proven track record in implementation and the delivery of outstanding results across developed and emerging markets from UK/US to China, Mexico and Brazil.

Co-President and Chief Strategy Officer at The Conversion Group, Richard leads strategy development and sits on the boards of The Conversion Group Inc, The Conversion Group Ltd, Nexus Media Events, Le Book and Columbus Media and Events.

In addition to his roles as Chair of the Management Department Advisory Board and at The Conversion Group Richard is also the chair of the IWSC Foundation and Moniker Foundation trustee boards and a non-executive director of Kathryn Sargent Bespoke Tailoring.