Professor Ken Sloan joined Harper Adams as Vice-Chancellor on 1 November 2021. Ken has extensive national and international experience in strategy, leadership, governance, professional, business development and commercial activities.

Previously, Ken was at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, serving as the inaugural Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Enterprise and Governance). As a member of the University Executive, he was responsible for providing University-wide leadership and strategic support for the creation and acceleration of major partnerships, government relations, precinct development, new revenue creation, commercialisation, innovation, entrepreneurship, strategic intelligence, group governance and institutional risk.

Ken has previously held roles as Registrar and Chief Operating Officer at the University of Warwick; as a Business Development Director, Universities and Higher Education, with SERCO; and as Special Advisor to the Stephen A. Schwarzman Education Foundation, based at Tsinghua University in Beijing, China. He continues to serve as a panel chair for the Schwarzman Scholars annual selection process.

Ken has chaired and served on the boards of a number of institutional subsidiary companies, boards and international fundraising and development trusts. He chaired the boards of Monash Investment Holdings and Monash College, the Audit and Risk Committee of the IITB-Monash Academy and the Monash Technology Transformation Institute (Shenzhen) Executive Committee. He served on the boards of BioCurate Pty Ltd, Warwick University Enterprises (Australia), and as Chair of the Victorian Heart Institute Strategic Advisory Board. He served as sector representative on the Federal Austrade Agriculture 4.0 Steering Committee and previously as Chair of the Coventry Partnership, ethics adviser to Coventry City Council, Chair of Governors of Woodway Park School and Community College, governor of the WMG Academy for Young Engineers and a board director of the Midlands Arts Centre. He was chair/ member of the University of Warwick’s fundraising trusts in Singapore, South Africa and Hong Kong.

Ken graduated with an MA (Hons) from the University of Glasgow, an MBA from the Warwick Business School, and is a member of CPA Australia. He is a Fellow of the Association of Higher Education Professionals and a Fellow of the Royal Society for the Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (FRSA). He is also a member of the Institution of Agricultural Engineers and the Institute of Directors.

Professor Sloan was invited to give the ANZ Journal of Surgery Lecture in 2021 and this lecture was published in the Journal later that year.

Professor Sloan currently serves on the Executive of Guild HE and on the Board of the Universities and Colleges Employers Association (UCEA) where he is also Chair of Finance and Audit Committee. He sits on the Telford Town Fund Board for Levelling Up, and is Chair of the Steering Group for Ironbridge Gorge World Heritage Site.