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General enquiries: [email protected]    |   Leadership programme: [email protected]
General enquiries: [email protected]    |   Leadership programme: [email protected]
Global Alliance of Entrepreneurial Universities
Entrepreneurial University Award
Entrepreneurial Leadership Programmes

Leeds Entrepreneurial Leaders Programme (Resource Site)

Leeds Entrepreneurial Leaders Programme (Resource Site)

Introduction

We welcome the opportunity to work with the University of Leeds in support of its objective to create a culture of entrepreneurship, through the promotion of entrepreneurial mindsets, behaviours and styles of working.  

This programme will support the development of interdisciplinary collaboration, creating a culture of innovation to address challenges ranging from sustainability through to healthcare and security. Working on research problems and challenges it will enable a new way of thinking and working within the University.

It will develop agile, creative entrepreneurial university researchers, technicians and professional staff, to be transformational, challenge approaches and develop innovative responses to regional (and wider) stakeholder challenges.  It will support them to contextualise their approach within the university but also within changing external contexts, places and environments.  We will support them to be able to spot and seize new opportunities, and channel resources effectively.  Through our programme participants will gain insights from entrepreneurial leaders from across the world, exploring how they have been able to innovate and develop their external engagement and impact.

During the programme, three action learning sets will be created, which will:

  • Work on a problem or challenge identified, establishing interdisciplinary or cross-service approaches and solutions.
  •  Enable further discussion of the issues/insights raised by the programme.
  • Benefit from support from peers and other experts.
This resource site will contain all you need to support you during the programme.

Our Guest Speakers:

Bruno Tindemans

Chief Foresight Officer, Department of Work Education, Economy, Innovation, Social Economy and Science Policy (Brussels, Belgium)

Read More »

Attendee List

Steve Carter

Careers Consultant, careers centre

Steve Carter provides one-to-one guidance with students – undergraduate to post graduate researchers.  Steve is a final year module leader and also teaches on other modules in the  faculty.  He is the Careers Centre lead for working with PGRs, arranging a variety of events including a PGR specific careers fair.  Steve also facilitates employer engagement, especially for PGRs.

Silviu Cobeanu

Director of Taught Postgraduate Studies

Silviu Cobeanu is a visionary leader in music management education and a strategic innovator bridging academia and industry. As Director of Taught Postgraduate Studies and Programme Director for MA Music Management at the University of Leeds School of Music, he has transformed the programme into a UK market leader. Silviu’s expertise spans curriculum development, industry engagement, and concert curation. He pioneered the School’s Industrial Advisory Board and leads initiatives in VR technology for music education. A Michael Beverley Innovation Fellow, Silviu has presented at international conferences and consults for prominent music organisations. His work significantly contributes to the School’s financial stability and enhances its global reputation in music management education.

William Davis Birch

Research Fellow, Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences

During his PhD at the University of Leeds, William Davis Birch developed a laboratory model of the gut microbiome, called MiGut. This technology has the potential to change the way we study the gut, offering a reliable and automated system capable of running complex experiments at scale. It is already being used across several laboratories and has received funding from the Pro Vice-Chancellor for Business Engagement and Enterprise to support its further development into a commercial venture. William is currently leading this by establishing a dedicated “Business Unit” to work with companies at the cutting edge of gut microbiome research.

Hanem El-Farahaty

Associate Professor in Arabic Language, Translation and Interpreting, AHC

Hanem El-Farahaty is an Associate Professor of Arabic Language, Translation, and Interpreting at the University of Leeds, where she also serves as the Deputy Director of Postgraduate Research for the School of Languages, Cultures, and Societies. Hanem is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Linguists. She is is a linguist, translator, and interpreter with expertise in Arabic-English legal translation and comparative corpus linguistics.
 
Hanem’s research and teaching focus is on legal translation, translation for international organizations, human rights, and inclusive legal language.  She is the author of Arabic-English-Arabic Legal Translation (2015) and co-editor of the Routledge Handbook of Arabic Translation (2019).
 
Hanem’s book on legal translation was translated into Arabic by King Abdulaziz University in Saudi Arabia (2018) and is widely used in universities across the Arab world. She also serves as a reviewer for several international publishers, including Routledge, Cambridge University Press, and Edinburgh University Press.
 
Since 2017, Hanem has been instrumental in developing and maintaining the Leeds Legal Corpora of Arabic countries’ constitutions. These legal open-access corpora have become invaluable resources for legal translators, researchers, and students, providing a comprehensive database of authentic legal texts in both Arabic and English.

Alessia Grassi

Senior Lecturer in Fashion Marketing, School of Design

Alessia Grassi is a Senior Lecturer in Fashion Marketing and Branding. Alessia’s research focuses on consumer engagement, strategic branding and brand experiences, and retailing. In August 2024 she was appointed Deputy Director of Student Education for the School of Design of the University of Leeds.
 
Since February 2021, Alessia has joined the University of Leeds School of Design as a Lecturer in Fashion Marketing and was awarded the Michael Beverley Innovative Fellowship in October of that year. In September 2022, she was appointed for her first leadership role as Programme Leader of the BA Fashion Marketing course.
 
Before joining Leeds, Alessia was a Lecturer in Marketing at the University of Huddersfield (Business School), where in 2019, she completed my PhD in fashion marketing.

Raymond Holt

Lecturer in Project Design

Raymond Holt has been working as a lecturer at the University of Leeds since 2005, when he completed his PhD. His research has focused on participatory design of assistive and medical technology, with an emphasis on measuring motor skills, and the use of haptics (information delivered through the sense of touch) for communication and navigation.
 
Raymond has worked closely with members of the deafblind community and organisations who support them (such as Deafblind International, Eikholt and Bartimeus). He is an active member of the Deafblind International Technology and Research Networks.

Ruth Lawford-Rolfe

Research Impact Manager, Faculty of Environment

Ruth Lawford-Rolfe is a senior research manager and analyst with twelve years’ experience in research partnerships and engagement, research and innovation development, programme management, research translation and impact. Ruth works in partnership with academic colleagues to report on outcomes, and evidence impact across industry, policy and practice settings. Prior to joining the University, she spent seven years as an environmental consultant and data analyst specialising in numerical modelling and applied oceanography. During this time Ruth delivered a wide range of projects for clients in the energy industry and government agencies.

Jin Liu

Research Fellow, Institute for Transport Studies

Jin Liu is a Research Fellow in the Spatial Modelling and Dynamics (SMaD) group at the Institute for Transport Studies, University of Leeds. Jin earned his Ph.D. from the University of Birmingham, focusing on multi-agent applications for railway traffic management. Before joining ITS, Jin worked at Newcastle University. His research centers on modeling and optimizing transport systems, especially rail, and he has collaborated on projects with Innovate UK, RSSB, Siemens, and others. Jin has led projects like RSSB’s Very Short Term Planning and Horizon EU’s nPET, delivering innovative solutions for traffic management and pollution evaluation.

Addi Manolopoulou,

Accounting & Finance Departmental Manager, business school

Awarded the 2023 University of Leeds Water Woman Award for ‘Impact and Societal Knowledge Transfer,’ Addi is  dedicated to translating research into an engaging narrative with real-world impact. Addi’s dyslexia fuels her creative problem-solving. With over 10 years at the UoL, she has a deep understanding of Higher Education’s strategies and challenges.

Addi’s global upbringing in Spain, Greece, and Thailand, coupled with a background in P.R. and fluency in three languages, allows her to bring a diverse, international perspective to building connections across cultures and industries. Previously, she worked for a global media firm, HAVAS and the Minister of Presidency of Spain.

Suparna Mitra

Lecturer in Bioinformatics (Microbiomics), Faculty of Medicine and Health

With a PhD in Bioinformatics and 14+ years of research experience in applying metagenomics and metatranscriptomics to medical sciences Suparna Mitra is active in research and teaching at the University of Leeds.
 
For the past two years Suparna has focused her research to understand the impact of Unrestricted Antibiotic Usage on the Gut Microbiome and Antibiotic Resistance Genes (ARGs) among relatively healthy population. As a Micheal Beverley Fellow her pilot study in Bangladesh is the first of its kind, trying to investigate the unrestricted use of antibiotics in generally healthy population and exploring other possible sources of AMR, like animal and environment.

Alexa Ruppertsberg

Head of Public Engagement with Research, Research and Innovation Service

Alexa Ruppertsberg is a research, innovation and engagement professional with over 25 years’ experience in higher education and is passionate about making research relevant and impactful. With a PhD in Natural Sciences, Alexa has worked as a researcher in Germany, Israel, and the UK, spanning fields from patient studies, human visual perception to computer graphics. Her strengths include strategic leadership, systems thinking, problem solving and expertise in engagement and evaluation that she applies to any new field.

Alexa has a proven track record in crafting and implementing strategies, establishing training and mentoring programmes, and developing innovative research outputs. She brings a unique blend of analytical and creative skills to her work and holds a teaching certificate from Keele University and a Business Studies certificate from The Open University.

Paola Sakai

Lecturer in Sustainability, Economics and Policy, Faculty of Environment

Paola Sakai is an environmental economist with over 10 years of experience investigating the challenges that climate change poses to organisations, cities, and food systems. Paola specialises in climate resilience, vulnerability, adaptation, the economic costs of disasters, the interface between disaster risk reduction and health inequalities, food systems resilience and mine water and geothermal energy for food production. She uses mixed-methods approaches to identify leverage points to enable pathways to a more sustainable and climate-resilient future.

Paola lectures on Sustainability, Economics and Policy at the University of Leeds, UK;and Financial Mathematics at the National Autonomous University of Mexico.

Yuri Siregar

Director of Student Education - Lecturer in Fashion Marketing and Brand Design, AHC

Yuri Siregar is currently Director of Student Education in the School of Design. Yuri has taught in the UK and Asia. Before entering academia, he worked in the Advertising and Marketing industry for 15 years.

Yuri’s research interests centres on consumers’ interactive experiences with fashion retail’s physical and digital worlds. The current focus of his research is exploring experiential phygital atmospherics through people-centred design. 

Yuri just completed the first stage of his project (funded by MBIF) in communicating sustainable messages in virtual environment.

Gisela Tome Lourido

Lecturer in Sociophonetics and Director of Language@Leeds, AHC

Gise Tomé Lourido is a Lecturer in Sociophonetics and the Director of Language@Leeds. Her research examines how speech is produced and understood, and how accent bias may lead to social inequalities. Her most recent project, funded by the Michael Beverley Innovation Fellowship, explored the consequences of accent bias on university students’ belonging and co-developed initiatives to tackle accent discrimination (a vehicle for class or ethnic discrimination), with the University of Leeds, Leeds University Union and other key stakeholders. As Director of Language@Leeds, a university-wide interdisciplinary network, Gise fosters collaborations to address key societal issues through language research.

Oliver Vickers

Research Fellow, Faculty of Medicine and Health

Oliver Vickers is a Research Fellow in the Faculty of Medicine and Health. His work focuses on implantable sensing technology, orthopaedic implants and smart surgical tools. Oliver has an excellent knowledge of medical engineering, and has advanced technical, analytical and research skills.
Oliver has presented at international conferences and won an award for his presentation at the John Charnley research day. He was a finalist in the 2019 young entrepreneur scheme, participated in ConceptionX and was a Michael Beverley Innovation Fellow.
 
Oliver is passionate about his research and wants to kickstart his career in research, technology transfer and entrepreneurship.

Cyntia Vilasboas Calixto Casnici

Lecturer in International Business, LUBS

Cyntia Vilasboas Calixto Casnici completed her PhD in Business Strategy at FGV – EAESP (Brazil), where she was also a Lecturer for 5 years. Cyntia is currently a Lecturer in International Business at University of Leeds.
Cyntia has an active participation at the Academy of International Business. She was the Program Chair of AIB-LAC 2021. Board Member of AIB-LAC as Country representative from the Rest of the World (non LAC countries) from 2021-2024. 

Cyntia advocates for active-learning and student-centre- teaching. Since 2023, she is actively incorporating AI into her teaching practices and pedagogical researches.

Hema Viswambharan

Senior Research Fellow, Medicine and health

Hema Viswambharan is a graduate of the University of Malaya, Malaysia and trained in the field of Genetics and Microbiology. Hema undertook her doctoral and first postdoctoral research training in the labs of Prof Luscher (Zurich) and Prof Zhihong Yang (Fribourg), prior to her appointment as Research Fellow within the group of Prof Kearney.
 
Hema is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and was elected Fellow of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC, 2008). She is also a member of the ESC Working Group on Atherosclerosis.
 
Hema leads the sandwich-year placement undergraduate course, with participating universities and well as a placement provider for the Nuffield Research Foundation. She is a qualified and CMI-registered coach and mentor within the University-wide mentoring Scheme.
 
Hema is an active member of the Yorkshire Consortium for Equity in Doctoral Education, where she is involved in mentoring doctoral candidates on their research journey.  She is very keen in bringing my research works on diabetes and drug discovery to commercialisation route, upon successful completion of my Michael Beverley Innovation Fellowship programme.

James Warren

Research Fellow

James Warren is a biomaterial scientist who is a chemist by background that moved into the field of soft matter hydrogels for regenerative medicine and biomedical applications during his PhD and subsequent post-doctoral projects. He has worked across multiple disciplines due to the nature of his work.
 
James has successfully developed novel peptide-based hydrogels and formed co-development arrangements with multiple companies around this technology as well as in the process of patenting a new formulation. He has experience in translating research from the lab to a prototype that can be employed for pre-clinical medical device trials.
Show

Useful Resources...

GET2 TEST

List of further reading –  Entrepreneurial Leaders

A field guide to the literature for Entrepreneurial Leaders

Entrepreneurial Leadership Pre-Programme Survey

Playing Big: For women who want to speak up, stand out and lead

Entrepreneurial Leadership – Nick Dearden and Lesley Dobree

Developing Creative Mindsets – Nick Dearden and Lesley Dobree

The Higher Education Policy Context – Josh Freeman, HEPI

More on entrepreneurial leadership and entrepreneurial universities – Nick Dearden and Lesley Dobree

Building Resilient Entrepreneurial Leaders – Adam Shore

Introduction to Ingenuity and Our Wicked Problem

University of Leeds Ingenuity Brief

Entrepreneurship education to improve the world:The role of the sustainable development goals to stimulate innovation in higher education – Professor Fernando Reimers

Educating Students for Climate Action: Distraction or Higher-Education Capital? – Professor Fernando Reimers

The 21st Century University – Bruno Tindemans

Useful Resources...

Presentations & useful resources will be posted here after each session. Watch this space!

Session 1: 6-7 November 2024 (In Person) 


Day One

09:00 – Arrivals and Coffee
09:30 – Welcome and Introduction to the Programme
10:45 – Break
11:00 – Entrepreneurial Leadership – Nick Dearden and Lesley Dobree
13:00 – Lunch and personal time
13:45 – Higher Education and Policy: a national perspective – Josh Freeman, Policy Manager, HEPI
15:00 – Break
15:15 – Developing Creative Mindsets – Nick Dearden and Lesley Dobree
17:00 – End

Day Two

09:00 – Arrivals and Coffee
09:15 – More on Entrepreneurial Leadership and Entrepreneurial Universities – Nick Dearden and Lesley Dobree
10:30 – Break
10:45 – Building Resilient Entrepreneurial Leaders: Growth Through Failure – Professor Adam Shore, Director of Liverpool Business School, Liverpool John Moores University
12:00 – Lunch and personal time
12:45 – Challenge and Problems – an introduction to developing solutions – Nick Dearden
15:00 – Break
15:15 – Reflection and key learning points.  Action planning and next steps
16:30 – End

See the timetable
Session 2: 21 January 2025 (Online)


09:00 – Welcome back and introduction to the day; project debrief and challenges encountered
10:30 – Higher Education, the Future Role and International Context – Bruno Tindemans, Chief Foresight Officer, Departement Werke en Sociale Economie
12:00-12:20 – Lunch; ponder on Bruno’s session and how it applies to ‘me and my work’
12:20-13:30 – Reflections, activity and next steps
13:30 – End

See the timetable
Session 3: 12 March 2025 (Online)


13:00-13:30 – Introduction and Welcome
13:30-14:30 – ‘Entrepreneurial Universities to Make the World Better’, Professor Fernando Reimers, Professor of Practice in International Education, Harvard University
14:30-15:30 – Reflection and discussion

See the timetable
Session 4: 19 March 2025 (In Person)


9:00-09:30 – Arrival and Coffee
9:30-10:00 – Welcome back and introduction to the final day
10:00-11:00 – Enhancing your Entrepreneurial skills to drive innovation and change, creating greater impact
11:00-11:15 – Break
11:15-12:45 – Professor Kevin Kerrigan, Deputy Vice Chancellor, University of Hull
12:45-13:30 – Lunch
13:30-15:30 – Presentations – recommendations to address the wicked problems
15:30-16:30 – Looking ahead – action planning and next steps
16:30 – End

See the timetable
Enquire about our courses today...
Study Day 5: 19 March 2025 (In Person)


09:00 – Arrivals and Coffee
09:30 – Welcome back and introduction to the final day
10:00 – Enhancing your entrepreneurial skills to drive innovation, change and create greater impact 
11:15 – Professor Kevin Kerrigan, DVC, University of Hull
12:45 – Lunch
13:30 – Presentations on recommendations to address the Wicked Problems; Next Steps
15:30 – Looking ahead; action planning and next steps
16:30 – End

See the timetable

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