Interview with Margaret Fletcher

The 50th AIB UKI conference at the University of Aston Business School saw you receive two certificates of recognition for your service. One from the AIB UK & Ireland Chapter for your long-standing service and one from the Women in AIB shared interest group for organizing WAIB speed mentoring sessions for five consecutive years.
 
What was your first AIB UKI conference you attended? What was your first impression?

2002 – where I joined the doctoral colloquium. I was very early days in my doctorate, returning to work after family time out. I had been a lecturer in entrepreneurship in the 1990s at The University of Stirling.
 
When did you get involved with the AIB UKI chapter in a formal role? Can you tell us more about the role?
 
I joined the AIB UK executive board as doctoral colloquium convenor 2012-2017, following on from Marian Jones and Anna Morgan Thomas who were previous DCs when a new role was created on the board early 2000s. This involved running the DC each year at the conference with in the region of 30-40 doctoral researcher attending each year. Students were allocated senior academic panelists in small groups of 3 or 4, who provided feedback. An innovation was the creation of two tracks A and B. The former  is for students who have completed data collection, the latter for early stage. These provide much needed support in the IB field for PhD students outside of their host institutions and access to the academic network. It aimed to become inclusive and encourage diversity in the research field. For example we saw an increase women PhD students attending the annual conference.
  
You became the co-opted diversity representative on the AIB UKI board in (please fill in year). What initiatives did you introduce? What inspired those initiatives?
 
I became Equality and Diversity officer and member of the executive committee from 2018 to 24. I launched the first UKI WAIB speed mentoring event at the AIB UKI conference University of Sussex 25-27 April, 2019. I have chaired and organized the sessions each year since, and recruited and training co-chairs to support the events. These have included Rose Narooz, Noemi Sinkovics and Melanie Hasslett. Each year in the region of 20 mentors and mentees attend the event. We have a blog and special session information on the annual conference WEB.
 
In  2018 I was chair for the Teaching in IB track and hosted a teaching café in AIB Minneapolis. In 2019 at  AIB Copenhagen, I met with Daira Panina who was interest in setting up the Teaching and Education SIG, which I then joined. I incorporated  the T&E SIG role as regional representative for UKI.  I am very keen to support doctoral researcher and early career academics. Many of the challenges that emerged from the WAIB mentoring sessions are with regards to balancing research, teaching and administration. Teaching has a key role in developing an academic career in business schools, and the AIB T&E SIG  has developed a wealth of pedagogy and teaching content to support IB educators. In 2023 at the AIB UKI conference we launched our first teaching cafes and in 2024 I chaired the first T&E Track with Stefan Zagelmeyer.
 
As I stand down  from my membership the AIB UKI, I am delighted that we have great support to continue these initiatives.
 
When did you become a member of WAIB? Which was the first WAIB event you attended?
 
I became a member of WAIB quite some time ago, probably when I attended my first AIB world conference in Milan in 2008, or a few years later. There was a special panel that I attended that was very interesting and innovating, raising gender related issues and career paths. I was a WAIB mentor for the first time at the Minneapolis conference in 2018. I was so impressed I liaised with the organizer, Saba Colakoglu to host a session for UKI. 
 
From the AIB UKI community, who inspired you the most? Who would you say are your role models?
Being based at Strathclyde and Glasgow Universities my key role models there were Professors Stephen Young, Marian Jones, Pavlos Dimitratos and Simon Harris. I owe them a lot. Stephan and Pavlos were my PhD supervisors, Marian became my ESRC post doc mentor and Simon my longstanding career mentor.