Introduce your self in three phrases or phrases.
I’m, at my core, “an educational entrepreneur”. My purpose is to form skilled destinies for at the moment and tomorrow’s challenges and create the suitable academic environments for that function.
In my imaginative and prescient, these challenges span throughout enterprise, human, and societal dimensions, the place abilities should discover their path each personally and throughout the broader financial and social panorama. This requires dynamic collaboration and engagement with varied stakeholders.
With my various background as a professor, researcher, director at a number of ranges, and as Dean for years, I’ve a powerful dedication to high quality enchancment and processes enrichment, each nationally and globally. I’m pushed by my private convictions on schooling challenges and I dedicate my power to innovating and serving in significant methods.
What do you want most about your job?
No yr seems like the previous one. Folks consider that the educational cycles are equivalent however in no way, after all! In 30 years of profession and throughout completely different establishments and positions, it has by no means been the case for me.
Furthermore, my job is on the junction of schooling, economic system and society, with a holistic imaginative and prescient worldwide. I believe what we do is without doubt one of the richest attainable actions and doubtless one of the vital impactful!
Greatest work journey/Worst work journey?
Actually, I consider that one of the best journeys are all the time these but to come back. As an educational entrepreneur, all what I’ve witnessed was on the identical time distinctive and invaluable. There may be all the time one thing to be taught, to know, and combine into your reflections and initiatives, and there may be all the time one thing completely different to expertise.
In case you might be taught a language immediately, which might you decide and why?
If I may lead a number of lives, I’d be taught a couple of language, a minimum of one per continent. Having solely three in my portfolio (French, English, and Arabic), I do know that languages are whole worlds and mastering many languages offers you the flexibility to create bridges and due to this fact the flexibility to behave and rework.
If I had to decide on just one language then, I’d say a programming language. At this time, machines are audio system with which it’s a must to speak as a result of they’re on the coronary heart of immaterial and social areas and environments. I’d like to have the flexibility to work together with machines in a deeper approach, as that is the language of at the moment too!
What makes you stand up within the morning?
Giving love, sense and power to my household and enriching my skilled group in a approach or one other, particularly the scholars who stay our function!
Greatest worldwide ed convention and why
As Dean of a triple accredited faculty, I take part in lots of worldwide conferences on enterprise schooling that typically permit us to share frequent challenges and establish rising matters and practices.
The final Annual Convention of the European Basis for Administration Growth (EFMD) in June 2024, which occurred in Bologna, Italy, was actually excellent from my perspective. It was hosted within the coronary heart of the historic metropolis, on the venerable College of Bologna, the oldest increased schooling establishment in Europe, established in 1088. The subject was “Navigating geopolitical tensions, AI, and fostering a human-centered future,” and it was imbibed with originality, imaginative and prescient and in a spirit of refoundation. It was really refreshing and provoking to share that second with greater than 600 attendees coming from all around the world.
Worst convention meals/beverage expertise
Thank God none! My choice is for home-cooked household meals so my expectations are comparatively restricted in that regard. However I respect the mental meals in the course of the conferences, and that is linked to the folks attending and the angle with which matters are tackled. What makes meals good may be very typically the corporate!
Ebook or podcast suggestion for others within the sector?
I extremely advocate studying the works of Edgar Morin, an excellent French sociologist and thinker who turned 103 years previous this yr. His holistic reflection, wonderful mental capacities and huge human expertise throughout the centuries and throughout the theories are really inspiring. Notably, he labored on the advanced thought and the thought of “reliances”, which is the flexibility to determine bridges past present classes and compartments. This dialectics of aligning variations and creating congruence past remoted rationales is without doubt one of the key challenges for any social and societal transformation.
Describe a venture or initiative you’re at present engaged on that excites you.
For 3 years, Excelia Enterprise Faculty has been engaged on the Blue Schooling Expertise, an enormous and world educational and institutional initiative focussing on the strategic useful resource of water. Water represents one of many key challenges that firms, the society at massive and the planet are going through. Our ambition is to extend college students’ consciousness, generate and disseminate data. We’re deploying in depth pedagogical initiatives geared toward creating cutting-edge data and enhanced competencies in what I name “inventive, sustainable, and entrepreneurial options for the long run”.
