Women empowered on their career paths

Randa Bessiso is the managing director of Manchester Business School Middle East in Dubai. Here she talks about getting more women on boards, executive education and the Financial Times business school rankings.

There has been a lot of discussion about women's representation on boards. What is your take on this?

Business education is an enabler for empowering women. It is absolutely a tool to help fulfil the vision to increase the number of women on boards. I believe it is happening, I know it will happen. I do see from experience that women on our business [programmes] tend to do very well. Many actually finish the MBA and use the tools to start up their own businesses. Arguably there is no glass ceiling if you own your own business, and good business education will support you to do that. We are extremely happy that in this intake - we recruit twice a year - we've witnessed an increase in the proportion of women on our programme rising up to 18 per cent. We are hoping to get it in the 20s and we are working towards this in a number of ways.

Many highly educated women leave the labour market when they marry or have children. How can that be addressed?

Our MBA programme or DBA [doctorate of business administration] is flexible, part time, it doesn't get in the way of business, your work, family. There isn't an excuse any more for progressing in higher education. The transformation in technologies has made it possible for us now to do business from the kitchen if we want to. Almost all the conferences I've been to [argue] we need legislation to empower women. If we want to do it, we go ahead and do it - we don't wait for society to give us regulations to empower us. We set the example and make sure that it's visible to enough relatively young women to inspire them.

You have also just introduced executive education to this part of the world. What prompted that?

We partnered with Dubai Knowledge Village and Dubai International Academic City to do research across the GCC countries. We asked [about] skills gaps and the requirements. Top areas that were suggested were with leadership, business planning and strategy. Our findings were translated into bringing a number of the expertise areas of MBS on bespoke, customised basis. It's part of the school's strategy to strengthen its relationship with the region. We are looking to expand our portfolio of programmes next year. Again, it's market-led in response to what [corporate] community has told us.

The FT business school rankings were announced last month. Manchester Business School moved up.

We've always been in the top 50 [but] we moved to 29 - that's exciting news. The DBA programme has consistently been number one for the past few years. The region represents 25 per cent of all DBA intake, [which] only accepts 30 students worldwide. So I feel proud about that. Hopefully we will have our very first graduation in Dubai at the end of this year. It will be the first graduation outside Manchester. Traditionally graduates go to the UK every December and July. We are bringing Manchester here.

lgutcher@thenational.ae