International Advisory Board

Previously Sue was Managing Director for Santander Business for Santander UK joining Santander Corporate and Commercial Banking in 2011 as the Divisional Managing Director of Corporate in the North before moving to the role of Divisional Managing Director for North West and Yorkshire with Santander Retail Banking in January 2014. From September 2015 she was Programme Director of Banking Reform for Retail and Business banking and which led to a large scale transformation programme for SME within Santander Retail and Business Banking in the UK. 

Sue’s previous role within the Royal Bank of Scotland Group as Regional Director, Corporate Banking for Yorkshire and the North East.  Prior to then, Sue held a number of senior leadership positions across SME and Retail Banking where she has been responsible for major change management projects and business performance. 

Sue is actively involved in the diversity agenda and was instrumental in establishing the Women in Business network for Santander nationally. 

Sue is in named as a Northern Power Woman influencer- a collaborative campaign to accelerate gender diversity from the North of England. In 2018 she was recognized in the FT HERoes Top 100 Champions of Women in Business list. 

She is an Advisory Board member of the Sheffield University Business School and a member of the UK Finance Commercial Products Board.

Her appointment at JGU started in 2013 with getting leave for obtaining the position of Director and CEO at the EA European Academy of Technology and Innovation Assessment in Bad Neuenahr-Ahrweiler, Germany, until 2017. Before 2013, she had been Full Professor of Technology and Innovation Management at Michael Smurfit School of Business, University College Dublin, Ireland, and Director of its Innovation Research Unit IRU. Furthermore, she was Research Fellow of the Engineering Systems Division at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge/USA. 

She started her professional career with studying Social Sciences at the University of Hamburg, Germany. At Free University Berlin, Germany, she received her PhD for a study on Artificial Intelligence, and got her habilitation at the University of Bielefeld, Germany, for a study on simulation in Science and Technology Studies. 

Her main interests in research and teaching are the mutual relationship of new technologies and society, inter-organisational innovation networks, and agent-based models as methodological innovation in the Social Sciences. 

Petra won various research prizes, has long experience in coordinating and completing international, mostly European research projects, publishes inter-disciplinarily in international journals, and has been awarded with fellowships of various scientific societies such as the German Academy of Technical Sciences acatech or AcademiaNet, the network of excellent female scientists in Germany.

He has maintained his links with the university over many years. He had a long career in industrial R&D having reached the post of Executive Vice President for the Strategic Science Group at Unilever Plc, retiring from the company in 2016 after 32 years’ service. Currently, Jim is a Strategy, Technology and Innovation Consultant as well as being an Honorary Professor of Innovation Management in the Haydn Green Institute (HGI) for Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the University of Nottingham. 

He brings a wealth of experience in innovation, strategy development, data and digital systems and sustainability to teaching and consultancy. In his business career he led pioneering initiatives on computer and data modelling, Total Quality Management (TQM), innovation management and breakthrough innovation Unilever Ice Cream.  From 1996 Jim had a leading role in sustainability of natural resources, GHG’s and Waste and he headed up the drive in Unilever to set up the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) as a trail-blazing example of industry-NGO partnerships tackle environmental challenges. He was a key player in setting up the Colworth Science Park and was a director there from 2009 until 2014. 

Through the Nottingham University Business School Jim teaches on MBA and Executive Education programmes. Also, he mentors and supports the Research and Innovation team to connect and engage with the Food and Drinks industry. In the Ingenuity Centre he uses his extensive external network to connect the start-up companies and entrepreneurs to the right agencies and experts to support the development of their business models. Currently, he chairs the Careers and Employability Forum which strives to enhance the success of Nottingham students in the graduate job market. As an honorary professor in Food Science he lectures to both undergraduate and Masters students on innovation including product and process technology. 

A Chartered Physicist (C Phys) since 1989, Member of the Food Research Panel of the Chief Scientist of the UK (2008-13), having held previous positions as Advisory Member for the MAFF/DTI LINK programme on innovation and Vice President of Euro-Glace industry body for Ice Cream in Europe.  

On social commitment Jim is currently a member of the board of governors of St Bede’s Interfaith Middle School in Cambridge and in terms of personal interests he is a fan of Rugby Union especially the Six Nations Championship. He reads widely on many topics including history, historical fiction, psychology, crime, leadership and management.

As Provost, he headed up Bentley's progress to university status and EQUIS and EDAMBA accreditations. AACSB and NEASC accreditations were reconfirmed during this period in addition. In line with his university-wide role, he held a joint appointment as Professor in the Information & Process Management and Sociology departments. He is currently an Associate Director of the European Foundation for Management Development (EFMD) Quality Services, Brussels, Belgium and also an Honorary Visiting Professor in the University of Loughborough's School of Business & Economics in the UK. Previously, he was Professor of Information Systems and Research Director in the Department of Information Systems at the London School of Economics (LSE). Before joining LSE, Galliers served as Lucas Professor of Business Management Systems and Dean of Warwick Business School in the UK, and earlier as Foundation Professor and Head of the School of Information Systems at Curtin University in Australia. He has held Visiting Professorships at the LSE; King's College, London; Brunel University (UK); the Australian School of Business, University of New South Wales; Bond University, Australia; Hong Kong City and Polytechnic Universities; University of St Gallen, Switzerland; University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa; National University of Singapore, the European Institute for Advanced Studies in Management, Belgium and INSEAD, France. He serves on the international advisory boards of a number of business schools, including those at the University of Tilburg in The Netherlands; Turku University, Finland and the National University of Ireland, Galway. He was a member of the EFMD's EQUIS Accreditation Board for the period 2009-2016 and serves on the Chartered Association of Business Schools (UK) Management Committee for its Academic Journal Guide since 2012. He holds an AB (honors) degree in Economics from Harvard University; a Master's degree with distinction in Management Systems from Lancaster University; a PhD in Information Systems from the LSE, and an Honorary Doctor of Science degree from Turku School of Economics & Business Administration, Finland. He is the editor-in-chief of The Journal of Strategic Information Systems; one of eight leading IS journals recognized by the Senior Scholars of the Association for Information Systems. He is a Fellow of the British Computer Society (FBCS), the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA), and the Association for Information Systems (FAIS), of which he was President in 1999. He received the AIS LEO Award for exceptional lifetime achievement in IS in 2012. He has published approaching 100 articles in many leading international journals on information systems and management (e.g., MISQ, JAIS, JMIS, ISJ, EJIS, JIT, BJM and LRP), and has authored or co-authored 13 books, including - in the Critical Perspectives on Business and Management series - "The Routledge Companion to Management Information Systems" (Routledge, 2017) and "The Routledge Handbook on Management Information Systems" (Routledge, 2015), together with, "The Oxford Handbook of Management Information Systems" (Oxford University Press, 2011); "Strategic Information Management" 4th edition (Routledge, 2009); "Exploring Information Systems Research Approaches: Readings and Reflections" (Routledge, 2007); "Rethinking Management Information Systems" (Oxford University Press, 1999), and "IT and Organizational Transformation" (Wiley, 1998). His research is transdisciplinary in nature, focusing primarily on organizational innovation/transformation and the associated management of change issues; the processes and practices of information systems strategizing; organizational knowing, and the intra- and extra-organizational impacts of information & communication technologies. He has been keynote speaker at more than 60 major international conferences and symposia including the European Conference on IS; the Australasian Conference on IS; the Scandinavian Conference on IS; the UKAIS Conference, and the Mediterranean Conference on IS. He has supervised 27 PhD students to completion (including 5 at Bentley) and his work has been cited over 11,000 times according to Google Scholar.

He has extensive experience at leading global teams, developing strategy and delivering solutions to address business and technology issues. 

Prior to joining Allstate, John led Citi's delivery centre in Belfast, providing IT, Operations, HR, Legal, Finance and Risk Services to the broader Citi group as one of 27 global delivery centres in its global network. Before serving in this position, John held senior management roles as head of technology and as a business unit manager for Citi, as well as senior roles at Grafton Recruitment, Liberty IT, J P Morgan Chase, St George Bank Treasury and Merrill Lynch. 

John joined Allstate NI in January 2016 as Managing Director responsible for over 2,400 employees based in Belfast, Derry and Strabane.  He was promoted to Vice President in July 2016. 

John is the Executive Sponsor for the Women in Technology at Allstate (WITA) and the Embrace (LGBT) network.  External to Allstate NI he is a Women in Business Diversity Champion. 

John is President of the Northern Ireland Chamber of Commerce, a member of the Queen’s University Employers’ Forum, is a school governor and is chair of the Business in the Community Place Leadership Group. 

John earned his Bachelors and Master’s degrees in Engineering and Computer Science from Queen's University Belfast.

He brings together real estate and financial skills, successfully bridging understanding and communication between the two. 

He has led transactions involving sophisticated financial structures including private finance initiative (PFI) and public private partnership (PPP) deals. He strives to solve problems and bring fresh ideas to any situation. 

Frequently working with the public sector, Paul identifies how real assets can be utilised more effectively to provide greater efficiency and increase value for money. Assignments have included critical review and analysis of real estate holdings to reduce running costs and identify assets surplus to requirements for disposal. 

Paul has extensive experience of real estate and corporate workout providing bank advisory services. He has been a Licenced Insolvency Practitioner and has acted on a significant number of cases as a Fixed Charge Receiver / LPA Receiver to maximise recovery on behalf of institutions in situations of stress and distress.

As a result, Laura has significant audit experience across a variety of industry sectors and has a wide portfolio of clients.  She is responsible for the audits of several large groups of companies and also acts as reporting accountant for many different companies. 

Laura is a graduate of Queen’s University Belfast, Ulster University and admitted as a Fellow of Chartered Accountants Ireland in 2016. She holds a Master’s degree in Advanced Accounting and is a Member of the Institute of Directors, a Council Member for Confederation of Business Industry, non-executive/Trustee for Belfast Waterfront and Ulster Hall Limited and non-executive/Trustee for Co Ownership Housing.

Prior to this he held the position of Non-Executive Chairman of the Board of Directors of Warner Chilcott from June 2005.From 2000 until January 2005 he served as Executive Chairman of Galen Holdings Ltd. 

John graduated from Queen’s with a first-class honours degree in Pharmacy and a PhD in Pharmaceutical Chemistry and was appointed to a Lectureship in the Department of Pharmacy.  He was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from Queen’s University in 2006. John has retained close ties with Queen's.

In 1998, Stephen became Managing Partner of PricewaterhouseCoopers, following the merger of Coopers and Lybrand with Price Waterhouse, until his retirement in 2007. He is currently the Principal of Stephen Kingon Associates - Chartered Accountants, and holds several non-executive positions including Allied Irish Bank (UK) plc.

He is a former Chairman of Invest Northern Ireland; the Ulster Society of Chartered Accountants; the NI Chamber of Commerce; Business in the Community NI; and the Institute of Management Consultants. Currently, he is Chairman of the NI Centre for Competitiveness; Northern Ireland Electricity and the Balcas Group of Companies. Stephen also serves on the Board of the Belfast Harbour Commissioners. Stephen is a member of Senate and Pro-Chancellor of Queen’s University.

In the academic year 1982/83 he became the inaugural President of the Queen's University Accountancy Society.  On 26 September 2018, Feargal was awarded Managing Partner of the year at the British Accountancy Awards 2018 in London, and was commended “for going above and beyond by demonstrating the highest levels of innovation, business strategy and quality of service”. 

In June 2012, Feargal received the prestigious All-Ireland Award from the Institute of Management Consultants NI Region and the Institute of Management Consultants and Advisors (Ireland) in recognition “of his significant contribution to business and public life in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland over the past 20 years.” 

Under his leadership PKF-FPM, which he founded in 1991, has grown significantly in size and influence.  It now operates out of 5 locations with over 120 employees across the Island of Ireland and has won many national and regional awards. Feargal was elected President of Chartered Accountants Ireland at its 130th Annual General Meeting in May 2018.

He is a leading expert on strategy and change in both the public and private sectors. 

He launched his career with a highly-regarded ten-year study of chemical company ICI, connecting economic business research with a broader sociological approach. He has revolutionised the study of organisational development by combining historical, political and social contextual information with statistical and quantitative data. 

Andrew’s current research interests include the management of strategic change processes within organisations and the relationship between leadership, change and performance. 

Andrew’s background in sociology and anthropology, where contextual and historical study are vital, informs his research methodology. Andrew believes that his work is to ‘catch reality in flight’ and to ‘give time to time’, encouraging researchers to emulate historians and ‘reconstruct past contexts, processes, and decisions’. 

Alongside his pure research, Andrew is concerned with practice and has been engaged internationally in consulting and advisory roles, from consulting on strategic change and management in the NHS to working with the boards of top corporations. He is Chairman of the Academic Sounding Board for McKinsey’s worldwide organisation practice. 

Andrew also studies the processes, practices and performance of collaborative academic research, addressing the ways business schools and researchers themselves deal with decision-making, innovation and strategic change management. He works with both the European Foundation for Management Development (EMFD) and the UK’s Economics and Social Research Council (ESRC) to understand and improve research in the social sciences and management. 

Andrew is author or co-author of 15 books and over 100 journal articles. He is recognised within the management community as one of the foremost researchers and practitioners in strategy and change management. 

In 2003 Andrew became only the third business school professor to be made a Fellow of the British Academy. He is a Fellow of both the British Academy of Management, and the US Academy of Management. He is also the only non-North American to be named a Distinguished Scholar of the US Academy of Management. He is the recipient of a Richard Whipp Lifetime Achievement Award by the British Academy of Management, and in 2009 he was awarded an OBE for services to higher education. 

Andrew has a degree in sociology at Liverpool University, and a PhD in industry sociology from Manchester Business School. Andrew lectured at Yale before returning to the UK, where he launched the Centre for Corporate Strategy and Change at Warwick University in 1985 and served as Dean of the University of Bath’s School of Management until he joined Saïd Business School in 2008.  Andrew has been awarded honorary doctorates from the University of Linkoping in Sweden (1989), University of Liverpool (2010) and Copenhagen Business School (2010). 

Her research focuses on trade theory and trade policy analysis.  Her papers have been published in The American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, Journal of International Economics, The World Economy, among other and various books. She is one of the lead authors and coordinator of World Trade Report (WTR) and WTO-WB publications on trade and poverty.  She is author of "A Practical Guide to Trade Policy Modelling" and "An Advanced Guide to trade Policy Modelling." She has served the WTO Dispute Settlement in several Panel and Arbitration cases. Her work has been covered by The Economist and Le Monde. 

Prior to joining the WTO in 2000, she was lecturer in economics and statistics at the University of Southampton and research fellow in the research division of Confindustria. She also has been teaching at the University of Geneva and LUISS. She holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Southampton. 

In addition to providing regular analysis internally at the bank, Richard is a frequent economic commentator in the media and a regular columnist in newspapers including the Belfast Telegraph and Irish News. As one of the leading voice on issues related to the Northern Ireland economy, from the property downturn and credit crunch in 2007 to the present day, Richard can also often be heard speaking at high profile events. He blogs at the website UlsterEconomix.com and tweets from @Ramseconomics 

Richard is currently a member of the Department of Finance’s Statistical Advisory Committee and was formerly a member of the Department of Finance’s Ministerial Advisory Committee for Public Sector Reform.  

Before joining Ulster Bank, Richard spent 10 years in the public sector – including spells as Principal Economist at the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Investment (DETI) and with Invest NI. He also held a number of economist posts within the Department of Finance & Personnel. 

Richard is a graduate of Loughborough University with a BSc in Economics & Human Geography and an MSc in European Economics and Finance.

She has more than 20 years of experience as a senior U.S. government official, as the first Senate-confirmed Assistant Secretary for Technology Policy in the U.S. Department of Commerce in the Administration of President George H.W. Bush, and as the Assistant Director for International Affairs in the White  House Office of Science and Technology Policy in the Reagan Administration.  She served as a Senate confirmed member of the Oversight Board of the Internal Revenue Service in the Administrations of President George W. Bush and President Barack H. Obama. 

Ms. Wince-Smith is also the President and Founder of the Global Federation of Competitiveness Councils (GFCC), engaging leaders from competitiveness organizations from around the globe.  Ms. Wince-Smith is a member of Corporate and Non-Profit Boards of Directors, Advisory Committees, and Philanthropic Organizations.  She previously served on the Smithsonian National Board, the Secretary of State’s Committee on International Economic Policy, the U.S. Naval Academy Foundation and, the Board of Governors of Argonne National Laboratory.  She served as Chairman of the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Competitiveness and as a Public Director of NASDAQ-OMX.  

Ms. Wince-Smith currently serves as a Commissioner on the Commission on the Theft of American Intellectual Property, as a member of Purdue University’s Strategic Research Advisory Council (SRAC), and as a member of the Council of Japan’s Science and Technology in Society (STS) Forum.  She serves as a member of Marquette University’s External Advisory Board for Corporate Engagement, as a member of the Queen’s University International Advisory Committee for the Management School, as a member of UNICEF’s Advisory Group, as a member of the Advisory Board of the Delphi Economic Forum, and as an Independent Advisor to Delos Living, LLC.  She also serves on the Board of Directors of the Mycenaean Foundation, and as a Trustee of the American College of Greece (ACG).  As an expert in technology commercialization, Ms. Wince-Smith serves on the Board of Directors of Aerolase, Inc., NanoMech, Inc., and Q-Net Security, Inc. 

Ms. Wince-Smith graduated magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Vassar College and earned a Master’s Degree in Classical Archaeology from King’s College, Cambridge University.  She received an Honorary Doctorate in Humanities from Michigan State University, an Honorary Doctorate of Public Administration from the University of Toledo, an Honorary Doctorate of Law honoris causa from the Queens University Belfast, an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters honoris causa from Worcester Polytechnic Institute and, most recently, an Honorary Doctorate of Public Service from the University of South Carolina. 

Ms. Wince-Smith is married to former Deputy United States Trade Representative Ambassador Michael B. Smith and resides in McLean, Virginia.  Her two sons are graduates of the U.S. Naval Academy and are currently serving as officers in the U.S. Navy and Marines Corps.

She has also been a research fellow for the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts, London and an external consultant for the NI Assembly, the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills London, the EU, World Bank and was an Advisor to the NI Minister for Finance and Personnel on public sector reform. 

Nola is currently a Senior Fellow of the UK Enterprise Research Centre and a UK Thought Leader for the UK Economic and Social Research Council and Innovate UK on the development and integration of social science in science policy, a member of the Assessment Panel for REF2021 and an elected council member of the UK Chartered Association of Business Schools. 

She has been a visiting Professor at the National University of Singapore and acted as external examiner at the University of London, Warwick University, University of Nottingham, NUI Galway, Aston University, University College Dublin, University of Limerick and University of Ghent, Belgium. 

Her research focuses on the dynamics of innovation ecosystems in an international context, innovation, technology transfer and networks with an emphasis on small and medium enterprises, business strategy and technology adoption. 

She has been involved in over 25 externally funded research and consultancy projects worth in excess of £4m, the most recent being an Irish HEA-funded 3 year project on the computational analysis of innovation policy. This research is published in the leading academic journals including Research Policy, Technovation, Small Business Economics, Scottish Journal of Political Economy, International Small Business Journal, Regional Studies and the American, Journal of Technology Transfer.

Sonia has over 25 years’ experience of working in Higher Education at Queen’s University Belfast, and was appointed to School Manager, Queen’s Management School, in 2005.

A member of the School’s Senior Management Team, responsible for the development of plans and policies to enable the School to deliver its key strategic objectives, with specific responsibilities for finances and resources. Sonia leads the Professional Services Team in the School.

She is a member of the Association of University Administrators.