Five Minutes With… Stuart Brocklehurst

Stuart is Deputy Vice-Chancellor for Business Engagement and Innovation, University of Exeter

Tell us about your role at Exeter

My job is to translate our world leading research and education into impact, in support of our mission to make the world greener, healthier and fairer. This involves working with organisations outside academia – business and government, charities and international bodies – who can affect the change we seek to see.

Describe a typical working day

Cliché though it is, there really isn’t any such thing. In the course of a week I’d typically meet with many businesses, ranging from large multinationals to local businesses in Cornwall and Devon and academics setting up new start ups. These conversations can cover applied research the university can deliver, executive education and degree apprenticeship programmes, and licensing intellectual property. The conversations are, in the jargon, very much ‘mission driven’, they start from our objectives – greener, healthier, fairer – and then explore what we might do in partnership with those businesses to those ends. The revenue the work generates is, of course, important to the university, but it’s a secondary consideration: our prime reason to work with partners is to make a difference, to ensure our work has impact.

I spend a lot of time in London, and in between those business discussions meet with politicians and civil servants to explore areas of policy linked to the university’s work. I’m quite often on stage at events making speeches, and sometimes I’ll be heading off by train to attend international meetings – or indeed sometimes by plane for those further afield, but I try to minimise that. I’m involved with quite a number of boards and committees both in London and within the region, and I also get out and about to meet with councils, colleges and other organisations locally. I'm really keen to increase the university’s engagement in the South West, to extend our contribution to the life of the region. Part of that is ensuring we’re visible, so Saturdays and Sundays often see me attending civic ceremonies or events involving our students, such as those volunteering to help with Ten Tors.

What was your first job?

My very first job was picking fruit on a farm in Derbyshire for £5 a day – backbreaking work not entirely assuaged by the ability to consume the product as you went along. My first ‘proper’ job after university was with Barclays Bank, on their graduate training programme. This was a brilliant experience, learning to assess businesses as lending prospects, working on IT strategy, and spending a year in Ghana redesigning the operating model of the subsidiary there.

Best business advice you’ve been given

I’ve been fortunate to have many brilliant bosses over the years. At Visa our President Anne Cobb, an incredibly charismatic and elegant French woman, was insistent I should wear a tie with body armour and helmet when working in Baghdad just after the invasion in 2003. That might not itself be the best advice, but Anne’s conviction and sense of purpose has always stayed with me. There has to be a reason behind what you do deeper than profit margin or return on capital.

What advice would you give someone else?

I sometimes meet with groups of students, in the early stages of their careers or about to embark on them. I think it’s important to remember that a career is a marathon – if not an ultra-marathon – not a sprint. It’s easy to get sucked into a sense that each early move or slight promotion is of earth shattering momentousness, but it’s the experience and capabilities you build over time that matter.

Who do you most admire and why?

I was fortunate to meet, briefly, Nelson Mandela once. His vision, his capacity for forgiveness, his ability to deploy charm to defuse dangerous situations: I’m conscious he’s a far from original choice but for me he is that rare thing, a truly heroic figure.

* A print version of this article appears in the summer issue of Exeter Tomorrow magazine. Out next week.