Joel McConnell, Executive Director of Marketing, Recruitment & Admissions, Business School

“I’m part of the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Forum and am currently the co-Chair of Imperial 600, the College’s staff network for LGBTQ+ staff, postgraduate students and their allies.” 

Celebrating LGBT History Month

While my early career experience was in pharmaceuticals and financial services in both Canada and the US, I decided to work in Higher Education after completing my MBA at IE Business School in Madrid.

Since then I’ve held several senior director roles, primarily focused on leading market expansion and international recruitment, along with corporate partnerships and alumni outreach. I’ve been a bit of an avid learner too, having gone on to complete several postgraduate programmes and executive courses at school like Oxford’s Saïd Business School, Cambridge’s Judge Business School, and the Booth School of Business, at the University of Chicago.

While lifelong learning is certainly something I would recommend for everyone, it was at Oxford where I completed research on the future of global management education (known as GME in business school circles), and seen through the lens of scenario planning and looking forward to 2030. This work informed a lot of what I am now doing in my role as Executive Director of Marketing, Recruitment and Admissions at Imperial College Business School, and how my teams are working to deliver a really differentiated on-boarding experience as we scout the globe to bring the most competitive students to one of the Business School’s 18 postgraduate degree programmes, our doctoral programmes, and the Summer School.

In addition to the day-to-day work I do at the Business School, I am also an active participant in the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) Forum – an initiative led by Assistant Provost for EDI Stephen Curry, as both the Co-Chair of Imperial 600 and as an ally of other important diversity and inclusion initiatives across the College.

I also participate in the project board that is developing the new Study Site for the main Imperial web site, which is a multi-year undertaking that affects all faculties of the university. Getting to work with colleagues from across the institution is something I consider to be a very rewarding aspect of my work.

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