Living authentic leadership of a global business during Covid | International Women's Day

Original Thinking Podcast

At this event, we are joined by Dr Emma Fitzgerald and Dr Jenny Rodriguez. Professor Fiona Devine, Head of Alliance MBS, will open the discussion.

Dr Emma Fitzgerald

Emma is a business leader with a passion for building great teams and bringing innovations to market to address the worlds big challenges.

Most recently she was CEO of Puma Energy focused on delivering affordable and sustainable energy solutions to emerging markets in Africa, Central America and Asia. Prior to this she ran gas, water and waste networks for National Grid and Severn Trent in the UK. She also spent many years running Downstream Retail, Lubricants and LPG businesses for Shell around the world. She has served on the boards of plc, privately owned and not for profit organizations in both an Executive and Non Executive Director capacity including Puma Energy, Severn Trent plc, Cookson Group plc, Alent plc, DCC plc & Windsor leadership Trust.

She is currently a Non-Executive director of UPM Kymmene, an innovative global paper & biomaterials business, Seplat Energy, an indigenous Nigerian Energy company which is dual listed on the London stock exchange and the Nigerian premium exchange, and Newmont Corporation, the recognised industry leader in the execution of principled environmental, societal and governance practices in gold mining. She is also an Expert Advisor for the World Economic Forum on acceleration of energy transition in developing markets and a Mentor on the climate workstream for the Creative Destruction Lab.

Emma holds a DPhil in Surface Chemistry from Balliol College, Oxford University and an MBA from Alliance Manchester Business School.

Facilitator: Dr Jenny Rodriguez

Jenny is Senior Lecturer in Employment Studies at the Human Resource Management, Employment Relations & Law Subject Area Group and member of the Work & Equalities Institute at Alliance Manchester Business School. Prior to joining Manchester, she worked at the Dept of HRM at the University of Strathclyde Business School and at Newcastle University Business School. Dr Rodriguez's research focuses on intersectional inequality in work and organisations, and the interplay between identity, work and regulation. She is particularly interested in the transnational experiences of skilled migrant women. She is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and an Academic Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development.

Dr Rodriguez is the Chair of the Equality and Diversity Committee at Alliance Manchester Business School. Between 2019 and 2021, she was Associate Head of Social Responsibility & Civic Engagement in the People, Management and Organizations (PMO) Division at Alliance Manchester Business School.

She is also involved in scholar activism as founding member of the Decolonizing Alliance, an international community committed to intellectual and practical collaboration, translation, active solidarity and resistance to tackle intersectional inequalities and neo-colonial power relations faced by people of colour in the Global South and the Global North.