Professor Rachel Ashworth reflects on her tenure as Cardiff Business School’s Dean

As Professor Rachel Ashworth concludes her tenure as Dean and Head of Cardiff Business School, we reflect on her impactful six years of leadership in this Q&A.

Since becoming the school’s first female Dean in 2018, Professor Ashworth has deepened its commitment to public value in research, teaching, and engagement.

She guided the school through the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic and led a celebrated review of the postgraduate teaching programme. Her leadership also saw the school achieve two prestigious accreditations with AACSB and AMBA, solidifying Cardiff Business School's reputation as a world-leading institution.

Cardiff Business School would like to thank Professor Ashworth for her leadership over the past six years. She steps down in mid-September 2024, with Professor Tim Edwards taking over the reins.

What are some of the most memorable moments or key achievements from your time leading Cardiff Business School?

Well, it’s been a bit of a roller coaster to say the least! I came into the role at a challenging time. Like many organisations, we were struggling with workload and wellbeing, and we were trying to address that when it became clear that COVID-19 was going to be a very significant concern for us. It was an alarming time for colleagues and students and as a School we had to try and respond quickly, keep in touch with everyone, and make the best decisions we could, without any real degree of foresight.

Public value remained at the fore, helping us to make decisions and prompting initiatives such as our Wellbeing Days. Despite the pandemic, we managed to embed public value, deliver our education, launch new programmes, gain the second of the triple crown accreditations, and retain our 4* research environment status in REF2021. I was shown so much patience and understanding throughout this time and I am grateful to everyone for that.  A huge effort went in from the whole School and I think we are still recovering to a degree.

As far as achievements go, these are made all day, every day by academics and professional services colleagues across the School. I had the privilege of seeing the scale and quality of our collective effort up close and it’s quite staggering. And the fact that we can make these achievements with such a high degree of friendship and collegiality towards one another is extraordinary. The best part of being a Dean is having a deeper insight into everyone’s work and being able to shout loudly about it.

Throughout your tenure as Dean and Head of School, you've emphasised the importance of public value in our research, teaching, and community engagement. Could you elaborate on what public value means to you and how you’ve been able to support the School in progressing its public value purpose?

Public value is about creating value for the common good. We need to make intellectual contributions and deliver educational outcomes, but the test of public value is whether any of this impacts communities and is important or relevant to them. These communities may be close to home or on the other side of the world, disenfranchised or powerful, but if we are not impacting them in some way then we are not delivering public value.

In my first month as Dean I met Huw Thomas, Leader of Cardiff Council who talked to me about a 13-year life expectancy gap between north and south Cardiff. The fact that your life is shortened because you live one mile in another direction in our home city should always shock and sadden us. Education and employment are key to addressing this. I have been able to make a small contribution on the Living Wage and decent work in the social care sector but across the School, academic and professional services colleagues are collaborating to address economic and social inequality, decent work, wellbeing, good governance, productivity, and sustainability and long may this continue.

What do you think your legacy will be as the first female Dean and Head of Cardiff Business School?

When I applied for the Dean’s position, I didn’t think I could attain the job because I had never seen a woman in that position so there is definitely something to the phrase: ‘if you can’t see it, you can’t be it’. So, I absolutely understand the importance of role models and I was pleased to be able to show that a woman could be appointed as Dean of Cardiff Business School. When I started, I was the only woman Head of School at Cardiff and often sat in meetings surrounded by men. We now have ten women Heads, so things are slowly improving, and of course we have Wendy Larner, our first female Vice Chancellor. Although, as she says, we took 140 years to get there.

Equality is a never-ending project. We have strong ambition and determination, but change is a slow process. I am pleased that we have our Race Equality Committee but there is a huge amount of work for us to do in that regard. Similarly so for gender, as the latest data on violence against women and girls shows. We have made some changes in the business school on the people side, but often we can only influence part of a process when the whole system needs to be examined and reimagined. So, I would like organisations, including our own, to be braver and bolder on equality.

As you conclude your term, what are your plans for the future? Are there new challenges or projects you’re looking forward to?

I am really looking forward to seeing Tim taking up the Dean’s position and to watching him, the members of our new Management team, and colleagues across the School continuing to take the School forward over the next period. I will be cheerleading and supporting in whatever way I can.

I start a period of research leave in October, which is going to be very exciting after several years in leadership roles. I am looking forward to playing a more substantial role in ongoing research collaborations and progressing some new studies over the next year.

I am also going to be making a small contribution in support of the development of the new University strategy in the coming months. Specifically, I will be helping with the thinking around our new ‘Global-Civic’ ambition and what this might look like. I will be able to take a lot of our public value thinking and learning into that work.

If you had to describe Cardiff Business School in three words, what would they be?

Warm, strong and purposeful.

Do you have any messages you'd like to share with the Cardiff Business School community?

The only message I have is one of the deepest thanks to my colleagues, our students and all our partners for all the support I have had over the last six years. It has been a privilege to be the Dean of a Public Value Business School and an honour to represent such a superb community of inspirational colleagues and students.