Siân is the editor of BusinessBecause, a website that publishes content about graduate management education and postgraduate business careers. She leads the editorial strategy for the site, managing a team of writers and content producers.
1. Can you give us a bit of your “back story”? What led you to your current career path?
After university, I had a two-year stint as an English teacher at a high school in Japan. That set the tone for the next two decades as education has been a strong thread throughout my career. For around six years, I was the group editor of four publications for teachers in the UK. Then as I raised my daughters, I worked as a freelance writer and editor for magazines, websites and newspapers, mainly focusing on the education and health domains.
One of my regular clients was Times Higher Education, where I eventually worked as Content Director of its global summits. There, I oversaw the content for HE events all over the globe (and endured the flip to online events during the pandemic).
But around two years ago I happily returned to publishing, taking up the reins as editor on BusinessBecause.com – a website dedicated to inspiring prospective students into business education. More recently, I was appointed Head of Editorial for BB’s parent organisation, the Graduate Management Admission Council.
2. Can you share your most interesting business school story from the last 12 months? What made it stand out?
This is a tough question. In my role, I hear and read great stories of innovative approaches to business education every day, as around half of BusinessBecause’s content is produced in partnership with global B-schools.
To name one recent standout, IMD‘s work to build an AI assistant to help students personalise their learning and interact with course content and the school’s research is pretty smart.
But then I also enjoy hearing about business schools that put teaching the triple bottom line (profits, people, planet) and the SDGs at the heart of their curricula.
Quite a few Indian business schools are strong at this. SOIL Institute of Management has a purpose and values-led curriculum, for example, teaching its students mindfulness and how to be ethical leaders by doing things like regular experiential learning at NGO social innovation projects.
3. What are your dos and don’ts for business schools pitching to BusinessBecause?
Number one is to know that we write for business school candidates, or people who are curious about entering a business career but still working out the best route into sectors such as tech, finance or consulting. We’re not writing for deans or programme directors but rather for your future students.
We’re keen for inside information on the application process or who your class profile is. Surveys or reports that may affect prospective students’ decisions on where, what or how to study are always of interest.
Interesting research about 21st-century business or customer trends is also useful. New programmes are less likely to get coverage – unless they’re doing something no other business school has ever thought of doing.
4. What are the top 3 things business school communicators can do to make your life easier?
Send a clearly written press release to news@businessbecause.com with the headline story in the intro. Send early so that we have time to arrange coverage. Include a couple of photo options. (And please don’t email us repeatedly – we’ll follow up if it’s of interest!)
5. Are you working on any exciting new projects you want to tell us about? How will they benefit your readers and can business schools get involved?
We are currently drawing up plans for our candidate guides series for next year. These cover all aspects of application, helping take the stress out of what can be quite a challenging process.
There will be opportunities for schools to participate in these by sending in quotes that answer specific questions.
Additionally, we’re starting a ‘Hear From The Experts’ series, where our readers can learn about a specific business topic from an academic or expert (so perhaps something that they might learn about at business school such as design thinking, but explained in layman’s terms).
Finally, we have another new series called ‘My Business Story’ where we want to share the startup stories of business graduates.
Feel free to contact sian@businessbecause.com if any of these are of interest!