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Top Management Programme: ‘a very powerful learning journey’

08 Jan 2026 | Advance HE Emma Bond, Pro-Vice Chancellor for Research and Knowledge Exchange, and a professor of socio technical research at the University of Suffolk, shares her experience of Advance HE’s Top Management Programme.

In this video, Professor Bond talks about her experience of the Top Management Programme, highlighting how senior leaders can work together in partnership to help solve some of the political challenges in today’s higher education environment. 

She says, “I felt very privileged to be able to go on the course and to have that space as a senior leader to actually think about and reflect on my leadership practice.”

For the international trip as part of the programme, Emma’s cohort visited the University of Copenhagen where the director suggested that, in terms of culture, he would introduce kindness as a promotion criteria, which Emma said was really inspirational for her because at the time she was revising promotion criteria at Suffolk.

She says, “I think going on the programme for me was a very powerful learning journey in that it helped me realise and consolidate the journey that I myself had been on at this university, and how lucky I was to be supported in my career throughout that, from teaching through to research and then into senior leadership.”

Watch the video interview in full below.

Applications for the next cohort of TMP are now open. Find out more 

We feel it is important for voices to be heard to stimulate debate and share good practice. Blogs on our website are the views of the author and don’t necessarily represent those of Advance HE.

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