Director of Membership & Professional Development, IET

Policy Fellow Alum, Centre for Science and Policy

As Director of Membership and Professional Development, Michelle is responsible for the direction of all member-facing services within the IET, with control of a £16M budget. She is responsible for strategy development and implementation, stakeholder management, profitability, strategic alliance partnerships, marketing and international operations. In this role Michelle has developed and implemented strategies and business plans covering registration and standards, accreditation of degree programmes and company professional development schemes, professional development, MPD marketing, education 5-19, membership & customer services, membership recruitment & retention and membership communities. In February 2011 she was given additional responsibility for the India and China office operations, and secured the commitment of the Trustees to ongoing investment for the next three years.

She chairs the IET's "Professional Home For Life" strategic programme board, which has been addressing members' needs at particular career stages to ensure that the IET is relevant to them in the 21st century. She has also been directly responsible for the creation of new membership packages such as "Graduate Advantage" and "Career Advantage" launched in 2011, and introduced the IET "Academic Partner" scheme which has recently been extended into China.

Michelle has 10 years experience of managing complex military projects and commercial medium and high volume product development and manufacturing. She was Britain's Young Woman Engineer of the Year 1990, and she has served as EC(UK) Board Member and Trustee (2002 to 2006 and 2009 to date), a member of the WISE (Women Into Science and Engineering) National Committee (2000 to 2011), Chairwoman of the Institution of Incorporated Engineers Council (1998 to 1999), and Chairman of the IIE Academic Accreditation Committee which included assessment of engineering courses in Singapore and Hong Kong. In May 2011 she gave evidence to the Government's Skills Commission.

Michelle visited Cambridge in November 2011 and January 2012 to discuss the following questions with senior figures in other disciplines and in the University administration:

• How can a Learned Society such as the IET be most relevant to academia and policy makers in the 21st Century? What mechanisms for creating and managing partnerships and relationships are effective?
• What contribution does the IET have to make to issues such as smart metering, electric vehicles and connected health (teleheath and telemedicine)? Where is it appropriate to seek to establish thought leadership on the engineering and technological aspects of such issues?
• How can (or should) such thought leadership reach policy makers and the public?
• What are the pros and cons of the open access model for knowledge exchange?
• In what ways will India, China and other "rising powers" influence the mission of the IET?
• What are the appropriate strategic responses by the IET and other players to the threats and opportunities presented?
• How should the IET's role in standards-setting adapt to the changing environment?
• How does the University of Cambridge manage the process of outreach to potential engineering students in under-represented sectors of the population?