Bernadette has been Managing Director of Common Purpose Germany
since April 2011. She joined the team of Managing from WHU-Otto
Beisheim School of Management, one of Germany's leading business
schools, where she ran the Executive Education department for four
years including the Kellogg-WHU Executive MBA and the customised
programmes.
She has been active in higher management education worldwide for
over twenty years. When WHU was founded in 1984 as one of the first
private business schools in the country Bernadette helped to build
up the international programmes and corporate relations. She then
moved on to Brussels in 1990 and for ten years managed the European
Foundation for Management Development (EFMD), a large international
non-profit organisation serving the stakeholders of management
education: business schools, universities, corporations,
consultancies. Under her leadership EQUIS was introduced, an
international strategic quality audit for business schools which
has established itself as one of two global accreditation
systems.
In 2000 Bernadette founded InterContext, a Brussels-based
consulting company for organisational and human resource
development, with a focus on Higher Education institutions. Her
work concentrated on strategy development, internationalisation,
executive education, leadership and management development in
universities. Roles included, among others, Vice President Europe
for Duke Corporate Education and for many years Senior
Adviser to the European University Association (EUA). In the area
of Executive Education her particular interest is in "out of the
box" approaches to leadership and management learning.
Her academic background is in political science and communication.
She studied in Italy, Germany and Belgium and obtained her Masters
degree from Université Libre de Bruxelles. German born, she works
in four languages and started her career as a political editor and
journalist on international affairs, writing for major German
magazines (Wirtschaftswoche, GEO, manager magazin).
