Women in Leadership

Professor Sue Vinnicombe, CBE Susan's research interests focus on the lack of women in leadership and specifically on corporate boards, women's leadership behaviours and the issues involved in women developing their executive careers. Susan was Founder Director of the Cranfield International Centre for Women Leaders from 1999 to 2016 and the Deloitte Ellen Gabriel Endowed Chair in Women's Leadership at Simmons College, Boston, USA from 2013-2016. She and her co authors produce the annual Female FTSE Board Report, which she launched in 1999 and is regarded as the premier research resource on women directors in the UK and is renowned globally. She has written ten books and over one hundred articles, reports and conference papers. Susan receives regular recognition worldwide and was honoured in 2016 by the International Women's Forum as a woman who has "Made a Difference" in the world and become a Companion of the Chartered Institute of Management in the UK. Susan was also named in the HR Magazine Most Influential Thinkers, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2021 and has been inducted into the Thinkers50 Management Hall of Fame in 2021 (founded in 2009, the Thinkers50 Hall of Fame honours the legacy of an elite group of thinkers whose work has had a profound and lasting influence on the world of management). Susan has been presented with the Richard Whipp Lifetime Achievement Award by the British Academy of Management. She was a member of The Lord Davies Steering Committee on Women on Boards between 2010 and 2015 and a member of the Advisory Board of the Sir Philip Hampton/Dame Helen Alexander Review on the lack of women in the executive pipeline 2016- 2021 and that of Sir John Parker’s Review of the lack of ethnicity on FTSE 100 boards.

Susan was awarded an OBE for her Services to Diversity in the Queen’s New Year’s Honours List in 2005 and subsequently awarded a CBE for her Services to Gender Equality in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List in 2014.