Dr. Jacqueline Drake

Associate Research Fellow

Dr. Drake received a BA from the Exeter University (Economic History, 1972), MBA from Cranfield School of Management, Cranfield University (one of the earliest UK women MBAs, 1976) and PhD from Cranfield School of Management, Cranfield University (Management Development, 1982).

She is an experienced university lecturer and student supervisor who has been working with MBA and MSc Programmes for 35 years at leading European post-graduate educational institutions. These experiences include:

2007 - ongoing

•      Visiting Fellow, Cranfield School of Management, Cranfield University, UK

•      Visiting Faculty, Mannheim Business School, Mannheim University, Germany

•      Visiting Professor of Communications and Organisational Behaviour, CIIM: Cyprus International

1996 - 2007

•      Director, The Praxis Centre of Leadership Development, Cranfield School of Management, Cranfield University, UK

•      Senior Lecturer in Organisational Behaviour, Cranfield School of Management, Cranfield University, UK

1981 - 1996

•      Lecturer in Organisational Behaviour, Cranfield School of Management, Cranfield University,

In addition, Dr. Drake has also been actively engaged with many client organisations during this period, developing solutions to meet their unique requirements, e.g., Leadership Development Programmes for Unilever (1988-1989, 1991-1992), Porsche (1986-1987), BASF (2014); Team Building Programmes for IBM (2007), Allianz (2010), The Natural History Museum (2007, 2011) and L’Oreal (2013) etc.

Dr. Drake has always run a small consulting company in parallel with school activities. She once successfully pitched for the opportunity to set up a new company Virgin Learning for Sir Richard Branson and then converted that into a potential joint-venture with Cranfield School of Management which led to the setting up in 1995 of the Praxis Centre for Leadership Development as a wholly-owned profit centre within the School. She set the direction of the Centre through three major innovations:

•      Introduced psychotherapy into leadership development as a supportive route to help managers change their mindset by overcoming limiting beliefs and personal blocks to effectiveness.

•      Introduced health and well-being as a legitimate concern for organizational managers in the UK through taking a holistic approach to curriculum design that integrated exercise; medical health checks; massages; meditations into the programmes.

•      Introduced arts-based management development, particularly theatre, and set-up a joint-venture with the Globe Theatre in London running leadership courses based on Shakespeare’s plays.

At Nanjing University, Dr. Drake teaches the innovation and entrepreneurship course “The Entrepreneur’s Journey” in spring semester in 2020 and 2021 and is going to deliver this course in the following spring semester along with another two courses “Career Development” and “Presentation Skills for Delivering Academic Papers” to students at the School of Earth Sciences and Engineering.