NEWS | CELEBRATING ENGINEERING SUCCESS AT ANNUAL DINNER

Widening participation in a successful scholarship scheme which has supported hundreds of engineers to become leaders in their field was the main theme of Lord Sainsbury of Turville’s keynote speech at this year’s Engineers in Business Fellowship Annual Dinner.

Thirty-seven years ago, Lord Sainsbury established the Sainsbury Management Fellows (SMF) scheme, an MBA scholarship that provides significant financial support to young engineers with leadership potential to acquire business skills at top international schools so that they can help companies improve innovation and business growth.

Today, there are 414 Sainsbury Management Fellows, including those now at business school.

Together, they have co-founded hundreds of businesses collectively worth more than £5 billion and have created more than 21,000 jobs in the process.

Speaking at the Annual Dinner, Lord Sainsbury touched on plans to encourage applicants who are financially less confident to apply for the scholarship and to amplify the success of the scheme by extending it to young people who chose sciences as their first degree.

Changes to the scheme are set to be officially announced in the coming months. Lord Sainsbury said: “What was originally a scholarship programme has developed into a dynamic organisation which shows young people the exciting and rewarding career opportunities in combining engineering and business.”

He added: “We will be announcing the launch of a new MBA scheme for scientists later this year.

“This is not because I have become less keen on engineers becoming managers, but because I have discovered, probably many years after everyone else, that many young scientists and medics are now enthusiastic about setting-up their own enterprises. And this is something that I think should be encouraged.”

The Engineers in Business Annual Dinner was attended by 120 guests including Sainsbury Management Fellows, other business leaders, prominent figures within the engineering fraternity, enterprise professionals from universities who are part of the Engineers in Business Competition and EIBF sponsors.

Find out more about the Sainsbury Management Fellows MBA scholarship.