The Business School will offer scholarships worth £22,500 to high achieving female MBA students in partnership with the Forté Foundation.
The Forté Foundation is a non-profit organisation that champions women’s progression within business through access to education.
The Forté Fellowships will be awarded to outstanding MBA candidates who demonstrate strong leadership skills through academic achievement, or in roles as team or community leaders, and show a commitment to helping women achieve their career potential through personal mentoring or community involvement. The Fellowships are open to all women applying to the Full-Time MBA programme at Imperial College Business School.
The scholarships form part of Imperial’s agreement as a new sponsor of the Forté Foundation, joining international business schools, companies and organisations around the world who are committed to working together to create more opportunities for women in leadership.
The Forté Fellows Program aims to increase the number of women applying to study for MBA programmes.
Women who are chosen as Forté Fellows by Imperial will receive a wide range of benefits including the opportunity to attend the annual Forté MBA Women’s Leadership Conference, the chance to extend their professional network to a community of more than 1,500 Forté Fellows across the world, and the chance to meet executives from companies inside the Forté network.
At Imperial we are committed to gender parity on all of our programmes because we know that having more women in leadership roles will have a long-term positive impact on business.
– Diane Morgan
Associate Dean of Programmes
As a Forté sponsor, Imperial College Business School will continue its work in increasing gender diversity by encouraging more women to pursue an MBA qualification and equipping them with the skills and confidence to fulfil their career potential.
Diane Morgan, Associate Dean of Programmes at Imperial College Business School is a Forté Foundation Board Member and a champion of the Business School’s efforts to support gender parity. She said: “Worldwide there is an under-representation of women pursuing postgraduate management education and this has a knock-on effect on the number of women who hold senior director roles within corporations.
“As a sponsor of the Forté Foundation, we can now reach out to more women across the world, and through funding Forté Fellowships, encourage more women to consider and apply for an MBA at Imperial College Business School. At Imperial we are committed to gender parity on all of our programmes because we know that having more women in leadership roles will have a long-term positive impact on business. Imperial is already making good progress on gender diversity, reflected by the 45 percent women currently studying on our Full-Time MBA programme which we expect will contribute to more women in senior roles in global business.”
Elissa Sangster, Executive Director of the Forté Foundation said: “We are delighted to welcome Imperial College Business School as a sponsor of the Forté Foundation. We hope that our alliance with Imperial will encourage more women to be inspired to apply for an MBA qualification and take advantage of Imperial’s wealth of expertise in science, technology and business.”
Imperial College Business School also runs a number of other initiatives to promote gender diversity across its programmes. These include the Dorothy Griffiths Full-Time MBA Scholarship for Excellence for candidates who demonstrate outstanding academic achievement and a drive for innovation, excellence and gender parity. The School also offers Executive MBA scholarships in partnership with the 30% Club, who aim for a better representation of women on FTSE100 boards. In addition, Imperial runs a number of professional development workshops that address the challenges and opportunities facing women in business.
The Forté Foundation is a non-profit organisation that seeks to launch women into fulfilling careers through increasing access to education and networking opportunities to build a community of successful business women worldwide.
More information on the Forté Fellowships can be found on the Business School's website.
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Laura Singleton
Communications Division
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