Biography

When Dr Susan Walsh opened the doors of Globe Business College Munich in 2006, she knew what she wanted to establish. Through her own background and experience, she had developed a concept of education with relationship between individuals, personal communication and networks being the key to both learning and development. It was time to put her realisation and insights into practice.

Born in Dublin in 1969, after school Susan attended the Dublin Institute of Technology, where she received a Diploma in marketing. Moving north to Belfast for a new job at Bank of Ireland, she simultaneously pursued an MA in marketing at the University of Ulster, Jordanstown. Having achieved that, she was subsequently recommended for a PhD.

Dr Walsh’s work adopted a qualitative, case-based approach as she was awarded a scholarship from the Bank to pursue the PhD. She spent four years studying the bank’s operational model, which illuminated how retail banks combine transaction, brand and relationship banking and marketing at the same time and with different customers. It was the genesis for what was to come.

After moving to Munich in 2004, she searched for ways to apply her ground-breaking ideas on the vital influence of the nature of relationships on education and their ability to prepare young adults for the future. Starting from square one in 2006, she step by step procured what was needed to offer her uniquely personal vision of, “one-on-one, customised education” to interested students in Germany. Given the prevalence of so-called “Mittelstand” companies in Germany and their needs in the broader marketplace, this was an inspired concept. It was the ideal opportunity to meld the Irish gift for communication with German thoroughness and exactitude – a winning combination.

Dr Walsh’s vision involves teaching students to engage in meaningful two-way communication, to understand how to build relationships with other business partners and clients and turn these into thriving networks that allow for mutual growth and profit. She is convinced that, in an increasingly automated, technology-mad and impersonal world, human contact and the relationships that surround business actors will become more and more vital to personal and professional success.

“It’s about the human being, human contact, human development” Dr Walsh asserts. “It’s also about empathy and the search for authenticity, that’s what we support, that’s what we represent.”

Based on her observations and experience gleaned at Globe College over the past decade and a half, Dr Walsh has been honing and developing her unique, relationship based model of education. In this digital age, she has also monitored technological developments and how they have irrevocably changed education and the way students absorb and process information. More than ever, she believes, the personal touch is crucial to create business graduates who know where they want to go, have the skills to get there and the network required to support them.

Click here to read Dr Walsh’s own thoughts on business education, disruption in the educational industry and the business model that is customised, relationship based education.