Dr Judith Shawcross has been the Head of Executive and Professional Development at IfM Engage, part of the Institute for Manufacturing (IfM) at the University of Cambridge since 2012. Judith’s focus is the design, development and delivery of highly customised and impactful professional development programmes for corporate clients and Universities using the extensive expertise available at IfM. She led the design, development and delivery of a programme for talented technology experts that enables them to become technology leaders that won the prestigious 2018 EFMD Excellence in Practice Silver Award in the “Professional Development” category for the Learning and Development partnership with Atos and Paderborn University. This programme continues to this day, evolving as required and has now run 20 times.
Judith completed her PhD (part-time) in 2018 focusing on Professional Skills Development during the IfM ISMM Masters programme. Applying an Engaged Scholarship approach this work resulted in a skills development model and a method for describing skills that supports teaching, learning and communication across organisational and stakeholder boundaries.
Prior to joining IfM Engage Judith undertook a mix of teaching, training and research roles at IfM in the fields of Technology and Innovation Management and Transferrable Skills. Before joining IfM, she was the Course Director of the MSc in Science Entrepreneurship at Cass Business School. Previously, Judith worked at the Manchester Science Enterprise Centre developing and delivering innovative Enterprise programmes and she has 14 years industrial experience in a major UK science and engineering company where she held a variety of roles. She has a PhD from Cambridge University, an MBA from Manchester Business School, a BEng (Mechanical) from Bristol University as well as multiple certifications including Emergenetics.