Background…
Dr Sarah Ivory is an educator, writer, and public speaker dedicated to ensuring university students develop critical thinking during their degree programmes. She works with students, universities, and related institutions.
Dr Sarah Ivory is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA) and has a PhD and MSc (Research) from the University of Edinburgh, an MBA from Melbourne Business School (including a semester at the University of North Carolina), and a BCom (Hons) from the University of Melbourne.
She spent nearly two decades as an academic at the University of Edinburgh Business School, rising to the position of Associate Professor, and holding posts in both Executive Education as well as Climate Change and Business Strategy.
During her academic career, Dr Ivory was the Director of the Centre for Business, Climate Change, and Sustainability (B-CCaS), a Visiting Professor at Melbourne Business School, Chair of the British Academy of Management Sustainable and Responsible Business special interest group, and served as an elected non-professorial member of the University of Edinburgh Senatus Academicus.
Prior to academia, Dr Ivory worked for a decade in the private sector in Singapore and Australia, and for an international NGO in the UK.
Media
Dr Ivory has been a regular presenter, panellist and media commentator on topics including university education, critical thinking, sustainability, and the business response to climate change. Her television appearances include BBC 24-hour News and BBC Reporting Scotland, while for radio she has contributed to BBC World Service, and BBC Radio Scotland.
University Teaching
Dr Ivory has taught courses and provided guest lectures in-person and virtually at universities in the UK, Australia, USA, Canada, France, Belgium and China, in Business Schools, Law Schools, Geosciences, Biological Sciences, Politics, and Social Sciences. Her wide-ranging topics have included critical thinking, study skills, leadership, strategy, global challenges, sustainability, climate change, environmental policy and organisational behaviour.
With extensive experience supervising undergraduate, postgraduate and doctoral dissertations, she has worked with students from multiple countries including the UK, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, South Africa, Canada, Ireland, Russia, Germany, Poland, China, Indonesia, Egypt, and Iran.
She has acted as faculty advisor for case competitions, including notably taking her team of four undergraduates all the way to the semi-finals of the John Molson Undergraduate Case Competition, at Concordia University, Montreal, Canada.
Executive Education
Dr Ivory is an experienced executive educator. Notably, she spearheaded the 3-year £1.5 million University of Edinburgh-NatWest Group Climate Change Education Partnership, with fundamentals training for all 65,000 staff, and in depth training for specific teams up to and including the Board of Directors.
Additionally, she designed and ran a two-day ‘Climate Leadership and Jobs Summit’ on behalf of Environment Leadership Australia, and delivered a ‘Climate Leadership’ programme to Scottish Power’s CEO and Management Committee, followed by a ‘Leading Climate Action’ programme for their second-tier managers.
Corporate Events
A popular contributor to corporate events, Dr Ivory has spoken at and MC’ed practitioner conferences, dinners, and staff forums at organisations including NatWest Group, Baillie Gifford, Crown Estates Scotland, Horizontal, Story, Royal London Group, and more.
Notably, Dr Ivory is the MC for the annual Ethical Finance Global Summit, organised by the Global Ethical Finance Initiative, which brings together financial leaders, policymakers, and practitioners from across the globe.
Academic Events
During her academic research career, Dr Ivory provided invited keynote addresses at universities including the University of Mississippi and Melbourne Business School. She regularly presented at academic conferences, including the Academy of Management, British Academy of Management, Aspen Institute Undergraduate Research Consortium, Australia & New Zealand Academy of Management, Scottish Educational Research Association, Chartered Association of Business Schools, and Australian Business Ethics Network. She is proud to have consistently supported Doctoral Symposiums at many of these conferences.
“Rather than passively impart information, Sarah encouraged vibrant debate within classes
and really encouraged us to think about the bigger picture,”
Publications
Dr Ivory has published two textbooks for Oxford University Press. Becoming a Critical Thinker (2021) has been adopted at universities across the globe and cemented her reputation as an expert in this area. Introduction to Management (2024), co-authored with Professor Emma MacDonald, aims to revitalise first-year management education, providing a critical yet approachable and engaging grounding in all the key areas of how organizations are managed, along with guided critical thinking exercises to develop this lens at the same time as the disciplinary focus of the book.
She has published academic articles in leading journals including the Journal of Business Ethics, Business Strategy and the Environment, and Organization. She has been involved in funded research projects including Teaching Critical Thinking in Business; Mapping Social Enterprise Governance; Study Skills Transition; Carbon Benchmarking Project; Pilot study of FTSE companies for proposed Climate Change Index; and Voices of Graduating Students.