African Leadership University

GCU’s Professor Pamela Gillies CBE Joins ALU’s Advisory Council

Professor Pamela Gillies CBE, Principal and Vice-Chancellor of Glasgow Caledonian University (GCU), has joined ALU’s Global Advisory Council. Regarded as one of the UK’s most dynamic and innovative universities, GCU and ALU have partnered to develop the ALU curriculum. GCU has an excellent track record of getting its graduates into employment, 96 percent of its graduates are employed within six months of graduation.

Professor Gillies is also a Founding Trustee of the Grameen Scotland Foundation which has brought the Grameen model of microfinance to the UK in partnership with Tesco Bank. She is also a Board member of INTO GCU, the Foundation College for the University and officiates at the graduation of over 2700 engineering students from their partnership University College, the Caledonian College of Engineering which has been operating successfully for 17 years in Muscat, Oman. Professor Gillies is also a founding Board member of the Grameen Caledonian College of Nursing in Dhaka, Bangladesh where the University has operated in partnership with the Grameen Healthcare Trust since 2010.

As Vice-Chancellor of the first Scottish University to have a postgraduate campus in London, Professor Gillies is a member of the London Higher Group of Universities and is also President of the University’s New York Campus, the first British University to become established in the City of New York. Pamela was awarded the honour of Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (CBE) for services to education and public health in December 2012. She was elected a Fellow of the Faculty of Public Health of the Royal College of Physicians of London in 2002; a Fellow of the Academy for Social Sciences in 2005; a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 2015 and became an Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of Glasgow in 2007.

Previously a Pro-Vice Chancellor at the University of Nottingham, Pamela has worked in Geneva as a member of the World Health Organisation’s Global Programme on AIDS (1989-90); at Harvard University as a Visiting Professor in Health and Human Rights (1992-3); as a Harkness Fellow of the Commonwealth Fund of New York; and in London on a seconded post as the first Executive Director of Research at the Health Education Authority for England (1996-99). She is a founding patron of a school for children of sex workers in Domjur, Kolkata and has researched and written widely on HIV/AIDS, health development, and inequalities in health focusing on the potential of social action for health.

ALU is honoured and privileged to have Professor Gillies on our Global Advisory Council. We are confident that her work in education will be of tremendous value in strengthening ALU’s curriculum and will help us achieve our mission to develop the future leaders of Africa.