Dr. Michael J. Barnes describes himself as 20^th century Banker and 21^st century educator. Till 1999, he worked in an international banking sector and 2000, he entered full time academia. On July 18^th, 2016; he was appointed as the Principal and Chief Academic Office of The British College, Kathmandu. After working 25 years in an international banking sector with reputed institute like Wall Street in New York, The World Bank in Washington DC and various other banks from around the world he decided to switch his career.

“I realized that I really enjoyed learning and my brain needed some recharging after 25 years of the banking job.” He continue, “After completing m doctorate in 1999, I was hired in the position of  Assistant Dean for Action Learning in Weatherhead School of Management of Case Western Reserve University (Ohio) and I did not want to go back to banking.”

He completed his education from top universities such as London School of Economics and Political Science, Stanford University Graduate School of Business and Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve University. After travelling and working in more than 701 countries, he now hopes that Nepal is his last. He shares’ “After the earthquake last year, the international community offered a huge amount of aid. However, most of it could not be channelized and went to the wrong hands due the lack of management skills and other reasons.”

He added, “Therefore I wanted to help Nepal in my own little way by building human resource and mitigating the loss of talent through my current position. Further I was also curious to travel and explore Nepal after reading and knowing about it.

In current position as the Chief academic officer and Principal of The British College, he responsible for dealing with the student affairs, Human resource department and education programmes. He says, “The academic programmes are already standard and are of high quality. Now my role is more focused on tightening up the overall management of the college and this keeps me quite busy.”

According to him, he has daily interactions with the faculty, students and alumni and making sure everything is well managed. “I am reorganizing the management and setting up new departments to tighten up the programmes. “, he shares. His vision is to prepare the students to be globally competitive which is aligned the goal of the educational institution itself.

He expresses, “I used to share with my students in Ohio, if you are selling dresses in the middle of Ohio from a small shop and your customers are paying you in dollars, you are in the middle of a global economy. “ Most of the materials that you are selling is imported from various countries and once you are dealing with a cross border transactions, it depends on foreign exchange.”

 He explains that everyone has to be global in today’s dynamic world. Lastly he concludes, “If you are not thinking global you are not in business.”

Source : The Himalayan Times