Executive Management Team

Professor Michael Harkin, Vice-Chancellor and Principal

Michael became Vice-Chancellor and Principal on 1 August 2019, having previously served for eleven years at the University as Deputy Vice-Chancellor. Michael holds an ex-officio post on the Corporation and serves as the University’s Chief Executive Officer, with specific responsibilities for making proposals to the Corporation on the educational character and mission of the University and for the management of budget and resources. In his previous role, Michael was responsible for Corporate Services and the development of the University’s estate. This followed an earlier career in both the further and higher education sectors and a commercial stint in the aviation industry.

The Vice-Chancellor and Principal is supported by the Executive Management Team.

The Executive Management Team (EMT) is the executive decision-making body for University College Birmingham. It supports the Vice-Chancellor and Principal in ensuring that:

• The University’s strategies, structures, systems and procedures provide academic programmes, support mechanisms and facilities that underpin a high quality, cost effective learning experience for students.
• Resources are properly managed to meet current requirements and to generate sufficient reserves to meet future needs.

Professor Helen Poole, Pro Vice-Chancellor (Teaching, Learning and Digital)

Helen oversees our higher education portfolio’s design, performance and quality standards. Following jobs across the criminal justice sector, including prison and probation services, she became a lecturer in criminology at Coventry University and was then Head of the School of Psychological, Social and Behavioural Sciences.

In 2016, Helen joined the University of Northampton as Deputy Dean of the Faculty of Health and Life Sciences before joining Staffordshire University as Dean for the School of Law, Policing and Forensics, then becoming Executive Dean of Justice, Security and Sustainability. As a result of her roles, she has managed a wide range of discipline portfolios and led on cross-institutional developments.

Helen remains an active researcher in criminology and completed a project on the use of digital forensics in child sexual exploitation cases. In relation to firearms, she co-led a large EU project, acted as consultant to the United Nations Office for Drugs and Crime Firearms Directive and has been published in international journals, as well as co-penning textbook Firearms: Crime, Consequences and Control.

Helen has an LLB Law degree from the University of Wolverhampton, an MA in International Criminology from Sheffield University and an EdD from University of the Birmingham. She also holds fellowship of the HEA and the National Council for Entrepreneurship Education and is a governor for a secondary school in Coventry.

Professor Gill Brown - Executive Dean School of Psychology

Gill is the Executive Dean of the School of Psychology, which offers a strong suite of applied programmes at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels and supports the employability skills of future psychology graduates. She previously worked as Head of the School of Psychology at the University of Bolton and has worked in higher education for over 15 years in both psychology teaching and leadership roles.

Prior to her academic career, Gill worked within the prison service providing psychological services to offenders and held the position of treatment manager of an offending behaviour treatment programme. She also has experience working within youth offending services and alongside forensic community mental health teams.

Her particular research interest is disparities in health service needs and treatment provision for ethnic minority groups, and her leadership of academic, research and treatment teams has allowed for the practical application of psychology, winning her the British Psychological Society (BPS) national award for innovation.

She also sits on the education and training board within the BPS and holds external roles relevant to curriculum development and quality enhancement and assurance.

Emma Smith - Executive Director - Further Education Quality Enhancement

Emma joined the University in November 2022, having already spent more than 20 years working in further education colleges and sixth form education across the region. As Executive Director – FE Quality Enhancement and Sixth Form Lead, Emma’s role at the University is to ensure that the quality of education for all students within the FE provision is outstanding. This includes our vocational programmes of study, apprenticeship programmes, access courses and T Level Qualifications.

Her career started in 1998 at North Warwickshire & South Leicestershire College where she spent a decade working with disadvantaged and disengaged young people who she supported into positive and worthwhile careers. In 2012 Emma moved to Birmingham and joined Birmingham Metropolitan College as Assistant Director, where she was responsible for improving the maths and English skills of young people and adults across the college. She later joined Cadbury Sixth Form College as Quality Director and Head of Curriculum in 2016.

In her strategic role within the University, Emma will also be leading the sixth form provision project as it moves towards a September 2024 launch, supporting students along a pathway of learning into the most up to date and interesting areas of study.

Bec Tigue - Sixth Form Centre Principal

Bec is Principal at the Sixth Form Centre at University College Birmingham. She has been in leadership roles in education for over 25 years, working in inner city schools in Liverpool, London and most recently as Head of School and then Director at the University of Birmingham School.

She is passionate about equity, diversity and inclusion and the power of education and opportunity to transform lives. She is an advocate for Character Education and was the first Character Ambassador of the Jubilee Centre for Research in Character and Virtues, is an honorary research fellow of the Centre, and completed her Masters in Education with a dissertation on Ethical leadership.

Bec hopes to combine her expertise in school leadership and character, with the wider learning and experiential opportunities available at UCB, to ensure sixth form students develop a life long love of learning, widen their horizons about what’s possible, and live purposeful and flourishing lives.