Ken Simpson

Ken Simpson is a native of Scotland, where he was born and raised far too many years ago to want to tell you about. After three years of junior employment with a local Bank, he moved to New Zealand at the age of 19, there to continue his banking career for a further four years. A significant period of employment in the tourism industry followed, in Australia, New Zealand, and back in the UK, before he began his own travel agency business in the western suburbs of Auckland.

After ten years of self-employment, he joined the staff of what was then Carrington Polytechnic, now Unitec, which is where he still sources his main employment. He is currently director of postgraduate programmes in business studies in the Faculty of Creative Industries and Business.

During his academic career, he has progressed his own education to include an undergraduate degree in marketing, and a PhD in management and international business – his doctoral thesis was about citizen participation in local government strategy-making, so perhaps the ‘international business’ part is rather complimentary!

He and his wife still live in West Auckland (as does one son, the other and his wife moved to London three years ago), so he has mainained his ties with both small business and the Westie culture – as I suspect conference delegates may quite quickly find out!