Kathy Lewis, a familiar face at the Graduate School of Business (GSB) over the past four years, returned to the school this month as the new associate director of Executive and Management Education (EME).

Lewis' ties with the GSB go back to 1999 when she first joined the school as executive assistant to director Professor Nick Segal. After a short time in that role, she was appointed general manager of finance and operations, but left in 2000 to run her own consultancy.

She remained a regular in the GSB corridors, however, and was enlisted to help with numerous tasks. In this capacity she was project manager of the GSB's EQUIS self-assessment (a 160-page report in the end) when the school sought accreditation from the European Foundation for Management Development (EFMD) in 2002.

Lewis was also familiar with the school's EME unit, which oversees programmes designed specifically for individual companies, when she acted as academic sponsor for one of the Old Mutual programmes offered by the GSB.

As executive director of EME, she plans to integrate the programme's open and tailored courses, and will consolidate the department's relations with existing corporate clients, such as Old Mutual and the Insurance Sector Education and Training Authority (INSETA).

"The school has fairly deep relationships with many large corporates and this job is a lot about managing these relationships, both in terms of servicing the clients effectively and in terms of the design and delivery of programmes," she noted. "In addition, there are increasingly more such clients and relationships coming into the GSB."