Heather McGregor
Most leadership pipelines still produce a narrow band of talent that looks and thinks alike, and the boards that authorise the spend cannot explain why the numbers have not moved. The gap is rarely intent. It sits in how succession, promotion, and capital are actually allocated, and in whether senior leaders are equipped to govern those decisions with conviction.
Heather McGregor helps senior leaders and boards turn diversity ambition into measurable governance practice, drawing on her record as a business school dean, listed-company director, and founder of the Taylor Bennett Foundation.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Heather McGregor
- She has built the institutional machinery that other organisations cite. The Taylor Bennett Foundation, which she founded in 2008, remains a reference point for ethnic diversity in UK communications, and the 30% Club steering committee she helped found reshaped how FTSE boards talk about women’s representation.
- She speaks from the inside of a listed-company boardroom, not from the outside. She has served as Independent Non-Executive Director and Audit Committee member at IGT since 2017, which means her governance and risk arguments are tested against fiduciary duty.
- She runs a business school, having moved from Executive Dean of Edinburgh Business School to Provost and Vice Principal of Heriot-Watt University Dubai. Her view on executive development is shaped by curriculum decisions, not anecdote.
- She has 17 years of weekly Financial Times writing as Mrs Moneypenny behind her, plus three Penguin books on careers and personal finance. The clarity of argument is built in.
- A Dame and Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, with prior CBE for services to diversity. These are credentials that travel in board conversations where credibility is the constraint.
Biography highlights
- Provost and Vice Principal, Heriot-Watt University Dubai; previously Executive Dean, Edinburgh Business School.
- DBE, 2023 New Year Honours, for services to education, business and heritage in Scotland; CBE, 2015, for services to business and diversity.
- Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.
- Independent Non-Executive Director and Audit Committee member, International Game Technology PLC, since March 2017.
- Founder, Taylor Bennett Foundation; founding member, 30% Club steering committee.
- Financial Times columnist as Mrs Moneypenny for 17 years; author of three books published by Penguin and Portfolio.
Biography
The Taylor Bennett Foundation was set up in 2008 to address a specific failure: the UK communications industry was hiring from a narrow demographic and could not explain the pattern of its own succession. Heather McGregor founded it from inside her own executive search firm, alongside University of East London and Brunswick Group. It is now cited by more than 200 supporting organisations and remains one of the most concrete institutional answers to a problem most companies still describe as aspirational.
That instinct to convert intent into operating practice runs through her career. She spent eight years as a sell-side analyst with ABN Amro across London, Hong Kong, Singapore and Tokyo, then bought and ran the executive search firm Taylor Bennett for seventeen years. Her Financial Times column under the name Mrs Moneypenny ran weekly for the same period, alongside three Penguin books on personal finance and women’s careers, including the bestselling Career Advice for Ambitious Women.
In 2016 she moved into higher education as Executive Dean of Edinburgh Business School at Heriot-Watt University, and now serves as Provost and Vice Principal of the university’s Dubai campus. The portfolio also includes a non-executive directorship at IGT (now Brightstar Lottery), where she sits on the Audit Committee, and earlier work chairing Career Academies UK. The Royal Society of Edinburgh elected her a Fellow, and she was made a Dame in 2023 for services to education, business and heritage in Scotland.
What she brings to a leadership room is the rare combination of practitioner, governor and educator on a single set of questions: how organisations actually promote, govern and allocate capital, and how those choices either widen the talent pool or quietly narrow it.
Key speaking topics
- Inclusive leadership and women’s progression
- Board governance and audit committee priorities
- Executive development and the modern MBA
- Diversity as a measurable operating outcome
- Personal financial literacy and women’s wealth
- Leadership careers across sectors and geographies
Ideal for
- FTSE and listed-company boards, nomination and audit committees
- CHROs and heads of talent owning succession and diversity targets
- Business school audiences, MBA cohorts, executive education programmes
- Senior women’s leadership networks and ambitious mid-career professionals
Audience outcomes
- A sharper sense of what diversity programmes need to look like to survive board scrutiny
- A working view of how governance, audit, and remuneration shape who actually rises in an organisation
- Practical reference points from the Taylor Bennett Foundation and 30% Club on what has and has not worked
- A direct read on financial literacy as a leadership capability, not a personal-finance topic
- Confidence to make the case for the next promotion, board seat, or capital decision