Ian Woodward is a Professor at INSEAD – the global business school, specializing in leadership, organisational behaviour and communication and is programme director for its flagship Advanced Management Programme. He has a unique combination of business, leadership and music experience.

 

Before academia, he served as a chief executive, senior executive and board member of major public and private organisations, especially in the energy utility and financial services sectors.  Despite the majority of his work being in business and leadership development, he is passionately interested in music.

 

His musical background includes classical music broadcasting, record production and performance. As a Society of the Arts Scholar at Trinity Grammar School, his initial musical studies were in piano, pipe organ and conducting; later working on musicology and composition at university. He taught music at colleges in Sydney, conducting Eisteddfod-winning choruses and ensembles; and was accredited with the Royal School of Church Music.  For many years, he was a regular broadcaster on, and then Chairman of Sydney’s classical music FM radio station.  He was a newspaper and magazine classical recording critic, including Australia’s nominating representative for the International Record Critics’ Awards and the Koussevitzky Prize for recordings over many years.

 

In 2007, with classical record label, Deutsche Grammophon he co-produced a five double-CD series dedicated to the legacy of legendary American conductor Arthur Fiedler.  He shares Fiedler’s musical philosophy, “that all music is good, if it is good of its kind.”  He collects musical philately and recordings.

 

Since 2008 his performance focus has been to create a series of special leadership and music sessions to bring classical music and contemporary business together – as an experience for the mind, heart, ears and soul. He has conducted these music and leadership sessions and performance with the MFO, as well as with orchestras like France’s Le Cercle de l’Harmonie, the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra, and Sinfonia Australis.