A US-based Old Elizabethan and former senior executive of one of the world’s best-known companies met the Headmaster during a flying visit to QE.
Top management consultant Stuart Blinder (1961-68), former Chief Operating Officer with Unilever, approached QE because he was keen to bring his wife, his 13-year-old son and ten-year-old daughter to see where he had been educated.
“I was delighted to welcome Stuart and his family to the School,” said Headmaster Neil Enright. “It is always satisfying to welcome back old boys, especially when they have gone on to considerable success in their own field. We spent a very pleasant hour revisiting the older parts of the School and presenting the considerable building improvements and additions.”
“I didn’t want to cause any disruption and was looking for an informal visit,” said Stuart. He is based in Wilton, Connecticut, where he is a partner in Equus llc, who specialise in providing business solutions, particularly relating to the supply chain.
Stuart took his first degree, in Chemistry, at Birmingham University before moving to Manchester University, where he took a Finance and Marketing double major MBA from Manchester Business School.
He joined Unilever in 1973, where he undertook several roles. He faced a number of challenges, not least to create shareholder value at a challenging time. He achieved an all-time record high income that exceeded the prior year by 30%, with profits up by 35% the following year and double the year after that.
After leaving Unilever he was in constant demand as a supply chain consultant and worked for a number of companies Insight Consulting, Succendo and Lornamead N.A. Since 2008 he has been a partner with Equus IIc, a boutique consulting and advisory services firm in the Americas.
Because of a heavy work schedule, Stuart has few opportunities to visit the UK, but enjoyed his return to QE. “A late word of thanks to the School for making the time to take us round,” he said. “QE has clearly returned to top form, and congratulations on creating an exciting vision to keep it at the forefront of UK secondary education and in the process instil in the students a spirit of life-long learning and excellence in all they do as individuals and as members of teams.”
During his visit, he offered to provide support for former pupils when they are studying in the States, such as Ramsey Kobeissi, who is in his last year at Yale, and Joseph Vinson, a 2013 leaver who has a place at the same Ivy League university. In fact, since visiting the School, Stuart reports that he has already had an enjoyable meeting with Ramsey.