HES celebrates doctoral and entrepreneurial journey

What a remarkable few months it has been for Felicity, which the Harmonious Entrepreneurship Society is delighted to celebrate. First she successfully defended her Doctoral thesis on 14^th February, 2023, then she received her Doctoral Certificate, dated 5^th May, her late father’s birthday, and on 11^th July she finally graduated at a joyous ceremony held in the new Swansea Arena. In between, on 6^th July, she was the third prize winner at the Learned Society of Wales prestigious Early Career Researchers Network Colloquium. This was for her exceptional research and presentation skills demonstrated by her poster presentation on Harmonious Entrepreneurship and its contribution to a prosperous Wales.

Very much an academic Mumpreneur, Felicity, of the International Institute of Creative Entrepreneurial Development, UWTSD, is not only the co-founder of the Harmonious Entrepreneurship Society (HES) and Harmonious Entrepreneurship Ltd, a spinout of the University of Wales Trinity Saint David, but she is the founder of Emergent Thinkers.com, in which she also interviews leading entrepreneurship educators in her “mind behind” interviews. This is how she and I first met. Additionally, she is co-founder of hanford.NL a learned society dedicated to phenomenology. Her Doctoral Research adopted an interpretive phenomenological approach to understand and interpret the experiences of Higher Education educators facilitating higher-order thinking. She is looking forward to presenting papers on her findings at the European Conference on Educational Research, Glasgow University next month, EE UK’s Conference being held at Surrey University in September, and at the ISBE Conference in November.

Apart from playing a vital role in shaping and fuelling the vision of HES, helping make it a powerful force for positive change through entrepreneurship, Felicity has also been closely involved with EntreCompEdu and, as a Parentpreneur, introduced it to Dafen Primary School in Llanelli. Not only did the teachers and pupils learn a great deal about entrepreneurship and sustainability from the project but they enjoyed the experience, and the school was awarded special whole school pioneer status by EntreCompEdu out of the 750+ participants from 52 countries. Commenting on the event Dame Nia Griffith, Shadow Secretary of State for Wales, said “A big well done to everyone involved and good luck with helping to share your experiences both across the UK and worldwide”.

Entrepreneurs are doers – they make things happen. This is typical of Felicity. She enthuses and energises those around her and I, for one, am very much looking forward to her future contributions. I know she has several projects in the pipeline, including a co-authored and edited book on “Phenomenology in Networked Learning”. So as well as congratulating her on her achievements to date we wish her continued success, and look forward to celebrating many more change making achievements in the future.

As the Brazilian novelist, Paul Coelho, says, and Felicity demonstrates, “The world is changed by your example not by your opinion”.

David

Professor David A. Kirby.