Co-founder: Harmonious Entrepreneurship Society
Dr. Felicity Healey-Benson (BSc, PGCE, MSc, MBA, DBA, FHEA)s an applied researcher, organisational development and learning specialist, and founder of Emergent Thinkers™. Her work brings together learning and capability, research, impact and evaluation, enterprise and innovation, sustainability, systems thinking and knowledge mobilisation.
Felicity has more than 25 years’ experience spanning industry, public services, organisational learning and development, higher education, professional learning, schools and community-based initiatives. Her practitioner background includes continuous improvement, organisational performance, systems implementation, workforce development and programme leadership, and continues to shape her approach to research and practice.
Her doctoral research used hermeneutic phenomenology to explore educators’ lived experiences of facilitating higher-order thinking. Her wider research and publication portfolio spans entrepreneurship and enterprise education, sustainability, professional learning, systems thinking and research methodology, including work on systemic entrepreneurial responses to sustainability challenges and the circular economy.
Felicity is particularly interested in how learning, culture, values and social context influence behaviour and change, and how education, enterprise and cross-sector collaboration can contribute to environmental and social value. Her recent place-based work in Llanelli combines research, impact and evaluation, stakeholder engagement and partnership brokerage, using participatory approaches to understand what is changing, surface different perspectives and translate evidence into practical insight. Through Harmonious Heroes / Arwyr Cydgordiol, she has brokered relationships between schools, businesses, community and civic organisations and creative practitioners, creating opportunities for young people to explore sustainability, enterprise and their local communities. Her wider ecosystem work uses participatory research and mapping to surface connections, gaps and opportunities across sectors.
Felicity previously served as Wales Operational Lead and Steering Board member for the six-country EntreCompEdu programme and led work supporting Dafen Primary School to become the first Global EntreCompEdu Pioneer School. Across her work, a consistent focus is translating research and ideas into practice, understanding and evidencing impact, and creating the relationships, learning and knowledge through which meaningful change can happen.
With Professor David A Kirby, she co-founded the Harmonious Entrepreneurship Society.
“I believe passionately entrepreneurship, and specifically a harmonious approach, is key to the transformation of our current learning ecosystem, and, specifically, can help promote new literacies and applied creativity and innovation in support of the UN’s Sustainability Development Goals”.
https://www.uwtsd.ac.uk/staff/felicity-healey-benson/
https://www.emergentthinkers.com/about-felicity
What People Say
David changed my academic life by his insightful thoughts during the last ten years. We held workshops on Entrepreneurial Universities in Turkey and Iran with @Hiroko_ENTR
Aidin Salamzadeh Faculty Member @ University of Tehran; Editorial Advisory Board @ The Bottom Line (Emerald)
David inspired my career. I was trained by him at a UKSEC bootcamp for #EntEd ers in 2005 after I was teaching Ent Finance for 5 years to expand my portfolio. I was delighted when he came to Egypt and I had thought provoking conversations with him
Shima Barakat Entrepreneur| Director| Academic| Mentor committed to growing sustainable entrepreneurial ecosystems
Felicity brings new energy, fresh thinking and years of practical thinking to entrepreneurship education. In particular, Felicity is asking new and old questions of the field, finding new answers and forcing us all to revisit our current assumptions.
Assoc. Prof Colin Jones, University of Southern Queensland & Author of ‘How to Teach Entrepreneurship’ (2019) & ‘How to Become an Entrepreneurship Educator’ (2020)
