Maureen Meadows
Warwick Business School
I joined NatWest O.R. Group in 1987, after completing my MSc in Management Science and O.R. at Warwick Business School. I chose to take the MSc following my maths degree, having decided that I did not want to be a maths teacher or an accountant (!), and feeling that I wanted to gain some business experience.
I spent six years at NatWest. The first five years were in the O.R. Group; this was a great introduction to organisational life, as I worked on a wide range of projects and business problems across the bank. Like many O.R. teams, the O.R. Group at NatWest was seen as an excellent source of ‘bright young people’ who would move onwards and upwards into the organisation. So, in my final year with NatWest, I chose to move into a strategic marketing role in the personal customer division, where I was considering issues such as market segmentation and delivery strategies, with a particular emphasis on [the then]‘new’ channels such as telephone and computer banking.
I took these areas of interest with me when I moved to Warwick Business School in 1993. My first lectureship was temporary (as I had no experience of academic research, I had to acquire some new skills that I had not practised at NatWest!), but I am happy to say that I became a permanent member of staff quite soon afterwards. I find that a major challenge of academic life is trying to balance my time between teaching, research and administration (as I am now Course Director for the MSc course that I took myself some years ago). However, as a mother of two young children, I am used to having multiple and conflicting demands competing for my attention! Our teaching group in Operational Research and Systems provides modules for MBA, Masters, PhD and undergraduate students, and I contribute to all of these in different ways. My research allows me to look at the contribution that O.R. makes to strategic marketing issues in the financial services sector.
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