We are pleased to announce that we have awarded Professor Claire Massey lifetime membership to SEAANZ.

 

A former SEAANZ President (2003), Professor Massey has retired from Massey University (NZ) after 27 years of service. Her career spanned the development of entrepreneurship as a discipline in New Zealand, a field in which she achieved national and international recognition. Her focus was to examine the economic and social contributions of SMEs to the New Zealand economy. Early on, she co-authored the seminal textbook, Small and medium-sized enterprises: A New Zealand perspective.

 

On a national level, she became a leading academic authority on SMEs and played a critical role for the dissemination of research through academic, public policy, media and practitioner-oriented presentations. She founded and led the NZ Centre for SME Research (2000-2009) and was called upon regularly to contribute to policy making discussions that sought to better understand SMEs and find ways to effectively support them. One of her earliest contributions was to communicate the futility of ‘a one size fits all policy’ towards SMEs given their heterogeneity.

 

On the global stage Claire was Senior Vice President of the International Council for Small Business (ICSB) and was selected as a Wilford White Fellow. She also served as academic chair for the ICSB 2012 conference which was held in Wellington, NZ. Claire actively encouraged international scholarly collaboration through her own publications, and through the NZ Centre for SME Research where international scholars that visited or worked continue to contribute to the small business field today. These include David Smallbone, Maura MacAdam, Michael Schaper, David Deakins, Martina Battisti, Kate Lewis, Hernan Roxas, Amanda Williams and Tanya Jurado.

 

We are delighted to be able to continue to draw on Professor Massey’s expertise as a Lifetime Member of SEAANZ.