Gavin Bell - AGSM Advisory Council Member

AUTHOR: Editor   DATE: 03.11.04   ISSUE 3, 2004
A role on AGSM’s Advisory Council is something of a return home for Gavin Bell, who completed an executive MBA at the school in 1996.

The chief operating officer of leading law firm Freehills, Bell says his position on the Advisory Council continues not only his association with AGSM, but that of his firm.

“I’m keen to play a part in helping the school maintain its leading position.”
Photo: Gavin Bell

“I enjoyed my MBA and got a lot of value out of it so on a personal level I’m keen to play a part in helping the school maintain its leading position,” he says.

“Also, Freehills has had a long association with AGSM in various ways – several of my partners or board members have had roles there as lecturers and academics and the firm has also been a substantial sponsor over the years.”

“At a purely commercial level we gain by that association – the AGSM is Australia’s premier school and I think it’s in our interest to be aligned with that.”

Bell says that AGSM is also facing some of the same issues which confront professional services firms such a Freehills.

While there might not seem, at first glance, to be many similarities between a school and a law firm, Bell says both are “largely professional services organisations” and are facing similar challenges.

“Australia is a relatively saturated market for professional services, there are a lot of law firms here for example,” he says.

“AGSM has had a dominant position and there are now other schools out there which are offering similar sorts of courses.

“So both the law firms and the school are looking towards Asia and how they might capture some of the market up there, so there’s an opportunity for the school to learn from what the law firms have done and vice versa.”

Being an alumni and now in a leading management role, Bell also hopes that his experience can help provide a “real link” between the academic and the practical.

“I think those links are extremely useful and I think over the time the Advisory Council is likely to make use of a few more people like me, who have been at the school and who have put into practice what they have learnt here,” he says.