Associate Professor Grace McCarthy

Coaching for business

With years of real world industry experience, Associate Professor Grace McCarthy was well prepared to develop the trailblazing Master of Business Coaching degree at UOW. 

As Dean of Sydney Business School, UOW, and Acting Executive Dean of the Faculty of Business, McCarthy proudly takes responsibility for promoting excellence in undergraduate and postgraduate programs at Sydney and Wollongong. 

“A meandering path best describes my life’s journey to date, one full of people who have enriched and inspired me,” she said. 

That meandering path includes time spent doing a postgraduate qualification in library and information studies and, subsequently, setting up a library for the research and development centre of a manufacturing multinational company. It also includes time spent as Manager of Business Excellence for BICC Cables Ltd, as the Customer Services Executive for BICC Communications, and as European Director of Customer Service for Corning Cable Systems where she was responsible for 10 teams spread across France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK. 

Then, while seeking more family friendly working arrangements, McCarthy moved into the tertiary education sector in the UK while undertaking a PhD, which explored the differences between approaches to leadership in Germany and the UK. In 2004, she made the move to Wollongong and was eventually offered the opportunity to develop the Master of Business Coaching degree. McCarthy has also taken responsibility for the Doctor of Business Administration, a research degree that equips practitioners with the skills to undertake rigorous research of relevance to industry and the community more broadly. 

In 2012, McCarthy was awarded an Australian Government Office of Learning and Teaching citation for Outstanding Contributions to Student Learning for using a coaching approach to inspire a love of learning among students and colleagues.   

Her research focuses mainly on contemporary leadership practices, in particular coaching and mentoring.

Her book, Coaching and Mentoring for Business, was published by Sage in 2014.