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The prestigious AMBA & BGA Excellence Awards shortlist was recently announced and of the twelve categories, UCD Michael Smurfit Graduate Business School entries have been shortlisted in three, including Best Innovation Strategy, Entrepreneur of the Year and the Postgraduate Leadership Award. 

The AMBA & BGA Excellence Awards bring together leaders of the global business education community to recognise and celebrate excellence among business schools, students and graduates, suppliers and employers that share AMBA & BGA’s values of ambition, impact and integrity. 

Postgraduate Leadership Award

The Postgraduate Leadership Award honours alumni from AMBA & BGA business schools who have been making an impact in the business world following their graduation.  

The award recognises the great work of these graduates through their achievements, performance and recognition.  
As an MBA graduate of UCD Smurfit School and alumnus of UCD Quinn School, Joe Barrett is co-founder and CEO of the global brand Applegreen, which operates 620 forecourt sites and employs c. 17,000 people across Ireland, UK, and the US with €4bn in turnover. Over 30 inspiring years, Joe, with co-founder Bob Etchingham, has reshaped Applegreen from a single fuel forecourt in West Dublin into a global roadside hospitality company. With an open style, Joe is approachable and cultivates a sense of trust and loyalty which inspires his workforce.

Entrepreneur of the Year

The Entrepreneur of the Year Award celebrates the achievements of successful alumni entrepreneurs, but also showcases business schools that are nurturing a spirit of enterprise and ambition.

This award highlights the success of business schools that promote entrepreneurship in their cohorts. It is also a chance for individuals to impress high-profile judges who are already at the forefront of global entrepreneurship.

The Entrepreneur of the Year award is one of the most distinguished awards in the industry. AMBA & BGA has developed the award to encourage and promote the value of entrepreneurship in the current competitive climate and to highlight its importance in the global market. 

UCD’s entry is ReaDI-watch, which was co-founded in 2021 by UCD College of Business double graduate Dave Byrne. The unique ReaDI-watch business aims to change the way companies around the world invest in R&D and Innovation through its digital platform. ReaDI-watch helps companies to maximise their ROI from R&D and Innovation, navigating the complex R&D tax and grant funding landscapes more easily. CEO Dave Byrne has displayed tenacity, diligence, ambition and expertise in all that he had done thus far at ReaDI-watch.

Best Innovation Strategy Award

The Best Innovation Strategy Award honours a school’s achievement in pushing boundaries in terms of creativity in practice.

This prestigious award is a celebration of innovation and radical thinking in business education delivery across all areas of the business school and has been developed to recognise and reward game-changing new practices, risks and creativity around programmes on offer at business schools in the AMBA & BGA networks.  

It promotes the values of taking risks in pursuit of the new in a range of areas, such as teaching, learning, recruitment and alumni relations.

UCD’s entry is the LEAP programme, Leadership and Employability Advancement Programme, which uses evidence-based management to develop global leaders for the age of AI. The innovative module enables MBA graduates to thrive in the business world by integrating the academic and career service elements into a for-credit module which takes a holistic approach to students’ professional development, with a dual focus on building their global leadership competence and future employability in the market. In its design, LEAP combines the best academic evidence from occupational psychology, careers education and universal design learning, combined with real-world inputs from industry partners. As such, LEAP represents a unique offering amongst the top 100 global MBA Programmes.

Please see more about all shortlisted entries here. 

The winners of the AMBA & BGA Excellence Awards 2025 will be announced at the AMBA & BGA Gala Dinner on January 24, 2025.

Please visit the website here to learn more about the awards ceremony.