The Scholarship Scheme of Engineers in Business Fellowship
The Sainsbury Management Fellows (SMF) is the MBA scholarship scheme of Engineers in Business Fellowship. The SMF scholarship enables professional engineers to add business, finance and marketing expertise to the diverse skills they gained through their engineering training and qualifications. Each year £500,000 worth of MBA scholarships are awarded to ambitious young engineers with exceptional education qualifications and leadership potential.

On graduation, the scholarship awardees become Sainsbury Management Fellows and gain access to an impressive network of professional contacts and activities including networking events, courses, mentoring and career guidance.

Our Aims
The aims of the Sainsbury Management Fellows scheme are:

• To promote continuing business education for all engineers to develop their skills of innovation, and better management and governance.

• To create and operate a charitable fund for the support of such continuing education.

• To develop a network of engineers who are, or who have been, engaged in such education in order to identify and illustrate its merits for the public benefit.

How SMF Began
In the 1980s, David Sainsbury (now Lord Sainsbury of Turville) felt that there should be more people in the boardrooms of British industry who have both the knowledge of how things are made and effective management skills.

By contrast, he found that many overseas companies, particularly those in Japan and Germany, were succeeding because their senior executives and boards included qualified engineers.

To help bring about a change in business culture in the UK, in 1987 Lord Sainsbury set up the Sainsbury Management Fellowship scheme, to develop UK engineers to be leaders in industry.

In 1993, the alumni of the Sainsbury Management Fellowship scheme formed an association to promote networking amongst members and the business community.

Profile of the Engineers in Business Fellowship
There are 375 Sainsbury Management Fellows – 10 are studying for their MBA degree currently. All Fellows have graduate degrees from the leading centres for engineering education, as well as their MBA. About 80% are employed in industry or services to industry and 70% of these are based in the UK or work for UK firms. Sixty Fellows own and manage small to medium-sized enterprises. The average age is 37. Most Fellows are multilingual, having gained international exposure from working and/or studying abroad.