What do the Chairmen of Glanbia, Lakeland, Carbery, Aurivo, and Arrabawn have in common?

They’re all graduates of the ICOS UCC Diploma in Co-operative Direction.

As a springboard to key leadership positions within Ireland’s Dairy Industry, the joint ICOS-UCC Diploma is unequalled. Running since 2001/02 the programme continues to produce strong, motivated and insightful leaders, which are need now, more than ever before in the industry’s history.

As we face into quota abolition, and prepare to grow our industry to become a world leader in dairy and infant nutrition, we need to continue to generate a pipeline of educated co-op directors; prepared to take the difficult decisions necessary to create strong resilient co-op businesses.

Tomorrow’s farmers will look to their co-ops to be strategically focused, profitable businesses, with the scale, efficiency and innovation necessary to compete with the global food giants. In order to do this, Co-op Board members will need to have natural leadership abilities, enhanced by quality education and training. The ICOS UCC Diploma in Co-operative Direction arms graduates with key skills in areas such as; Team Building & Communications, Corporate Governance, Leadership, Organisational Development & Change, International Marketing, Strategic Management, Financial Appraisal, New Technologies & Future Food Developments and Policy and Regulation.

The next programme runs from June to December 2015, and is open for enrolment now. For more details see the ICOS Skillnet update in this newsletter.