March 5, 2025, by aczht
Yes woman by Frederique Bouilheres
Dr Frederique (Fred) Bouilheres is Deputy Associate Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Education and Student Experience in the Faculty of Social Sciences and Associate Dean for Education and Student Experience at Nottingham University Business School (UK). In these roles, she has led key initiatives to enhance teaching quality and student experience, including a full curriculum review and professionalising assessment-related activities and tutoring.
Fred will soon embark on a new journey as she relocates to Malaysia, where she has been appointed Interim Dean of Nottingham University Business School Malaysia.
Fred’s career journey
Before joining the University of Nottingham, Fred spent ten years at RMIT University Vietnam, first as an accounting lecturer and then as a Senior academic developer in the Learning and Teaching unit. Prior to her academic career, she worked as an accounting practitioner in France and Vietnam.
Her research and publications span digital textbooks in accounting, book chapters, and journal articles on blended learning, accessibility, authentic assessments, work-integrated learning, and accounting education.
Fred holds a PhD in Business, an MBA (Education), an MSc in Accounting and Finance, and a Graduate Certificate in Tertiary Teaching and Learning. She has been recognised for outstanding teaching with three university teaching excellence awards, including two Lord Dearing Awards, and holds a Senior Fellowship of Advance HE.
Why we should all embrace new opportunities and say “yes”
Hear about Fred’s journey and how saying “yes” can open doors to unexpected and fulfilling opportunities.
Yes woman.
That’s me in a nutshell. If you don’t understand the reference, you probably have not seen Jim Carrey’s movie ‘Yes Man’. This is the story of someone who is deeply unhappy in all aspects of his life, and the reason for that is because he is saying no to life and, by extension, to opportunities. A chance encounter convinces him to become a follower of the Yes doctrine, and as you will have guessed, because it’s an American movie, he turns his life around.
This August, I will celebrate 20 years as an expatriate in my fourth country of residence. As I prepare to relocate to Malaysia and take on the role of Interim Dean of Nottingham University Business School Malaysia, I have been reflecting on how I got there.
I come from a middle-class family in a small town in the South of France. I had a non-eventful upbringing, went to Medical school and… failed miserably. This was the first failure and I was not prepared for it. Things had been easy until then and I did not know how to handle it. So I went for something familiar, something reassuring. Like a legacy. I became an accountant since there were accountants in my family. It was fine for a while but the spark in me died. My eyes were firmly set on the other side of the Atlantic in what I thought would be an attempt to reignite it but another setback meant that it was not meant to be. Drowning in despair, I then received the call that would change my life forever. I was offered the chance to move to the Ho Chi Minh City office of the accounting firm I worked for. But Asia was not part of the plan. Vietnam certainly wasn’t. I knew nothing about it.
Three weeks later, I called back to accept the offer, and five months later, I was on my way to a country that gave me the best 13 years of my life. That’s where I ‘bumped’ into academia – another opportunity with a loose connection to salsa dancing. That’s where I discovered my passion for teaching and learning and this is where the spark was reignited. I learnt the ropes, went to the other side of the curtain to support academic staff, completed my PhD while having not one, but two children, relocated again, used my new set of skills and moved my way up to where I am today. Every step of the way and every role was an opportunity I could have declined. But I didn’t. Not because I was sure I would succeed but because the alternative, the status quo, was a worse outcome for me.
I was told I would have to choose between the School and Faculty roles I was applying for at the time – and that I still held until a few days ago. But I refused that choice, so I went for both and convinced people I could manage both.
Is my story about luck? Maybe. Is it about hard work? Definitely. But for me, it’s mostly about confidence. I know a lot of women suffer from the impostor phenomenon, but part of me always wondered, looking at these brilliant role models, whether they had been conditioned to think like that for fear of coming across as arrogant – while others with the same mindset are seen as confident leaders.
We female leaders should dare to be confident leaders no matter what the world thinks of us. We have to be yes women!
Further information
Find out more about Fred’s teaching and publications – Nottingham University Business School – Dr Frederique Bouilheres
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