British American Tobacco and LUMS Discuss Potential Avenues of Collaboration

LUMS has been at the forefront of developing industry-academia partnerships, which have enabled the University to promote country-wide access to high-quality education in Pakistan. To further this aim, a meeting was held with the senior leadership from British American Tobacco (BAT) Global Business Services (GBS) Pakistan on March 30, 2022.

BAT GBS is an initiative of British American Tobacco, which centrally manages the human resource and marketing services for different regions. It is based in Lahore and has been set up as a shared services hub for the APME region. Representatives from BAT GBS included General Manager, BAT GBS Asia-Pacific & Middle Eastern (APME) Region, Mr. Shahid Afzal; Head of Commercial Development & Transformation APME Region, Ms. Emma Ridley; CEO, BAT GBS, Mr. Zubair Khan; Legal and External Affairs Counsel, Ms. Neshay Aqueel and Head of HR, GBS Pakistan, Ms. Maham Khan.

The meeting was attended by LUMS senior leadership including LUMS Provost, Dr. Tariq Jadoon; Dean External Affairs Suleman Dawood School of Business (SDSB), Dr. Adeel Zaffar; Director REDC, Dr. Khawaja Zain ul Abdin; Director Career Services Office, Mr. Mazhar Chinoy; Director, Office of Advancement, Ms. Nuzhat Kamran, and representatives from the Syed Babar Ali School of Science and Engineering.

Ms. Kamran gave an overview of the LUMS journey while discussing the University’s effort to be accessible to talent across the country, “Pursuit of excellence has been a fundamental goal of LUMS for the last 35 years. Two areas of focus for the university have been to increase accessibility and diversity and in doing so, we have been setting standards for other universities to follow.”

She shared that LUMS has been ranked as the 50th Best Small University by Times Higher Education 2021 in the world and is the top ranked University in Pakistan by QS Graduate Employability 2020 Rankings.

Ms. Ridley shared BAT’s initiatives for the digital transformation of services in the country. “BAT is in the process of expanding in the fields of business intelligence, digital analytics, and shared service centres. We are looking at innovative ways to set up a digital hub for global business solutions. We envision Pakistan to be a hub for centres of excellence that explore cross-functional ways of working.”

Mr. Khan also spoke about the company’s vision “This is a pioneering initiative for the global business solution industry where we are exploring new digital and marketing capabilities. We envision that LUMS can play an integral role by providing us with talent supply and delivery. This will expand exposure for students at LUMS by equipping them with new skills and capabilities which are now a requirement in the industry.”

Dr. Zaffar and Dr. Abdin discussed potential collaborations with LUMS Rausing Executive Development Center (REDC) in which mid-career and senior professionals at BAT GBS could receive training to enhance their skills, as well as develop programmes to uplift and develop capabilities for skilled professionals.