Mr Darrell Kofkin
I am a Senior Lecturer in Social Entrepreneurship and Entrepreneurship.
After a career in marketing for major organisations I founded two innovative educational and professional development organisations, London School of Marketing (a private college sold to a venture capaital backed management buy out in 2005), and a professional development organisation, Global Marketing Network.
I have held several positions at University of Westminster. This includes being a former course director for all undergraduate marketing courses. I oversaw the redesign of all courses to ensure they were more reflective of the digital economy students are now entering. I have worked with thousands of marketing and entrepreneurship students and helped hundreds of students develop their business ideas. More recnelt I have contributed to the design of new social enteprise module specifications for the BA Business Management degree.
At postgraduate level I am a member of the new MSc Social Enterprise development and delivery team. Since 2010 I have also been a member of the adjunct faculty on the University of Liverpool Executive MBA, as an Honorary Instructor on digital marketing and marketing modules. I have supervised several hundred executive students across a wide variety of dissertation themes and consulting projects. Training has seen me lead executive leadership programmes for international executives working for Governmental and non-governmental organisations both in UK and overseas.
Within the university I have received support for several student engagement programmes. For exanmple in 2017/18 I led a social enterprise programme involving students from Unuiversity of Westminster and University of Rwanda. This led in March 2020 (with university and private seed funding) to the founding of Shibuka, an NGO registered in Rwanda to support the sustainable development of young entrepreneurs, of which I am co-Founder and Deputy Legal Representative.
Currently Shibuka’s work includes the design and implementation of Kwa Muganga, an online ‘proof of concept’ programme supporting early stage entrepreneurs through COVID-19 and the Third Wave, helping them redesign their business models; and applied research investigating the barriers and challenges facing low income women entrepreneurs in COVID-19 tourism-hit communities.
I am also a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.
Since 2017 my applied inter-disciplinary research and development has been on establishing youth entrepreneurship education, development and knowledge exchange interventions in emergent developmental economies such as Rwanda. I have investigated disruptive interventions to support the development of entrepreneurs in an ‘emergent developmental’ economy; the role of public and private sector ‘actors’ in supporting sustainable development of youth entrepreneurship and social entrepreneurship in an ‘emergent developmental’ economy; alternative structures that can exist to support the integrated and sustainable development of entrepreneurship strategy in an ‘emergent developmental’ economy; the role of online communities in establishing entreprenurial communities of practice. This applied research has led to several 'live' proof of concept cross-sector parnership programmes of development with impact acheived for thefor the beneficiaires in them achieivng greater clarity, confidence, communication and commerciality. This applied work has received government support (in UKK and Rwanda) and has been supported with funding from a variety of bodies including Quintin Hogg Charitable Trust and Higher Education Innovation Funding.