It is a long way from Lancaster to the valleys of Northern Iraq.

Darren Cormack (International Masters Program for Managers [IMPM], 2014), is Chief Executive Officer at the Mines Advisory Group (MAG). He has made such a journey.

MAG is a Non-Governmental Organisation based in Manchester that is committed to helping communities affected by landmines and other dangerous ordinance and weapons. Darren travelled to Iraq in his role as CEO, and he goes back there now in his mind when asked about the highlights of a career that was spurred by his time studying at Lancaster University.

“This job is incredible in terms of the places you go and the senior levels you meet,” he says. “You take Hollywood actress Rosamund Pike to meet the Foreign Secretary, for instance.

“But last year I was in Northern Iraq, driven through the mountains to a handover ceremony where MAG had cleared some land on the Iran-Iraq border.

“I arrived in a beautiful valley, and this old man comes up to me. He’s talking very rapidly in Kurdish. I don’t know if he is mad at me or whatever.

“Somebody starts to translate, and he starts telling this story about how we were handing over land that for the majority of his life had always been littered with landmines, and he had lost two brothers on that land. He had spent his adult life as a father and grandfather worrying about his children, who were playing and curious and running around. Just that sense of impact that he represented, the stories he was telling, the passion with which he was thanking us for making it safe. They are the moments which stick with you most when you think about the job in terms of what it is you're helping to contribute to.”

As he sits in an office with a backdrop showing an armoury in the Congo which MAG rehabilitated to try and prevent weapons being diverted from state control, Darren recalls how the IMPM studies helped shape his career and lead him to that encounter.

He was working as a middle manager when he set off on the IMPM journey looking to take his career on a new trajectory. The chance to join the IMPM landed on his lap just weeks before the programme started.

“I didn't necessarily come in with a great deal of a runway, I didn’t really know what to expect,” says Darren. “When I think about my career, there's a huge amount of luck and serendipity, and in that respect, I was very fortunate to end up on the IMPM. Everything thereafter was just thoroughly enjoyable.

“The course is very global – I studied in Lancaster, Montreal, India, and China – but as the only Brit on the course it was fascinating how much I learned about the socio-economic context of the UK. Sometimes with all the change happening in the world, you look far afield for new ideas, and very often a lot of what you need is very close.

“I’m pretty sure I was the youngest on the course and the most inexperienced. I started thinking I knew it all, and then walked through the door, listened for a few hours, and thought ‘wow. There is a huge amount I don't know’.”

Darren adds: “The Lancaster module is about this reflective mindset, about creating the context in which you can think about what you're thinking about. I grappled with that a lot, and probably one of the biggest takeaways from the course was placing greater value on the process of reflection.

“There are moments in the course where they take you away. You spend time with the Quakers on the outskirts of Hawkshead. Just hearing somebody so at peace and so reflective, learning about other faiths or versions of the faith you have, and seeing how that isn't separate from what you do but a very important part of what you do.

“Then we went off to Grasmere, paddled along Rydal Water, and went into a cave where we better understood ourselves. That ability to reflect and push to better understand yourself came at quite an important time in my career. I had been so young and ambitious, drawn to action and the pace of getting stuff done, which is an inherent strength of mine. Learning to punctuate that with spaces to reflect and to think about what you're actually working on and why, was probably the biggest takeaway from the whole course.

“Both Martin Brigham and Lucas Introna introduced concepts that I struggled to grapple with, coming into it in my late 20s. You don't see the world in full colour, and they really disrupted my thinking with some of the ways that they framed issues. You could go away at night and really grapple with stuff.”

Darren is still in contact with his IMPM network – “you just feel like you could reach out and say, ‘Hey, I'm in Beijing, who's around?’ and you know you would get a response” – and has returned to Lancaster to speak on the IMPM.

At MAG, he became CEO in the week Covid lockdowns began in the UK, and he cites the IMPM’s work around complexity as helping him navigate a challenging transition.

“Very often you're not necessarily sure in a very tangible way how what you learned on the IMPM affected how you work now,” he says. “It is more unconscious growth that you go through, exposure to other cultures, to other perspectives. I think it really did broaden my mind. It helped me to appreciate the different mindsets that one needs to be in as a leader to affect change.

“I don't necessarily sit here day in, day out and say ‘remember there was that framework, that tool’, but it encouraged me to see space in my diary not to be filled but as space to think and grapple with issues. To have that so readily and clearly endorsed by a management programme of the quality Lancaster runs was really quite disruptive and affirmative. That was a big takeaway.”