Impact is one of the most overworked words in business education. Scroll through the marketing materials of any leading school and you will find it everywhere - in programme brochures, on admissions landing pages, in the declarations of school missions. The promise is that if you come and study here you will go on to change your world.

But business schools can themselves change the world. Not just through alumni in the decades after graduation. But through the expertise of faculty, applied to the most pressing challenges of our time. However, that expertise needs to be visible.

Research that sits in an academic journal, however rigorous, rarely finds its way into a government committee room or a UN advisory chamber. The link from scholarship to policy is shorter than most people assume, but it requires a bridge. That bridge is the media.

From academia to media visibility to parliamentary testimony

Consider what happened when BlueSky Education worked with Professor Efpraxia Zamani at Durham University Business School on her research into gender differences in remote working. Specifically, Zamani looked at how women and men manage the boundaries between professional and personal life in a home-working environment. The research was serious, nuanced, and directly relevant to post-pandemic policy debates about flexible working legislation. Initially it was largely unknown beyond the academic community.

A targeted media campaign changed that. Coverage followed in trade journals, then The Times and Daily Mail, both reaching audiences measured in the millions. Then the Durham research was covered by the BBC, after which Professor Zamani was contacted and invited to give oral evidence to the House of Lords Home-based Working Committee, examining how technology shapes domestic working patterns.

The recording of that session now sits on the UK Parliament website, a permanent marker of academic expertise shaping the legislative conversation.

From research to a press release, to personalised journalist outreach to the media, to parliamentary testimony. Each of the steps was enabled by the one before.

Thoughtful pitching leads to the UN Security Council

Then there is LSE IDEAS, the London School of Economics' foreign policy think tank and Europe's top university-affiliated research centre, who shared radicalisation research by Dr. Asya Metodieva with us. Thoughtful pitching secured an opinion piece on Euronews, a platform with an audience exceeding 400 million, in which the professor was able to articulate publicly the complex motivations behind why individuals join foreign conflicts.

What followed went beyond any media metric. The UN Security Council Counter-Terrorism Committee Executive Directorate made contact directly. A Political Affairs Officer from the unit that monitors trends in terrorism and counter-terrorism entered into conversation with Metodieva about advising the UN on these very questions.

From academic research to meaningful media engagement to a UN advisory engagement.

The road to Davos from an op-ed

My final example is directly relevant to the audience of business schools, universities and think tanks gathering in Brussels next month for the BlueSky Media Connect Conference. A professor with roots at the conference host, Vlerick Business School, and now at the European University Institute, published research on European energy infrastructure and cross-border cooperation.

BlueSky secured extensive coverage, including a compelling op-ed The Guardian. The professor later noted the unexpected consequence: "One of the articles we worked on together attracted interest from the World Economic Forum, who got in touch with me about contributing to a future initiative. For me personally, this was the best result I could have hoped for."

WEF gatherings in Davos are precisely the kind of forum where the people shaping energy policy - ministers, commissioners, regulators and corporate leaders - come to listen.

Each of these examples shows that when faculty research reaches the right audiences through credible media outlets, doors open that no direct approach could unlock. A cold email to the House of Lords goes nowhere. A BBC interview gets you invited to testify.

Meeting the media in Brussels

This is what underpins our Media Connect Conference in Brussels on 22nd and 23rd June 2026, bringing together more than 20 journalists from outlets including the Financial Times, Bloomberg, Reuters, BBC, Politico Europe, Euronews, Euractiv, Carbon Pulse and EU Observer. These are not just prestigious media outlets, they are the publications read by European commissioners, their advisers, ministers in member state governments, and the officials who draft the directives and regulations that govern life across the continent.

They are also media read by European citizens, from business and the economy to climate and education.

For communications teams at Europe's leading business schools and universities, the relationships forged in that room translate into coverage, and coverage translates into influence.

For deans and institutional leaders, the ROI is not just reputational. Schools that are seen to contribute to the great debates of the age - on climate, on AI governance, on economic resilience, on geopolitical risk - are schools that attract the best faculty, the most ambitious students, and the partners who want to be associated with genuine relevance.

Business schools have spent a generation selling impact to their students. Brussels in June is an opportunity to demonstrate what institutional impact actually looks like, and to build the media relationships that make it possible.

Author: Matt Symonds

A former journalist for the BBC, The Economist, Forbes, and Bloomberg, Matt is also the S in QS Quacquarelli Symonds, co-founder of CentreCourt with Poets & Quants, and a long-standing expert in facilitating meaningful dialogue between higher education and the media.

With over 15 years of experience organising high-profile media conferences across Europe and beyond, Matt brings unparalleled insight into what makes stories resonate—and how communications professionals can earn their place in the global news cycle.