Ralph Windle (1931-2019)
From Professor Denise Lievesley, Principal of Green Templeton College:
I am sorry to bring you the news of the passing of Ralph Windle, former Fellow of Templeton College. Ralph had been suffering from myelofibrosis, a serious illness that he took lightly and fought valiantly, and passed away on 21 April 2019, at 88 years of age.
A Foundation Fellow of Templeton College, Ralph brought a wealth of marketing expertise gained through time at companies such as Proctor and Gamble, and Nabisco UK (he was Divisional Chief Executive and Main Board Director of Nabisco UK, and a member of the Nabisco European Management Council), to his International Corporate Strategies Portfolio at the College, from 1969 to 1980.
Ralph was also a poet, writer and social commentator who, through the pages of the Financial Times of London, the Harvard Business Review, books, radio, live performance and other media, helped bring poetry and its language into corporate boardrooms and offices on both sides of the Atlantic and worldwide.
He has exercised various Visiting Professor and lecturer/research roles in Europe, South America and the United States; including AGSIM (the American Graduate School of International Management, Arizona); Georgetown University Business School, Washington DC; The International Trade Centre, UNCTAD/GATT, Geneva; Centre for Advanced Technological Studies, Turin; Ecole des Affaires de Paris; Management Centre Europe, Brussels; and others. Ralph has also acted as External Adviser (Advanced Education and EC Policy portfolios) to four successive Directors General of the National Economic Development Office, London; and on projects with the British Association for the Advancement of Science, the European Commission (Competition Directorate), Georgetown Centre for Strategic and International Studies (Washington DC) and the ILO (Geneva).
He founded, and was Director of, The Creative Value Network, from January 2000, aiming to encourage better creative interaction and ideas exchange between the arts, science and educational communities.
A humanist funeral will be held at Oxford Crematorium on Saturday 4 May, 2019, at 11.00 a.m. Please do not feel obliged to wear black. Family flowers only, but donations (if desired) to Professor Mead’s Myelofibrosis Research Fund, cheques made payable to Oxford University c/o Greens Funeral Services, 32 Corn Street, Witney, OX28 6BL.
Ralph is survived by six children, and four grandchildren. He will be greatly missed by those who knew him and his work.
