Scottish Disney executive awarded honourary degree from QMU

Disney executive Andrew Mooney returns to his Lothian roots to collect his qualification

When Andrew Mooney grew up in Whitburn, a mining village in West Lothian, he couldn’t see the point in college. He wanted to go to work and get a head start over his colleagues.

30 years later, the influential Scot has returned to the Lothians as one of the senior figures in the Disney enterprise to collect an honorary degree from Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh.

Mooney began his career training as an accountant, taking an apprenticeship with Nike in Leeds. At the age of 27 Mooney switched from accounting to marketing. By 1994, Andy Mooney was living in the United States as Chief Financial Officer of Nike.

At Nike, Mooney excelled, reorganising the marketing strategies of the company with great success. However, the $3bn Global Apparel division he headed was soon to be dwarfed by his next job. In December 1999, Andy left Nike and joined The Walt Disney Company.

Mooney, having been headhunted from Nike, was promoted to Chairman of Disney Consumer Products, the merchandising side of the company. Here, he was given power over lines including Disney Toys, Disney Publishing and Disney Store.

He pioneered the Disney Princess line, a huge success which is now worth a massive $4bn. Retail sales have rocketed from $13bn to $30bn, with the division now reaching over 90 countries.

Andrew Mooney returned to Scotland last week to collect his D.B.A. (Doctor of Business Administration) degree at Queen Margaret’s new campus, on Edinburgh’s eastern fringes, to his mother’s delight: “He was a good scholar, his dad and I wanted him to go to college, but you can’t force anybody.”

Mooney, had words of encouragement for Scotland, describing it as a “hotbed of creative talent”. However, he also warned that there is “a lot more opportunity than Scotland is taking advantage of.”
Philip Close