# Exploring the Executive MBA Programme

Data: 11-01-2025 21:43:29

## Lista de Vídeos

1. ["What derails the careers of high-flyers and what you can do about it" with Richard Jolly](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDRmFDyljPk)
2. [Introduction to the Executive MBA Dubai Programme](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WhpoMBX1mFA)
3. [The Executive MBA Dubai Experience](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzLm8-PE7M8)
4. [Introduction to the Executive MBA Programmes: EMBA London and EMBA Global](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDleeAIhQ2o)
5. [The Executive MBA Experience   EMBA London and EMBA Global](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KgNqF3yhWY)
6. [Reboot your career: In conversation with EMBA alumnae](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDAahkPEWv4)
7. [Executive MBA: Spotlight on Entrepreneurship](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=upmJhIlu4_4)

## Transcrições

### "What derails the careers of high-flyers and what you can do about it" with Richard Jolly
URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDRmFDyljPk

Idioma: en

good afternoon everyone and uh welcome
to this afternoon's uh faculty master
class um uh on the subject of what
derails the careers of high fliers and
what you can do about it a quick word of
introduction my name is brett hunter i'm
the director of recruitment and
admissions for leadership programs at
london business school uh a portfolio
which includes the executive mba
programs which i believe most of you are
interested in
joining us today
um we have a fairly
packed schedule ahead of us for those of
you who are staying for the sessions
after this um in about five minutes um
we will be joined by uh richard jolly
who is a an adjunct professor in
organizational behavior here at london
business school um and he will run
through his thoughts on what derails the
careers of high fliers and what you can
do about it um richard is a very popular
teacher at london business school so
we're lucky to have him with us this
afternoon
he's twice won the best teacher award at
london business school and has been
running up several other occasions
and what's more he's also a former
graduate of the executive mba at london
business school so he knows firsthand uh
what it means to uh to go through this
program
for those of you who are interested um
we will be continuing after uh a short
break um with some information about the
dubai center and the executive mba held
out in dubai and i'll run through some
more information about that uh when we
finish it uh with richard's
session uh for those of you who are
wanting to join that um but at this
point i will hand over to richard um who
can take you through his faculty
masterclass
thank you so much brett and it is an
absolute pleasure to be with you uh here
today because as brett said i was in
your position
uh admittedly this was a few years ago
in fact i remember attending an
information session at london business
school in 1997
where professor john hunt gave a lecture
uh and it inspired me enough uh to uh
submit my application uh and i was an
ember uh and uh doing it in uh 1998 and
1999 and it was for me a transformation
experience uh in fact i enjoyed it so
much i stayed uh because i remember
sitting there in the auditorium thinking
this is so stimulating uh i want to do
that job and so um it's a longer story
but i worked my way
uh into the school on to the faculty and
up uh to being a professor and i've been
here on the faculty now for 22 years and
what i want to do in our time together
today we have an hour together today is
talk about a topic that i think is
relevant to all of you
uh because what we're going to do here
is we're going to look at two
specific elements firstly
what's it mean to be a good boss
and then uh what we're going to do is
focus specifically
uh on high flyers
because to be honest you wouldn't be
applying to lbs if you weren't already a
high flyer in your career
and uh the the point for me that is uh
important here is there is some very
consistent research findings
uh that show there are some predictable
mistakes
that high flyers make that can lead them
to do what we call derail
to come off the rails
and so it leads to an important question
here which is what are these predictable
mistakes and what can you do about it
uh now the answer i'm going to cut the
answer the answer may include for some
of you doing the ember course at london
business school so you can kind of
that's probably not going to be too
surprising that that may be something uh
that we would recommend here at the
school but where i want to start here
and this is an interactive session uh
now not nearly as interactive as it
would be uh if we were doing a lecture
uh on uh the mba whether it's zoom uh or
in the classroom and i'm delighted uh
that we're now back in the classroom uh
after uh for me of 18 months of doing
virtual sessions but um even the virtual
sessions we make this very interactive
but i do want to start off with some
interaction so in the group chat
hopefully uh you are familiar enough now
with zoom to know how the chat function
works uh in the group chat what i want
to do is ask you a question and then i
want to hear from as many of you as we
can
about what are your experiences uh uh
your answers if you like uh to these
questions so
here is uh the uh the sort of situation
i want you to think about
i want you to think about the absolute
best boss you have ever had at any point
in your career maybe your current boss
it may be a boss you had uh years ago uh
uh so think of them of this individual
and the question is
and what i want you to type in your
answer into the chat uh about is
what did he or she do
that made it such a good experience for
you and i want you to focus on behaviors
don't say they were inspiring don't say
they were motivating the point is what
did they do
that made this a motivating or inspiring
experience for you so just in the group
chat uh hopefully we've got this uh uh
now it's gonna work uh i'd love to hear
what comes uh to mind for you
okay we've got some fast typers here so
uh fantastic so uh but please uh let's
hear from as many of you as we can
fantastic so we've got a whole bunch of
messages coming in here so uh the
fastest typer uh in all caps uh is uh
winston uh listening uh brahim uh says
the same thing about listening uh and
this is a topic we will be uh focusing
uh in on uh quite extensively
um then uh we have uh from uh francis
involve me in many parts of the world
business decisions not typically part of
the role that i was in really helping
you move beyond
maybe that area you were refocusing
being supportive uh flexibility uh ayush
if you can tell us a little bit more
about what you mean by flexibility uh
because that can mean lots of different
things but
that sounds like a very uh valid theme
uh maurizio forced me to ask questions
gave me plenty of room to come up with
answers uh absolutely so not just
listening actually getting uh uh you uh
to ask the questions uh that you can
then answer rather than them telling you
what you should do uh abdul kareem uh
autonomy absolutely giving you that
space uh so you can really uh be
effective tom consistently challenged me
to come up with better results and this
thing about being challenging is for me
a very important point because um
sometimes these best bosses at the time
uh that they were managing us we may
have complained about how tough they
were on me oh they're really pushing me
making me work so hard sometimes it's
only with hindsight we realized the
reason they were pushing us so hard is
they really believed us they knew we had
the potential to really step up our game
and so that's why they were consistently
challenging us
and it's an offer not
enjoyable at the time but it's often
those experiences where we grow and
learn the most
encouraging you mohammed supportive
particularly when there's problems there
uh absolutely
uh then um
tian
trust and freedom for me to explore
ideas uh to fail and repeat exactly
because as we know failure is a better
uh teacher than success uh so really uh
being able to make uh obviously not uh
failures where we destroy the entire
organization but um you know failure uh
is a critical part of it and this word
trust that tian uses i'm going to come
back on this because
in many ways
i think trust is perhaps the foundation
stone on which all these others are
built uh adele on the same page as
yourself and therefore supportive on key
issues acknowledge your point of view uh
winston's back with the all caps
ramsey phenomenal coaching skills and
coaching skills i think is a really
important point
and
we'll come back and talk about what
exactly we mean by coaching skills but
it links back to this point from before
about helping you ask questions and
helping you answer those questions which
i think is a very uh insightful point
arpan giving freedom to think and act
independently or on the show within a
team when giving thought leadership and
backing up if any mistake absolutely
it's a great uh cluster of things there
soon uh very supportive my exit plan at
the time that's a very interesting point
and this is the thing sometimes we do
need to fly our nest uh and uh that can
be something that is right for us and
having a boss who's gonna be supportive
of what's in your best interest not
every boss is gonna do that as we'll
talk about but that if you've had that
soon that is a fantastic experience
a people manager challenge me out of
your comfort zone exactly it's difficult
it's challenging it's what we call good
pain and good pain is things that if we
do the consistently
uh we actually get stronger uh be it uh
working out uh being it uh things like
going to the dentist or
uh and here is perhaps the relevant
point for us uh in this session uh
studying
uh for something like an executive mba
because if you're working full-time and
studying full-time this is going to be a
demanding experience but for many of you
having taught on the ember for 22 years
and having been a member myself for many
of you this ember experience
the time you're at to lbs uh will be one
of the most stimulating and rewarding
times in your life and at the time you
may complain about it i've got my
corporate finance exam coming up how am
i going to survive this thing but as
soon as the mba is over
you will really miss it the stimulation
not just from faculty but from
colleagues the bonds you'll form
together on this program will be things
that for many of you will enjoy
throughout your careers and maybe even
your lives i'm still in touch uh with my
cohort we meet up regularly
and some very good friends
and often even business contacts coming
out of it uh so comfort zone uh is uh
something we need to get beyond uh ahmed
supporting and typing letters and
communicating with clients is good for
the relationship helping you really form
your uh sort of
relationship with clients absolutely
adash kept the designations apart and
encouraged free communication
uh fantastic puzzle empowering uh the
work to you uh hani uh held the hand
when needed and pushed me off the cliff
when ready uh fantastic uh hopefully
there's water at the bottom of the cliff
or you have wings i don't know what the
metaphor here is uh hani but either of
them is appropriate amro transformed the
threats into opportunities helping
reframe uh difficult experiences
absolutely uh samir uh coach and mentor
absolutely and there is a distinction
there we'll we'll touch on uh muhammad
again straightforward and reasonable
winston how to deal with a boss like
donald trump and i've noticed you've
moved away uh winston from the uh donald
trumpian uh all caps uh for your final
point there so look these are some great
points so um to be honest
we could just end the session right now
and say you want to be effective in your
career do all of these things
and that is true this is a fantastic
list
now we're not going to end the session
here because it's not quite that easy
because there's a second half to this
exercise
and the second heart of this exercise i
want you to really reflect on
uh
some maybe even touching what winston uh
was touching on there the worst boss
you have ever had in your life
uh and the absolute worst boss and the
question to you is what did he or she do
that made it a difficult experience too
now you could say well richard it's
opposite of all of the above but that
would be lazy thinking
not worthy of an lbs ember student uh so
same process again for your worst
experiences i'll just give you just a
few seconds we've obviously got some
super fast typers there
but let's see uh give everyone a chance
to
uh to start really uh
uh commenting
okay so there's a whole bunch of things
there and more to come i'm sure so uh a
narcissistic boss uh i have to say in
one of my electives uh i teach three
different electives uh here in the
second year mba you can choose from this
menu of electives i teach three of them
uh one about uh managing change one
about interpersonal dynamics dynamics
how to build more effective
relationships and another one called
paths to power uh and in that we do talk
we have a whole session on the dark side
of power focusing specifically on
narcissism uh micromanagement both from
abdul and brahm and aapan and abdullah
and probably most of you we've all had
that backseat driver constantly looking
over our shoulder perhaps
and it can really suck out our energy uh
suck out that mojo uh absolutely so
micromanagement is a key one methyl lack
of transparency uh absolutely uh not
very clear again in the communication
for muhammad and their expectations
uh and yeah this is often why we leave
in fact there is a phrase that people
join an organization but they leave
their boss
and uh in terms of um
the data here on why people leave
organizations overwhelmingly
the reason we leave organizations is not
because of money
it's not because of the organization's
strategy or even the culture and values
it's because i can't bear working for
that idiot
anymore
and that i think is very profound
uh didn't listen acknowledge your
opinions as francis says and ideas
downplayed any concerns etc brush things
off
not telling the truth from winston uh
tom made me responsible for the effects
of his decision
absolutely and i assume some of these
tom maybe we say um sub optimal uh
decisions there rather than giving you
all the credit when things went well
uh
well uh honey uh you're your own boss
and that's why you're here absolutely
and certainly helping you be a better
boss is an important point and when i
did my mba
uh
plus years ago
um
most of our mba students went into
consulting or banking uh and industry
and other things but now
and still that's obviously uh two very
of the most common uh areas uh uh where
our students end up with top uh banks
and uh consulting firms but really i
think over the last two decades the main
growth area is people saying i want to
be on an entrepreneur i want to set up
my own venture whether for social impact
or your own uh sort of hedge fund or
fire equity firm or whatever it may be
uh but the the skills to actually be
your own boss to actually run your own
organization we have some great faculty
here uh in the strategy strategic
entrepreneurship space uh and many of
you will be i'm sure doing at least one
of your second year courses focusing on
entrepreneurship
uh so uh uh mayor you've obviously been
able to find something good from all of
them but you may have also learned some
lessons about i am not going to take on
that particular behavior free term but
i'm glad you've been able to reframe all
of these into positive experiences uh no
action only talk
from winston uh adele inconsistent uh
with his position throwing me under the
bus as a result when there's conflicts
with positions of more senior
professionals so there was uh one
uh speaker i had who was the former
chairman of unilever
and he said he told the story which for
me uh uh was very very insightful for me
and for our students he said look
uh on my first day
as a managing director one of the
operating companies within unilever and
obviously you have many hundreds of
operating companies he says the chairman
of that operating company had arranged
for us to have breakfast together who's
sitting there chatting about the weather
and family you know over coffee and
pastries and he said but then the
chairman turned seriously and he said
look this is your first day running a
business there's two things you need to
know number one anytime that you are
successful i will make sure that you and
your team get all the credit
number two anytime that you screw up i
will accept
full
responsibility now it's not always like
that as some of you are talking about
here uh throwing you under the bus
but for me that would that's exactly
what it means
uh to really empower the people below
you to really give the credit and you
take uh the uh
uh you are the one who go under the bus
uh as the boss
maurizio untruthful duplicitous
unnecessarily political
i think that's a well phrased lack of
clear vision or substance but a skill
for survivor organizations i'm sure
there's a longer story here maurizio uh
that if we're in the classroom uh i
would ask you to share but uh it seems
some very specific uh comments there uh
tian not leading but merely merely
ticking off boxes to satisfy the kpis
oh yes you are not alone in that and
that's the point about this exercise is
here we have our group therapy
uh you're not the only one who's had
these experiences and uh that i think is
uh in itself realizing you're not the
only one uh who's had maybe some uh
seriously uh sub-optimal uh experiences
uh misleading false promises from pover
not giving me leadership opportunities
from ahmed discriminator ramsey
absolutely
and that is something that these days
the whole dei diversity equity and
inclusion space is something that's
getting attention in almost every
organization in every part of the world
so that is becoming much more salient as
a problem that needs to be addressed uh
stephen i'm engaged and disinterested in
discussing my work problems to resolve
issues just pushing the agenda against
all the evidence in front of them to
implement a process or strategy uh
fantastic well not fantastic terrible
but fantastic that you shared it so
thank you uh biased uh again ramsey back
banging back to your discriminator point
i think that is uh uh very uh uh very
critical today and this is something we
will be addressing
very directly and i hope very powerfully
uh on the program irritable yes
sometimes uh in fact uh anger and
tantrums and all sorts of mood swings uh
can be part of it uh soon apparent
display of nepotism and unwarranted
exclusion on uh issue affecting the
entire team yeah that doesn't sound
great and enough enough we could go on
and on but i think we've made the point
here so thank you so much uh for all of
these points here but look this is a
question i've been asking mba students
and executives for 22 years
and of the many thousands of people i've
asked
what is uh strike to me
uh
i've just
my
video uh and this is one of the things
uh that we find here is um uh we uh uh
we do struggle uh sometimes can you hear
me brett thumbs up if you can hear me
yeah you can hear me fine uh so uh we've
uh learning to be generous with each
other
technology problems has been one of the
things uh that we uh uh experience in um
uh this uh uh rather strange uh sort of
world that we find ourselves in uh in
terms of um
uh
this virtual living uh so um look this
is a question i've asked for many
thousand executives and here are the
themes that typically emerge when you
ask this question so on the positive
side we want bosses who have ambition
who have a sense of vision we're
decisive and have that energy enthusiasm
and passion
people who are able to trust people who
lead by example they walk the talk and
they show respect and fairness rather
than this biased discrimination
in terms of their interactions with us
they give us that responsibility give us
space so that we can learn for ourselves
they coach us and they listen and
provide feedback
sound familiar
on the negative side there is no
ambition here
so typically rather than being ambitious
what we see is that they are reactive uh
impulsive uh they're not open to new
ideas especially from below
that have unclear expectations they're
unpredictable they're blaming they're
defensive they're political with these
uh hidden agendas
they are as many of you have described
here the micro manager uh no
communication highly critical they rule
by fear some of you may have come across
jfdi
if you haven't come across it loosely
translates as just
do it and fundamentally they're just not
interested in me
and my career
let alone helping me even if i need to
fly the nest now
first question to you
and i hope this is rhetorical but when
you're being managed by the good boss
my assumption is you enjoyed it more
than when you're being managed by the
bad boss now there are some people out
there who enjoy the bad bosses beat me
again again master these are people uh
that we describe uh as masochists you do
not want to be in that category
uh but more importantly my assumption
again
is that when you're being managed by the
good boss you are more productive
than when you're being managed by the
bad boss and that is the critical point
here
because good bosses
create higher levels of productivity
than bad bosses so it's not about being
nice
not about being good it's about
productivity it is about are you able to
help people around and below you improve
their performance
so this really matters in terms of
actual productivity
but and you kind of got a sense of where
we're going with this this isn't really
an exercise about your experiences with
other
bosses
what we're really talking about is as
you look at these two lists as you read
through all of these comments in the
group chat
the key question is where are you
as a boss now let me answer the question
for you
most of the time richard i am a good
boss i can do all of these good boss
behaviors but there are times
particularly when i'm under a lot of
pressure where i go over
to the dark side
so uh
the question that that sort of leads to
is
what turns you
to the dark side because we all have a
dark side as the russian dissident
alexander solzhenitsyn put it the line
dividing good and evil
passes through the heart of every human
being
all of us have good boss and bad boss
within us
the challenge here is to really think
about three important questions
for you as a boss what one good boss
behavior do you need to do
more of
you're doing all of it to some degree
but some of these you could do a bit
more
second question
uh what turns you to the dark side what
are your key trigger points what are the
things that return you from luke
skywalker
into a little bit more darth vader
and once you go to the dark side
what one bad boss behavior to you
need to do less of because if you look
at that list and you say i don't do any
of these well then you need some
feedback because as solzhenitsyn
suggests we all have a dark side
so on the mba these are questions that
we will put to you and we will give you
lots of data 360 data and a bunch of
other instruments some psychometrics
that will help you really get clear
answers to what i would argue are three
important questions
but
we're now really going to move on to
this more
specific
and even more fundamental question about
these predictable mistakes
that high flyers make that can lead them
to derail so if when you actually
finally go back into the physical office
and i have to admit
uh this week i'm actually in my office
at lbs for the first time this week uh
in 18 months
very very strangely back on campus and
fantastic
to be lecturing face to face to our
students mba students again
and but when you go back to the office
if when you get there they've done
something like this to your chair
well they may be giving you some subtle
hints about how your career is going
so what i want to do here is analyze
these predictable mistakes that
executives make that can lead them to
derail and i want to start here by
looking at your career ladder
in three separate
phases
let's start off at the bottom of the
ladder here because the first time
you were ever asked to supervise the
performance of somebody else
uh the reason they ask you to do this is
that you know stuff you're a good
salesperson you're a good engineer
you're a good uh financial analyst they
say look you know stuff could you please
supervise these other people as soon as
you become a supervisor for the first
time
you learn
an important truth
people
are a problem what's wrong with these
people it's obvious what they should be
doing and they're just not doing it
sometimes it can even feel as if they're
intentionally screwing up if you've ever
had that experience
welcome to a fundamental psychological
truth
we call it the curse of knowledge and
the cursed knowledge suggests that when
we know something it becomes almost
impossible to imagine
not knowing it so for example
if you've ever been driving down the
road and you come up behind a learner
driver who's driving slowly and badly
you fight yourself getting frustrated
maybe even a little irritated
now
think about this
this may be
literally the first time they've ever
got behind the wheel
and uh so of course they're a learning
driver of course they're driving slowly
and badly they don't know how to drive
and remember this there was a time when
you were a learner driver and you were
slow and bad
but once we know how to drive we can
just get so irritated with these idiots
who don't know how to drive
so this is the curse of knowledge and
many people at this phase in their
career
learn an important truth
that they are are not cut out for
management and in any organization
pretty much there are two separate
career paths
one of them is the managerial one and
that's what we can help you with at
london business school
but many people realize they just don't
want to learn how to be good managers
and you have to learn these skills
and i would argue with to lbs we can
help you accelerate uh your development
at learning these skills but other
people they're just not kind of managed
it's not the right path for them and
those are what we call the subject
matter expert
there are some traders who should just
stay as traders there are some strategy
consultants who should just stay as
strategy consultants there are some
engineers who should stay as engineers
in almost every field and you can have
very successful careers
become very senior earn lots of money
and have the respect and admiration from
everyone
as a subject matter expert so you need
to figure out which of these career
paths is right for you and at lbs we
might help you with that decision but
let's say
you say no no no i am going to learn how
to supervise others and i want to rise
up the managerial ladder
then
if you can develop basic supervision
skills you rise to middle management and
there you're managing
large teams even business units sub
sections of organizations and here
the job is completely different
and the mistakes that executives make
are completely different because here
you the challenge the key challenge is
you have to manage people who know more
about their job than you do
so the problem at this stage is that you
can no longer rely
on your technical expertise
for your authority
and that is a problem because it's that
technical expertise that got you into
management in the first place but now it
just doesn't work
and this is the classic derailment phase
for many executives in their career
because they say look i am the expert i
know more than these little people below
me
and so you can get into uh this
bottleneck situation and in fact in 1979
a famous article was published in the
harvard business review by bill once
uh and uh in this article called who's
got the monkey
he describes a metaphor here that is
very powerful he says if you have a
problem
uh you have a monkey on your back and
the first instinct we have when we have
a monkey on our back is to go to the
boss and say boss i've got a problem
just as when we were kids you go to the
parents say mommy daddy i've got a
problem or go to the school teacher and
say teacher i have a problem now as the
boss the parent the teacher
when they come to you with this problem
you just internally sign say uh
i've seen this a hundreds of times
i know how to solve it i could do it in
minutes uh
or certainly much quicker than you can
it's going to be quicker for me to just
do it myself and even to start
explaining to you how you might think
about doing it and then you'll go away
and you'll come back and say boss is
this the right way no no no and then
i'll get you go back and eventually have
to say no why good job here but leave it
with me i'll do it
and so the best thing to do
as the bosses say
leave it with me the employee goes boss
you are the best thank you so much and
your employee leaves uh happy uh to be
uh have the problem is going to be done
well
uh you're happy because you've got a
happy employee and you know this
will
be done appropriately
and that's the world is a good place but
the problem clearly is this
the next person comes to you with their
problem and you say leave it with me
and again the monkey jumps from their
back
to your back and in fact ongoing
produced a video uh to go with this
article
and it's a fantastic but very outdated
video now and he had these actors and
these trained monkeys and the employee
comes to the boss's office and says boss
i've got a monkey on my back and the
boss says ah just leave it with me and
the monkey jumps over literally to the
boss's shoulder employee leaves happy
and then the next employee comes in same
thing happens until you have an entire
office full of monkeys it is chaos
they're ripping up the paper they're
eating the pencils and the whole point
about onkan's metaphor
is if an employee who comes to you with
a monkey on their back they need to
leave with a monkey on their back
in fact sometimes they need to leave
with
two
monkeys on their back and so many middle
managers
end up becoming the bottleneck in the
system because i'm the only person who
can solve this i have to get it done and
all these little people only are going
to screw it up and they become a
liability
and yet they think they are there you
know working late at night up early in
the morning working weekends being these
heroic managers and they don't realize
that they are completely screwing up and
they are derailing
in their careers
so
if you're able to learn these basic
middle management skills and we'll come
back to some of these in a bit then you
can continue your journey up the
managerial ladder to
the executive
floor the c-suite and there as a company
director a member of the board
you have reached the top of the mountain
however
in the boardroom the job is completely
different than it was when your middle
manager and so we have some fascinating
data here that actually uh the people
who make it to the boardroom
they don't make it because of their
performance
i'll say a bit more about this in a
minute uh the skills we need to operate
effectively at an executive level are
completely different than the skills we
needed to be effective model managers
because when you're senior you have to
operate in foggy complex situations and
you have to make decisions when you
don't know what the answer is because if
you're on the board and a problem gets
to the boardroom to which you go okay i
know the answer to this you have a
problem
firstly it may be a simple problem with
a simple solution
but if that's the case then how come
it's risen up to the executive level
this is the challenge the monkeys need
to be pushed down the hierarchy not
rising up the hierarchy
but much more frequently it's probably
the fact that you think it's a simple
problem but it isn't because you haven't
really understood it
and the problem in the boardroom
and this is a problem that is increasing
year after year and it's only been
accelerated by the pandemic
the problem is this we are living in
vuca times
now many of you i'm sure would have come
across
i first came across it in 2011 i was
working with procter gamble and some of
their directors and we took them to
various uh stimulating places around the
world to hear from
some experts
and really broaden out their horizons
and one of the places we took them was
to the american military academy at west
point
it was fascinating
because at west point they said we are
training soldiers to operate in vuca
conditions
so vuca if you haven't come across it
yet is a cluster of interrelated
concepts and for the last 10 years i've
been teaching students about vuca and
talking about complexity and leadership
nowadays i don't need to explain vuca in
our pandemic uh sort of affected lives
and careers clearly this is something
that speaks for itself so very briefly
the v stands for volatility because just
the speed of change
so uh you know flying around the world
uh is something a green and amber red
state you have to quarantine it is
changing
uh day by day we're now on the delta
variant now we're talking about the
lambda or the mu variant uh and we have
no idea what's really going to happen
uh u stands for uncertainty because of
the number of surprises and this isn't
just obviously major uh black swan
events uh like uh the pandemic things
that we couldn't probably uh predict and
may happen once in a lifetime or even
once a century uh hopefully uh these uh
maybe small things but uh you know i
mean a classic example of this for me is
uh certainly all uh sort of um the world
leaders uh
nobody
i think actually predicted that the
afghan government and military will
collapse uh nearly as quickly or as
thoroughly as it did this was just
uh very difficult to predict
c is for complexity because there's so
many different internal forces in our
complex often matrix structured uh
organizational structures uh with dotted
line uh reporting et cetera and
obviously external forces as well
be it medical uh requirements uh big
government legislation uh be it uh
pressure groups uh be it even things
like websites such as dark glassdoor.com
and i don't know if you've ever gone
onto glassdoor.com and read what uh
former employees say about your
organization but typically it's not
those guys were awesome
usually it's a little bit more negative
and these things really matter and
finally we have a ambiguity and this is
what in the military they call the fog
of war because even with our latest
uh laser guided satellite enabled
technology even today
in real time we don't know what's going
on
uh we have
large amounts of friendly fire and
inaccurate information and mistakes
being made we live in foggy times when
is this pandemic going to be over we
just have no way of knowing there are so
many things that are just far beyond our
ability
to have simple uh understanding of
and it used to be the case that when you
started your career at the bottom of the
mountain it was foggy but then you would
work hard keep your head down avoid
getting uh
involved in too many uh negative
situations and you would slowly climb
your way up the mountain and eventually
you would emerge through the clouds into
the sunlight and then as a member of the
executive
uh uh sort of committee uh the c suite
the board the vorstand whatever you
could see further
and so you would with this clarity
be somebody who would set the strategy
uh and should have the ceo
some kind of team who would set this
vision and strategy and then you would
cascade it down the mountain site
and the metaphor here of cascading
information is everything that's wrong
with many organizations today because
the metaphor here is there is some
person or group of people with some
vessel of wisdom and insight and they
pour it down the mountainside and it
tumbles nourishing people as they go and
there may even be a few drops for the
little people at the bottom of the
mountain
but that's not how great organizations
operates today and in the post-pandemic
world
i make a strong and confident prediction
this increasingly will not define what
great organizations and effective
leaders pay attention to
because we did some studies uh with a
colleague four years ago uh interviewing
ceos and even four years ago let alone
today they said yeah i don't know what
we should be doing
it's foggy it's complex it's much too
messy to have simple
sort of things like i can set the vision
and this is the key point about
organizations today
great organizations
have people at the top of the mountain
who have a clear sense of who we are and
where we're going but
they can create an environment where
everybody below them understands who we
are and where we're going
and feels that they can really
play to their strengths that they can
really use the things that they can
contribute to help us achieve our
ambitions
it's often called distributed leadership
uh and it's completely different so 22
years ago when i first started teaching
at lbs it was all about how to lead
strategic transformations and we talked
about people like jack welsh and you
need to cascade all this information and
set the vision and strategy
it's not what great organizations look
like today and this trend is for me one
of the most fundamental shifts
between what it took to be successful in
the 20th century
and a bit beyond and what great
organizations look like today
as the american writer f scott
fitzgerald said the test of a first-rate
intelligence is the ability to hold two
opposed ideas in the mind at the same
time and still retain the ability to
function
that ability to stay with complexity
rather than try and eliminate it say
look it's simple
it's not simple
and yet really be effective so let me
share with you the bad news here and
this is bad news a history of success
which all of you have otherwise you
would not be considering an ember
program at lbs a history of sex is
success is no guarantee of future
success because the things that have
ensured your success to date will not
continue to do so as you increasingly
get senior as you climb that managerial
ladder
in fact the title of marshall
goldsmith's book is what got you here
won't get you there and this is
increasingly true
the behaviors that allow you to be
successful in one phase of your career
are not the behaviors that will allow
you to thrive as you increasingly get
senior and yet we have this assumption i
just got promoted and so clearly you've
just rewarded my behaviors so clearly
those were the right behaviors it's an
implicit assumption and yet it is one of
the most consistent
mistakes that high-flying
high-performing smart executives with a
track record of success make
so the fact you've been successful
means that you shouldn't be too pleased
with yourself because it doesn't mean
that it's gonna end very well
so
you are never promoted because you were
good at your last role there is always a
leap of faith by the organization a hope
you'll be self-aware enough and agile
enough to adapt
to the challenges of a new role
where the criteria for success are
different it's not the same job as you
did before
and so isaiah berlin the philosopher
categorized people into two categories
and he used an animal metaphor going
back to
a historical philosophy called arcolocus
he said there are two types of animal
that you could be
the first of them is a hedgehog
now a hedgehog has a great defensive
strategy if it's attacked it curls
itself into a ball and the predator
cannot eat it now that's a great
strategy that's allowed it to survive
and thrive for millennia
there's another type of animal that you
might be and that is the fox
and the fox in this sense is able to
adapt to very different situations it
can live clearly in the countryside you
can live in an urban environment so if
here in london you go jogging through
the streets at dusk
you may well bump into a fox in fact one
time i actually had a fox run along this
beside me for a little bit uh they can
live in the arctic circle uh there's uh
the arctic fox uh hunts literally
through uh the the snow
and even some of the most arid desert
conditions you find the desert fox a fox
is able to adapt to the challenges of
its environment so are you
the subject matter expert
are you the hedgehog this is what i do i
am an expert i develop years developing
this depth of expertise
or are you more like the fox who's able
to learn new skills to have what we call
a growth mindset to be open to doing
things differently
uh because most managers are
significantly more
uh
sort of less rather self-aware than they
think they are
and in the words of mark twain
uh it ain't what you don't know that
gets you into trouble
it's what you know for sure that just
ain't so because you might be sitting
there yeah yeah yeah it's all very
interesting for those losers out there i
am a winner i am on the fast track to
the top and that may be true
but
this is a very consistent problem and
let me take you through the 11
most consistent mistakes
that executives make as they're really
transitioning up this ladder
and all of these
you may be able to survive them but
clearly
uh at london business school what we're
saying here is
you want to really accelerate your
development
you need to learn new skills you do not
have all the skills abilities behavior
and knowledge that you need
to continue on that fantastic trajectory
that you've already uh
sort of achieved whether it's staying in
the same function or you're looking to
do something more transitional so what
are these classic mistakes well number
one is arrogance uh being right and not
seeing your own limitations and by the
way a lot of the things when you were
more junior these were considered
strengths
you're self-confident you have
self-belief as you get more senior that
increasingly under the spotlight of
senior management starts looking like
arrogance
needing to always be the center
attention it's always about me me me
uh and you always have to bring the
topic of every conversation back to
yourself
unpredictable mood swings you know that
irritability that creates inevitable
uncertainty in fact there are some
managers that are so unpredictable that
if they're in a bad mood the whisper
goes around the office and everyone will
avoid them
but if the whisper goes around they're
in a good mood then suddenly everyone's
queuing upside
up outside their office to get to their
approval get them signed or something
yeah no problem uh and uh this can take
up a lot of people's energy figuring out
what mood you're in rather than focusing
their energy on actually delivering
results to the organization
excessive caution you're paralyzed with
fear
the deer in the proverbial headlights
unable to take wise risks
then next we have untrusting you're
skeptical about the motivations of
others as i said that ability to trust
is what underlies
everything
uh of what it means to be an effective
leader
and so there was a study uh
uh published by a researcher called
rosenman in um
in the early 80s
and what he did is he went into a series
of primary schools
and he gave the children a specific test
which measures
uh
academic improvement ah is this someone
who has the potential here to really
step up and uh really grow
uh so wherever you are academically are
you gonna stay at that same level or are
you really uh going to be what we call a
high potential
uh and he gave these children this test
but he didn't give the children the
results all he did is he went to the
teachers he said now don't share this
with the children
but just so you're aware put the
children in your class into two separate
categories one category are the low
potential children we're going to carry
on in straight line of performance the
other ones are the high potential who we
predict are really going to step up and
excel more than they have done in the
past uh but don't share this with the
children
and then roseman went away but he came
back uh three or four months later just
to see how the children were getting on
and what he found was remarkable because
in every school in every class
the children they identified as high
potential children were doing well and
the children that identified as low
potential were doing less well and as a
scientist
that's what you're trying to do
accurately predict future patterns which
is kind of cool
but the problem here is that rosenman
lied to
the teachers
the children had been randomly assigned
to one group or the other and yet their
measured performance in every class in
every school
was showing a clear
divergence so the only thing that could
have been affecting their performance so
consistently
with the attitude
the mindset of the teacher if the
teacher thinks the child is stupid lazy
and competent
they will be right
absolutely guaranteed almost absolutely
but if a teacher thinks that here is a
child who has potential who really is
going to step up they will also be right
one way or the other the attitude of the
authority figure yet the boss the
teacher or even the parent
creates a self-fulfilling prophecy and
there is some manager to say well i am
skeptical you have to earn my trust
and they're always right look i told you
the idiots were going to score but look
how they've screwed up
you take those same employees you give
them to a good boss who is able to give
trust unconditionally
and those employees will consistently
improve their performance
then we have a loop and these are the
bosses that disengage especially when
the pressure is on these are the bosses
in the pandemic you just get the
occasional email and in the first weeks
they're saying everything okay
everything okay but then they just don't
care
uh destructively impulsive
uh without considering uh the
consequences and they can't set
priorities so they have lots of
initiatives but they start a lot of
things nothing really ever gets
implemented
overly political
they say one thing but they do
another
perfectionist they're so focused on
detail
that they're
micromanagers they're down in the weeds
unable to really stand back and see
the bigger picture
and the final one here
uh is uh in many ways uh particularly
problematic was that they want to please
everyone
you might say well surely that's a good
thing
if you want everyone to like you or even
to love you you can't make the difficult
decisions so if you want everyone to
love you do not be a manager
do not rise up the managerial ladder my
advice instead is
buy a puppy
a puppy will love you as long as you
feed it occasionally
so stay there in your subject matter
expertise
do not be a manager this is not a
popularity contest
so
let's say
uh that uh um in your current role
uh that uh the um let's say breakfast
time today you ate something that tasted
a bit strange maybe a little bit off and
uh as the day wears on you feel yourself
having stomach cramps and sort of
sweating and uh sort of feeling uh
really very unwell and you get major
food poisoning and you slip into a coma
this is all hypothetical of course but
you are in a coma for three months
without any communication with the
outside world
if that were you
would your organization collapse
 i can
tell you what the probable answer is
that
no
uh but in three months time you wake up
out of your coma
uh leap out of bed rush back to the
organization and say okay guys crisis
over
i'm back
how are they likely to respond
well that probably says something like
oh well great to your boss well things
are going okay here
in fact the really scary things when
they say well actually boss
things are going better than when you
were here
micro managing us
in the words of charles de gaulle the
graveyards are full of indispensable men
we have this fantasy that we are the
only ones who can do things we have to
have all the uh monkeys on our back uh
because all those idiots would screw it
up and this is a conceit this is just
wrong but
and this is an important point for me
delegation
is against
fiber of our dna
because the reason you've been
successful
is that you are a high performer
so to delegate somebody who
uh is maybe less experienced less senior
probably and maybe just maybe less
intelligent is
problematic
because they'll do it more slowly
they probably won't do it as well
they'll certainly do it differently to
some degree as you and you may even have
to step in and take it over
so it leads to a question
why on earth should i delegate
and this brings us on to the great
alfred p
sloan the head of general motors for
many many years and the man i would
consider the father of modern management
in fact one of our degree programs is
named as the sloan program in his honor
same is true at stanford same is true at
mit
and sloan said something
very profound
he said the most important thing i ever
learned about management
is the work must be done by other men
delegation is not just another
management skill it's fundamentally
about your ability
to build the organization
so what can you do to avoid uh
derailment
well get regular feedback on your
leadership behavior
do you really know what your strengths
are and this is something we focus on a
lot
uh in the mba a lot of them as well it's
a very very important thing there's some
very cool research about successful
people spending more time thinking about
their strengths than worrying about
their weaknesses but as we increasingly
get seniors some of these strengths
strengths could under that intense
spotlight that of senior management
could start looking like weaknesses
you need to continue learning now again
uh brett and i we're somewhat biased
here we think for many people it might
uh if you're really serious about your
crit it might be good to get a little
bit of external support to help you
accelerate your development
but also it's the informal learning
you'll get day to day from people around
you in the organization that is also
important you need to get advice from a
coach or a mentor and the distinction
for me
a mentor says look
uh i know you well uh i can see
strengths that you can't see this
is where you need to focus your
attention
a mentor gives you advice
and it has to be somebody you would you
admire and respect
a coach
well a coach is somebody that simply
helps you ask important questions and
creates a space so you can think through
the answers for yourself
both of these
may well be critical for your career
success
but again career success it's not a
generic thing what is your personal
vision for success
what does success mean for you in your
career it'll be different than it was
for your parents if they are saying you
should be doing that on his path or your
friends and
other people your boss uh
what does it really mean for you what is
the journey that you need to go on
and one of the most stimulating things
you'll get from the ember at london
business school is talking to people
from all around the world this is a
truly global program it's one of the
real joys that i find of connecting and
learning from our mba students in an
ember class you will have pretty much i
don't know brett but 30 35 nationalities
in each class and so really learning
from other people it'll help you figure
out what is the right path for you it's
not simply continuing necessarily to
climb that narrow career ladder that you
started on
so what will be the things that lead you
to be successful in the future and
finally
manage your relationship with your boss
you may be right your boss is a bad boss
and sometimes you have a toxic boss
and if that's the case if they're toxic
and they're abusive then you need to get
out before it undermines your
self-confidence and even your
self-esteem but
all bosses including ourselves are
imperfect so don't underestimate your
boss
it's usually a better idea to help your
boss look good than to go behind their
back complaining about them because
bosses always know
when somebody below them does not
respect them
so
these are hopefully some useful points
uh and i want to open it up now to some
questions
uh we have uh three minutes left uh here
for questions uh and uh uh we have a
question here from deb cena how do we
convince ourselves to hire people who
are smarter than us
and this is a great question charles
darwin famously said if i have seen
further
it's because i stood on the shoulders of
giants
many executives do not like having young
uh bright people uh but i'm not
necessarily young but bright capable
people below them they like surrounding
people uh who are not gonna you know
show them up
but this i think your point uh uh that
scene is an important one it takes
self-confidence
to say if i surround myself with people
who are brighter and smarter than i am
then actually that's good for me
uh because there are some managers the
only way they've seen further is by
stepping on their heads and beating
people down below them
as much as they can rather than actually
helping people grow and develop
in fact i wrote an article about this
called the paradox of indispensability
and what we find uh is there are some
managers who like to feel indispensable
and keep all these people below them uh
sort of in their books and make sure
that you're shining and getting all of
the praise the problem with that is you
do consistently get to a phase in your
career
where the people above you say you are
fantastic we love you you're doing a
brilliant job we're never gonna fight
but the other thing we're never gonna do
is to promote you because you're far too
important where you are so that
is uh the paradox of indispensability so
great question deb cena basel says who
should everyone why should everyone be
leaders can an
without a leader by cooperating as a
team i think part of what you say there
is profound
uh because what you're getting at there
is that leadership is not what happens
uh simply from the ceo's office
and this is for me the fundamental shift
we see in what leadership means today
and will increasingly mean tomorrow
leadership is something that happens
that every needs to happen rather at
every level in the hierarchy it's about
our ability to create a context around
us where everyone feels that they can
really contribute in profound ways to
success in the organization where
everyone feels they can genuinely
cooperate and collaborate it's not a
hierarchical concept so it's a
fundamental redefinition of what
leadership means and ashwin says how to
change our attitude from taking and
doing jobs to delegating jobs
uh now ashwin how to do that
well it is a very simple mindset shift
in some respects but practically
speaking it's significantly harder than
flicking that switch i need to delegate
and if you join the mba i will be
sharing with you my article on
delegation uh where i tell you how to
actually do this i'll give you some
practical advice about it but this is
something that both with your fellow
students particularly in your study
group and obviously with faculty is part
of what will try and help you find an
answer as you go through your mba that
will set you up for future career
success
okay
we're out of time here it is uh uh i was
briefed by brett to finish uh after
exactly an hour which is where at right
now so uh i really hope this has been
stimulating i hope there's some
practical things you can take away from
our time together here uh and uh i
really do hope uh that you really
consider uh an mba an executive mba a
london business school as something that
could help you really continue
your uh
career journey as a high flyer you go
out there
fueled by everything you've learned the
inspiration and to be honest the main
thing you'll learn at london business
school is not all this theory and two by
two matrix and cap you know the weighted
average cost of capital and all this
sort of stuff the main thing we're going
to give you
is confidence to go into a wide range of
situations you didn't even think you
could ever find yourself in
and go there and really
thrive and succeed so good luck with
your careers and i hope to catch up with
some if not many of you uh in your time
at the school thank you very much
thank you very much richard i'm sure you
all um will join me in thanking richard
for um really an excellent inspiring
session strange in the the uh
the lecture theater world would be
giving him a round of applause right now
um
but i know there's a few uh talking
points there that kind of ring true to
me and uh i'll be taking into my own uh
leadership style
so go forward um now as good as that
session was i'm sure richard would agree
that it's uh generally better in person
um you know on the program itself um you
know there's so much about learning from
each other as well as from from the
faculty so it's a
discussion from from left to right
across the uh the lecture theater where
you'll share ideas and you know richard
mentioned 30 35 nationalities in the
classroom you hit the nail on the head
that's exactly what we normally get in
uh with our london member to my classes
um so it's different perspectives from
different uh different geographies as
well as well as different industries and
so on yeah yeah and uh i think that's
really important right and um you know
just to be just to make one final point
and then i'll hand over to brett and the
rest of team but um you know this is not
an nba dumb lbs is not a series of ted
talks
uh it's a it's a highly interactive
immersive experience uh and you know i
love ted talks fantastic you know
there's lots of content i've got loads
of youtube videos out there but the nba
it's not it's it's so much more intense
and profound than that and you will be
different
when you finish the ember than when you
started so good luck with all of that
and i'll hand you over to brett thanks
richard uh absolutely true it is uh it
is definitely a life-changing experience
um
now we uh for those of you i don't know
where you all are in your uh your
journeys uh through the admissions
process uh there's quite a few in the
room um some of you will have been in
touch with uh with our admissions teams
already um if that's the case please do
get in touch with your uh your contact
to continue the discussion uh for those
of you who haven't yet been in touch
with us um
uh please do get in touch if this is uh
you know really you know raise your
interest level in doing the program uh
as richard has said uh it really is
genuinely a life-changing experience um
we're gonna have a short break now a
couple of minutes i'm not sure if we'll
stick to that original uh timeline and
whether we'll go a few minutes more um
but
for those of you who are interested in
the uh the executive mba program held in
dubai um there is another couple of
sessions coming up um so um with
scheduled for a 10 past two london time
ten plus five um
gst um to move into an introduction to
the executive mba dubai program uh
that's being run by zara nor camelin who
is the program director for the ember
out in dubai um that will be followed um
uh soon after uh at 4 30 london time uh
5 30 gst uh with the executive mba dubai
experience which should be uh hosted by
amber huck who works in the uh the
recruitment admissions team adam dubai
uh and she'll also then be uh hosting a
panel discussion uh with a couple of our
um uh amber dubai alumni uh and that
will be from uh 310 uk
to 325 or 610 uh dubai to 625 uh so if
you are interested in the uh the amber
dubai program please do stick around um
yeah we will give you about a five
minute break um so probably a quarter
past the hour so in five minutes time we
will uh we'll start that session uh for
those of you who are more interested in
london or any of our other programs
again please do stick around if you'd
like to hear more about what we're doing
in the the golf region with our with our
program um but if not do feel free to
drop off the call now and um uh please
do get in touch with us i'll take

---

### Introduction to the Executive MBA Dubai Programme
URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WhpoMBX1mFA

Idioma: en

good evening everyone and welcome to
the amber dubai program overview my name
is zara kamelin uh as brex did a small
introduction to me earlier on um
while you were listening to our amazing
professor dr richard jordy talking about
his area of expertise
i want to take a little bit of time
talking to you about the ember dubai
program
and what we do here in dubai
so i'm just going to get started
like this okay
so um
as you know the mb dubai program is
run in tandem with the ember london
program we have we have the sister
stream we start together and we end
together our journey is a 20-month uh
journey starting off kicking off in
london historically pre-covet
as and then we all end up together again
uh in london
for our finale and wrap-up before we
congregate to celebrate the 20 months of
hard work that our ember students have
put in
so
we have two starts or two intakes in
september and in january um throughout
the program uh they split across two um
two different um parts so the first part
is your core which runs over three times
and then there is two extra terms that
we call your second year or the second
phase of the program and i'll talk to
you a little bit further about
both
for dubai we run our classes in a block
week format
and for london it's
bi-weekly so it's a different format
in terms of the terms that we cover
for core you will be looking at about 15
courses we start with executive
leadership and understanding general
management these are the two courses
that you will be kicking off with
and then from that point onwards you
will be having a
mix of
two to three different courses during a
block week
in dubai the block weeks run
typically from a
tuesday or wednesday through till
saturday which includes the dubai
weekend the current dubai weekend which
is the friday and saturday um i'll show
you
a timetable of a block week calendar
sample here so as you can see there's
two different courses
that is running in in a typical block
week like this but apart from the core
teaching what you will also notice is uh
the extracurricular elements that is
part of the ember
and i also want to profess that there's
a lot of
learning informal learning that happens
outside the classroom so we do build in
time for that
that doesn't just include your lunches
or your kind of breaks you have in the
morning but also includes sessions that
we work in tandem with our careers
colleagues in the couriers team as well
as our faculty to be supporting you
outside the class now there is also
elements that run during a block week
which includes um networking informal
and formal uh
networking facilitated by the program
office as well as your colleagues and
students so it's it's quite a packed
week uh it is intentional um
not just from a learning perspective but
from an immersion perspective so
we do um expect students to be
uh in person attending this
these block weeks now with our classroom
first policy and and model which i will
talk to you later uh but this is just to
give you a flavor of what a typical week
in a dubai classroom looks like
we have three sessions so we start at
9am to buy time uh and then we go on
till half seven
with the exception of saturday as you
know our classes are a good mix of a 50
50 commuter versus
students living in dubai so in order to
support
our students traveling in as well as our
faculty
we don't run a pm session or the
afternoons on the last day of class
the sessions are two hours 45 minutes uh
and you do get breaks
in in the middle of between
this is part two of the program or kind
of how it looks like so you have two
terms like i mentioned before
there's various formats of
uh classes that we
run for electives now electives is in
your second phase of the program uh
they're essentially
learning modules that you get to choose
depending on what you want to do our
portfolio for the program is about 90
plus
you have various electives you can
choose from
that is representative of the seven
subject areas we have at the school
apart from electives you also have uh
your request required to sit and
participate and pass what we call the
global business assignment or gbas in
short
as well as a finale what we call the
capstone project in england that you
come together with the with the london
class and of course uh you need to kind
of continue with your core and your
electives plus all the other
requirements for your second year in
order to be presented and graduate um at
the end so this is kind of your second
year phase second years or the second
part of the program is quite
individual because you get to choose
your electives as opposed to how your
first year looked like in in the slide i
shot with the 15 courses they are set
they are the foundation or the building
blocks uh for you to be starting your
second year journey or thinking about
what you want to do in your second year
in order to
kind of
the second year phase of the program is
divided into
various electives but the minimum
requirement for the program is that you
pass a minimum of six but you have the
opportunity to expand depending on the
time you have for your second year up to
up to nine electives we also have uh
partnerships with various business
schools and as part of an embassy as
part of the amber journey you also get
the opportunity to be doing a block week
exchange with one of our party partner
institutes um so
currently we have partnerships with hong
kong university
and then ucla and columbia business
school in the us so these are the three
schools that we have partnerships with
and you will have access to elective
portfolios within those
partner schools as well
i spoke a little bit about the portfolio
review now
lbs
has a varied amount of
formats in how we offer this you will be
engaging in electives
and participating in these classes with
the rest of your counterparts so that is
another networking opportunity you get
to meet and share your ideas with
various students from different stages
of programs so you will have early
career students the full-time mbas were
in their mid careers as well as our
leadership portfolio students saloons as
well as your colleagues from ember
london um and in the global asia and
europe programs
so across all of the programs um there
are about 190 streams
what this means is that
you will have access to that 90 plus
courses
that run 190 times so some of the more
popular electives are offered in let's
say four to five different formats
um and then you get to choose
the format that suits you best uh for
your busy schedule because we do
appreciate that our embers are employed
part-time students with family
commitments as well so you have that
option as well as the different subject
areas i'll get to the subject layers in
a bit but i just wanted to highlight the
kind of flexibility you have
during the elective phase
this is this is a slight overview of the
portfolio uh when you do join the
program uh we have much more in-depth
briefings
uh about
the options you may have and the
flexibility you have and the duration
etc so this is a very high level
snapshot of
what
the portfolio looks like so apart from
the subject areas you get to choose your
electives from
uh there's also what we call
the special electives so part of that
includes niche courses which are
application only there's quite a few of
that in the portfolio so if you are
specializing wanting to specialize in a
specific finance area or let's say
something around management science
operations you have that option within
the niche courses
there is business projects so there are
much more immersive
real life work projects you can take as
part of your
current kind of you know with your
current employer or a project that you
want to foresee uh to be wanting to
aspire if you're aspiring to do be going
into a different industry etc depending
on your career goals for joining the
school
as well as the entrepreneurship summer
school uh this runs
once in the summer throughout uh it is
again application only but we will share
more information in the portfolio as
well as the exchange as i mentioned with
three um business schools that we have
partnerships with
dubai electives we run in block b format
the same way we run our cool classes
and these are also a special group of
electives because
we run the most popular electives in
that current in that academic year's
portfolio so these are the electives
that we have in our portfolio right now
um they will change over the years
depending on on the demand but as you
can see it's a good mix of strategy
general management finance um as well as
marketing electives so
again this is just a very small snapshot
of electives
for those of you who are intending to
complete your program only in dubai you
have that facility now because of the
the elective for you have but we do
recommend given um global nature of the
program and the school that you do um
take advantage of our campuses between
london and dubai
global business assignments are a very
um interesting
immersive
learning experience for our executive
mbas and it's
time and time again one of the more
popular
aspects of the amber program
i'm showcasing six cities that we used
to run programs in
some of it is still available and some
of it isn't
but this is just to give you an idea of
where our students have been in the past
a global business assignment is a
week-long intensive immersive
learning experience where our mba
students across
all of the portfolios as well as sloan
students
get to experience not just the country
or cities culture
um and and the social aspects but more
importantly the the economic and
financial and political implications of
that country these are all faculty-led
designed for that specific country so if
you see for example um uh the dubai and
abu dhabi gba was actually based on the
expo 2020 model
and
you know as as we move on from the expo
uh this topic or the the kind of focus
of the gpa will change as well a bonus
errors as well as athens was around the
um
the crisis and economic crisis and what
that meant for those countries and those
cities specifically so it's very focused
uh
regional as well as country focus these
are fun trips but also quite immersive
and quite educational um and as a
program team we do travel with our
students on these trips so i can say
personally being in some of these they
have actually been a big highlight for
me just from a learning experience
although i've been with the school for a
long time i always learn something new
in in a trip like this so it's it's this
is a key
element of the program
it's hard not to talk about kobet um
in the current situation uh so i wanted
to kind of put this slide in
uh
i am sure
as many of you working in the various
industries know that you know a lot of
sectors got disrupted education
as an industry higher education too
so over the last 15 months we had to
quickly pivot from what we were doing um
you know we have
we are professionals and we are very
thorough and we know what we're doing
face-to-face but in a kobe situation and
when this happened last year uh we had
to quickly pivot to what we called a
virtual delivery um and from that point
onwards we've learned
and we've redesigned the course as well
as some other elements that we delivered
used to deliver face-to-face uh to a
hybrid platform
um and
more recently from this term onwards
from the autumn term we are what we
we're doing what we call a clash room
first delivery model what this means for
those of you who may plan to join in in
the future now for the ember dubai
program is that
we are slowly going in to um
what we used to do pre-covet
with
giving the students the flexibility of
um being able to kind of join the
program at various stages um
in a hybrid format so it's it's quite
complicated uh to explain in in in
detail but what we wanted to keep was
the flexibility for students who are
still um
in
areas or regions where travel is
restricted uh for students who have
personal circumstances for medical or
various other reasons so while giving
that flexibility to our ember students
we wanted to move back to what we see
where there is value which is the
face-to-face experience
like brett said like
even richard focused on the face-to-face
informal and formal kind of elements of
the program
really is what makes the executive mba
so special so we don't want to sacrifice
that and as the world open up and dubai
opens up specially we've been able to do
that here so since last
um september we have been running hybrid
uh the hybrid format and since august
this year we have been running classroom
first model
we are able to fly our faculty out now
um so most of our faculty are flying in
this is the first week we have both our
faculty members in a block week in dubai
we hope to continue that
uh restrictions allowing uh so
hopefully if you are joining the program
you should be expecting
uh to be
engaging with us in the classroom in
dubai uh given the restrictions of
course if things change we have to be
flexible with that but this is this is
our future focus we are going back to
how we used to deliver pre-pandemic so
that is around planning
and then finally in terms of just
graduation of for the embankment what
you need to do uh you need to pass all
of the core requirements like i said
there's 15 courses in your first year
that you need to pass you get a lot of
support around pastoral care and
academic support
for the courses
we have specific stream managers who are
allocated for the streams who will
support you throughout the journey so
you have that one-to-one support from a
program perspective as well as from an
academy perspective
our faculty are available
because they have faculty assistants and
teaching assistants or support with
courses so if you do need that extra
support that is always provided for you
in your second year it's a much more
um individual or kind of best sport
journey for you you can design it the
way you want
you are required to pass your minimum
requirements which is the six electives
where you are allowed to do up to a
maximum of nine um as of the current
member regulations
you're also required to
attend and pass a global business
assignment as well as your capstone
requirement and of course as with any
program you have to be in good academic
standing as well as good financial
standing in order to be presented to
what we call the exam board which is a
back office system or back office
process we do on presenting you on
behalf of you we present you to the exam
board in order to graduate uh formally
so
that is a overall nutshell of the
program um i hope
if you have any questions please do
reach out to the um amber dubai team and
we can help you with it
uh but yes i hope i get to see some of
you in the future in in one of imma
programs
good luck with your application if you
are interested in applying for the
program and please do reach out if you
have further questions

---

### The Executive MBA Dubai Experience
URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzLm8-PE7M8

Idioma: en

my name is amber huck i am the senior
manager for recruitment and admissions
for the executive mbh5 program and i am
your host for the last session of the
exploring emba
that you have been seen that have been
with us so far for the faculty master
class by professor richard jolly he is a
professor of organizational behavior you
have also just heard from zahra noor
kameli she is the program director for
the executive mba dubai program and now
i would like to introduce to you uh two
members of our alumni community uh
executive mba dubai alumni for what is
going to be an excellent conversation on
their experience as students in the
program
joining me today i would like to welcome
please andrew nichol uh class of 2010 uh
he is a partner at lumina capital
advisors here in the united arab
emirates also joining me today from
egypt is amir
class of 2019
she is amir is the chairwoman and
managing director of naeem financial
investment
which is a member of the naeem holding
group and she is also its group the
deputy ceo
i'd like to welcome you both uh for
joining us today thank you very much
thanks amber
thank you
excellent before we get started i would
like to remind our audience uh you are
welcome to submit questions for our
panel through the q a function uh i will
open up the last 10 to 15 minutes of the
session for your questions to get them
in and i'll try to get through as many
of them as i can
to get us started today um i'd like to
ask the both of you um
the fundamental question about why uh
the executive mba so what made you
decide um to do the executive mba and if
you could just provide some context on
what you were doing before um you were
before you joined the program when you
were actually thinking and researching
schools i'd like to begin with you
andrew
sure and thank you very much for
inviting me to to talk this afternoon
this evening um so why did i do the mba
i think
i think a bit of context on my
background is helpful so i've always
been in investment banking um i started
my career at kpmg in london
in 2001 and i was in the valuations team
so i was very very focused on a specific
area of valuations um and i'd spent five
years in that team
and by the time it came to 2005 2006 i'd
been sent out to
the middle east to do a secondment to
head the evaluations team for kpmg
across the region
but i'd always felt there was something
more out there
valuations is obviously a very it's a
very technical subject
and i've been very focused on on that
area and when i came to the middle east
i really had one objective and that was
to diversify my global experience and to
save for the mba um and i wanted to go
to insead at that point um my mother was
french and i'd always wanted to go there
so i'd applied to insead and london
business school
and as i went through that process i
realized that lbs was a much better fit
for me the way that the program worked
out and i'd actually applied to the
full-time program
so the process of going through multiple
different business schools had really
helped me to focus on what i wanted to
get out of the program and that was a
diversification of
skills i wanted to get away from just
doing valuations
and i felt having applied to different
schools and looked at what lbs had to
offer and that really was the the right
place for me to go and i then moved from
the full-time program very early on on
to the dubai london executive program
because that enabled me to do my
full-time job
and to do the mba which which is the the
same program but delivered to deliver
quite differently so i think for me um
in a nutshell it was
diversification um of experience it was
enlightening and understanding lots of
different areas of business so not just
one specific area
which was valuations
and learning about lots of different
areas within business which i hadn't
been exposed to before
great thank you
uh omnia
yes so um amber i've always had the
dream of doing my mba but i always i was
always too busy to pursue it seriously
always too busy at work changing jobs
sometimes working between different
countries i had to stay some of my time
in london when i was working for
barclays capital then and i've always
been working within the financial
industry whether it be evaluations
derivatives trading
i've built also exposed to uh corporate
credit in banking so i was also not just
changing jobs i was even changing the
focus of my job as well in between i've
managed to do my cfa
and it was a three years independent
study but yet i always still wanted a
classroom experience that is mixed with
my current skill set from the job
so in 2018 i was
already looking back at some of the
bushes and emails i used to always
inquire about lbs program in specific
and i said well it seems there is never
a right time so i'd better jump in now
or i will never do it and that was it i
wanted to
see myself in a different lighting
interact with a different
set of group that will definitely share
a different set of knowledge that i
don't have access to in the workplace as
well
and also i was always afraid of being a
dinosaur at work that i'm not aware of
what is new going on in this world that
i become a senior person who's lost
touch to the new weights in the world so
i just embarked on it and i applied that
excellent so it sounds like for you
it was about making sure that you were
up to date yes
and having your skills be
be relevant for the marketplace is that
correct yes
okay now you would also mention the lbs
had always been at the top of your list
yes
there are many good schools there's
there's um also good options here in the
region why why has lbs always been
something at the top of your list i've
done my research thoroughly among the
different schools that can offer a
program that does not require a
full-time presence because i never
wanted to leave my job
at work is key for me so i've compared
between the executive programs available
and lbs definitely stands out for its
set of finance
courses in terms of topics covered the
variety and the number of courses as
well
also i've had some talks with some of my
friends who went through the lbs program
and other programs as well
and i've always been the lbs one has
always been highly praised by others
compared to the other programs
when the time came also the format of
the program was key for me and the
ability to have classes between london
and dubai and given that i live in egypt
as well so commuting is key
distance made a difference for me as
well but the top top reason was the
quality and variety of the finance
courses
okay
now andrew same question for you you did
mention uh another school that you were
considering uh given that um your french
background
um what ultimately you you talked about
diversification of experience but what
cinched it for you in terms of your
decision between these two schools
it's a really hard decision and as i i
mentioned you know
there are other schools but you learn an
awful lot about schools as you go
through the application process it's
hugely intense in terms of the time you
put into it the investment that you make
the interviews that they have and the
people that you that you meet and having
spent you know everyone who's on this on
this call you know it does take time
as you go through that process you learn
about the people you learn about the
school you learn about the content
delivery and the way that the program is
delivered throughout the the experience
so for me as i went through that i i
developed my thinking and
you know i got offers from from two
schools from the school i mentioned at
lbs both full-time but i changed and i
wanted to go to lbs purely because of
the people and the experience that i
expected i was going to get and i think
by learning through that process it
really helped me clarify what i wanted
to get out of the the experience and it
was
you come in thinking it's technical and
it's academic it's really about the
people
and i'm sure we'll come on to that about
what is the long-term benefits and what
do you take away in the one year five
year and ten years time
but you know when you get a good feeling
about a school when you feel like it's
going to give you what you're looking
for in terms of your objectives um you
know you learn quite a lot through that
process so for me it was about the
people it was about the delivery of the
fairness of that process at each stage
it was clear why you were filling in the
forms why you were doing the gmats why
the test and it was 10 years ago when i
did my mba so the process might have
changed a little bit now but it was very
clear why you were doing all of that it
wasn't just about a score there was five
or six different um areas of that
application so i think um communication
was excellent and the content the course
delivery as omnia said was very good and
the people that i met along the way were
absolutely top notch in first class and
i i felt very comfortable
right actually this is a very good segue
into my next set of questions which is
um your experience actually on the
program as students and andrew i'd like
to continue uh with you now you did
complete uh the program 10 years ago um
more than 10 years ago that you've
mentioned
how would you describe the classroom
experience for you so you've talked to
me a little bit about the people and the
content how would you describe for our
audience today they're obviously not not
with us on the program yet but what
would you describe as as a student on
the program inside the classroom with
your classmates and a professor such as
the one we just heard from a little
while ago
it's a hugely rich experience and as i
said my background was very specific and
i wanted to open my eyes to other areas
of business and you're not just going to
do that to the classes and through the
electives you're doing that through your
classmates so in my class i had an
architect i had a teacher i was the
token finance person there was a
consultant
and an engineer so we had people from
all different walks of life and every
single person in that class had
different objectives for joining and
they all contributed very very
differently so i was able to contribute
to the finance classes the decision
making the engineer was excellent at um
so you learn a huge amount from the
people that are within your study groups
and it's not always the easiest people
do fall out sometimes
but actually you learn from that as well
as you go through the class and the way
that you deal with difficult situations
and when people don't always agree on a
way to deliver a project but part of
that delivery is the process as well so
my experience was um was hugely
eye-opening it was great to learn from
so many different people and different
cultures as well there are people from
all over the world and people from
brazil from
from europe from the us from obviously
from the middle east so
it's not just about the teaching and the
quality of teaching which when you start
off on your mba experience you think
it's academic and it's teaching it is
it's the people in your class and it's
also the experience of learning from
them as well so i think it's very
eye-opening and engaging so that's one
of the key things from the mba for me
was was the people and what i learned
from them
great and we will come back to the study
groups uh in a moment i do have a
question for you around that um amnia
how was your experience in the classroom
um is is what andrew was saying
resonating with you did you have
something else that you would like to
add on what andrew said i totally agree
with him and also it was fascinating it
turns that you suddenly back into a
classroom and you feel that urge to
misbehave a bit like a teenager when you
were in high school you threw jokes in
between classes you complain about the
amount of assignments you had to do so
it's refreshing it's nice it gets you
out of your usual self that is committed
to a work schedule very formal no the
diversity in the class is amazing the
interaction is very nice i was also
blessed with a very nice peer group as
well professors also add a lot of
knowledge and the discussions inside the
classroom actually are also and i
as i said
of course when it comes to the group
assignments we were all
from different backgrounds as anderson
as well i was the finance person there
was a
an er doctor with us there was an
engineer there was a marketing person so
we were all from very different
backgrounds
different nationalities as well i was
the only female in the group so i was
always pampered as well so uh it was
nice it was diverse it was nice we also
made a point that whoever is passing
through a difficult time family be it
work responsibilities and want to juggle
some of the workload we sort of
held each other's back so it was a good
experience in terms of networking with
the people classroom experience is
amazing and refreshing as well
now in terms of the study groups some
it's mentioned already but can you give
me an idea of how did you
um
so let me provide some context the
audience may or may not know
when the class starts at lbs
the entire class is actually divided up
into study groups yes
i'd like you to maybe share with us how
what was the dynamic like in your study
group in terms of how did you
work together what did you work together
on um were all your assignments done
together did you work on certain
projects
can you give us some insight on how this
study group functions
of course during the core courses it was
a single study group so we work together
on all of the assignments of course if
the assignment is a bit heavy on the
finance side i would give the first push
and lay out the foundation and then
describe general idea and people pitch
in
in general if it's an essay for example
or a set of questions to be answered
each of us would take
a shot at the question and then we would
discuss over uh conference polls
because you know i wasn't living where
they are so mostly we're communicating
via chat
phone calls whatever it is and then we
circulate via email the final product or
the first draft to be reviewed by all of
us we all pitched in
and it was a rule put by the group from
the very first beginning that if anybody
is is
having some difficult time and maybe
their contribution to the group would be
a bit effective
it is better just to speak up now
because the group would then handle
his specific task in this specific
assignment on his behalf
so it was very collaborative in nature
and interact
and sounds like obviously uh the study
groups we make an attempt um from the
admissions side to make sure that the
study group is diverse in terms of
nationality but also experience so it
sounds like uh for your assignments
everyone's perspective unique
perspective uh was was considered yes
yes this was actually uh one of the
purpose of that there was always a first
draft to look at and there was also
um respect for all points of view and
this is discipline by the way because
some of us have very senior jobs where
they already are because we are at
different stages of our career so it is
it might be intimidating to listen to
others sometimes or you are used to
being the boss at work so part of the
discipline of the program to learn to
listen again regardless of who you are
outside of the classroom this was very
useful and very beneficial and it tames
the character back to what it should be
as
thank you that's that's uh very
interesting to know thank you for that
andrew is there a particular course
faculty member i know it's been some
time but um anything that you remember
in terms of
courses or faculty members or
experiences that you would recommend
so look i think it's courses i mean um a
lot of the faculty members
they're all great that the faculty
i remember them being that they are
hugely inspiring and when you're
listening to people that are on top of
their game you know they've written
books about every subject and everyone
has different subjects that they're more
passionate or most passionate about
but for me it was the i think i
mentioned this in the introduction it
was about
understanding about a broader range of
business issues it was understand it's a
decision-making decision-making risk
analysis i'd never done that before i
was a valuations analyst so helping to
make better decisions and putting a
framework and a model behind making good
decisions i'd simply never done that so
that was was absolutely fascinating for
me and marketing
you know it stands out i was an
investment banker i'd never heard of the
three ps i didn't know um how to
structure a marketing conversation so i
think it's about when you come out of
the end when you start the nba you're
generally quite focused on one industry
but when you come out the other side you
you've understood so many different
components of all the different facets
within business you might not be an
expert at all of them but at least you
can talk the language so for me again
marketing decision and risk analysis
these were things i just never done
before and to go and spend i actually
did advanced marketing as an investment
banker while i was doing that because i
was fascinated by it
and private equity but it's part of my
you know i was in valuations and i i
realized i was passionate about private
equity so that's the um
was the private equity professor he's
still there
he was absolutely
engaging and i became very passionate
about the subject i read all of his
books and then within two years of
leaving the nba we might come on this
what we did afterwards i actually joined
standard chartered i joined their
private equity team so
i never started the nba uh looking to
shift careers i was very happy what i
was doing um i was very enjoying i was i
was working at a bank but actually i got
um so engaged in private equity actually
end up moving into that field so for me
it was opening wise to different areas
of business
and then eventually finding something
that i was even more passionate about
than when i went in and then eventually
it took me a little while but i got into
that and i moved into that area
fantastic thank you
same question for you was there any
particular course or faculty member that
you would like to recommend of course uh
i can't forget path to power with
richard jolly
and also it was thinking strategically
with david maya
both were quite exceptional and both are
also quite exceptional characters in the
classroom it's like they they are show
masters when they are inside that like
like the time flies when you're with
them and the course material is so nice
and refreshing as well i still remember
those two courses in specific okay
anything in particular about the paths
of power since uh we had richard jolly
with us earlier today what was about was
it about the course in particular it was
about him first of all because he makes
it very enjoyable the way he teaches the
material the exercises he gave us as
well the type of the questions even we
had in the exams were very challenging
and it makes you think really out of the
box it was very very different he's a
very
talented professor i have to say and he
knows how to explain what's behind it so
it was very very fascinating
great
um thank you both for for those
recommendations and the insights on the
course content
one of the questions uh that we get
frequently in admissions is about
electives now zara did go over
um briefly the elective portfolio and
how the electives are chosen but at lbs
as you know the selection is quite broad
um and students have the option of
taking courses in either london or dubai
we run the 10 most popular electives at
our campus in dubai
do you have any advice for how best so
the question that we get is you know how
do we choose from from this uh portfolio
of 70 plus electives can you walk us
through how you
based of course i understand based on
your interests but there are so many
courses can you walk us through some of
the things that you were considering
um when you were choosing your electives
and could you also please tell us if you
took them in dubai london or in both
locations or only one
um andrew if you'd like to start please
so i i wanted to get the best of both
worlds so as i said i'd started um on
the full-time program and i switched to
the dubai london executive mba so i
wanted the best of both worlds so my
electives were based on geography so i
did all my electives in london
and that was so i could do my weekend in
the uk
and in three weeks in the middle east
and i kept my full-time job but i got i
kind of got the benefits of the
full-time mba i got to meet all my
classmates in london as well a different
set of colleagues so i think geographic
was number one for me
um and then number two was was really
around what i was passionate about it
wasn't about following and doing
advanced advanced corporate finance
um it was about doing the electives that
i really felt expanded my my horizons so
i did obviously private equity advanced
private equity advanced marketing
advanced decision making and it was
about taking those electives that
during the the core modules it piqued my
interest so i didn't go in thinking okay
i'm going to have my 20 credits i'm
going to do these 10 electives i tried
to keep a bit of an open mind because
you do get inspired as you go through it
in those modules there are certain
professors
there are certain classes that you just
remember so i think it's being
open-minded i led geographically
and then i really followed in terms of
what i became most passionate about and
i think you know at the time i wasn't an
entrepreneur but it was something i was
interested in so i did a number of the
entrepreneurial classes so i think you
know it's it's really where you want to
spend your time
um and then maybe not doing the the
obvious ones maybe ones that are more
challenging or opening up a new path
because you know i spent the first 15
years of my career in investment banking
i never thought i'd be running my own
business um but i now am and a lot of
those skills that i've picked up during
the nba are now hugely critical to what
i'm doing now you know offices in
dubai and riyadh and london and a lot of
those skills that i picked up i never
thought i would would have you know the
month before i joined the nba when i was
focused on valuations in london you come
out of that the other side and you've
had your mind open so i think you know
geographic in terms of where you want to
spend your time you know in
meeting a wider range of people
and then perhaps not doing the ones that
when you start the mba you might think
of the most obvious maybe let yourself
get into the program finding out where
your passions lie and then following
those
sound advice
thank you
uh so
i totally agree with andrew's approach
first of all for me i wanted also the
best of both worlds i wanted to have
some of my electives in london and the
others in dubai
so first of all it was filtering by
where the electives are offered and of
course throughout i also
wanted to have some more exposure to the
finance course that i like this one and
others that are more on the humanities
side as well so it's sort of to have a
balance
so again i had something that i was
comfortable with which was the finance
side and of course this is where my
passion lies whether it be private
equity or ask management because my firm
does both it's like
a full-fledged investment critique and i
wanted also to go more into the
humanities courses sides as well i've
always been fascinated with economics
some perhaps uh strategic thinking and
stuff like that and then i spent time
also reading reviews about the
professors and the quality of the
courses well this was for me
such i'm underwriting my time there
committing myself for the coming next
year between countries doing courses so
i want to also see others feedback on
such courses the uh the ease of the
course the the quality of the professor
the amount of time we committed and
because of my job requirements and
commuting i also chose the block week
electives
so
for me like andrew said it was
trying to commute between london and
dubai both words and something that i
have passion for and uncomfortable with
in addition to new exposure as well
okay
now in addition to having the option of
taking your electives in either london
or dubai uh zara also mentioned in her
program presentation the global business
assignments
um nia where did you go for your gba i
was so lucky and i went to san francisco
it was amazing so we've got to meet some
of the nasdaq giants like
facebook
linkedin we've been also with some of
the entrepreneurs who were into digital
transformations and then they would
become a unicorn and sold for a billion
later on we were actually always doing
expectations on them we met with some
angel investors it was a very very
nice trip it was different and it was
very relevant to what's happening today
in the world about artificial
intelligence digital transformations and
the way forward and how this actually
will affect in the future the employment
market
okay so when you were a student a san
francisco was one of six options and you
shed some light on on why specifically
san francisco because of
the reason anybody who went to san
francisco brags about it and how good
the electives the global assignment is
there so you listen we listen to the
older ones and their earlier experiences
and also i like to go somewhere that is
quite remote and different from where i
am it is part of the exposure i was
seeking i wanted countries that i'm not
used to places that i'm not familiar
with i've been to the u.s of course
several times for vacation but for
florida sometimes new york i haven't
been to san francisco before so i wanted
to go there and also the topic of
digital transformation and artificial
intelligence is very key to
part of my job because we also offer
trading in international markets and now
most of the firms outside of the region
are
dealing with artificial intelligence to
do the trading decisions rather than the
typical traders
so this was also interest to me this
election
okay now andrew i realize uh when you
were a student was probably not called
the global uh business assignment
um where did you where did you end up
going i i can't even remember what it
was called because i didn't go on a
global assignment um it wasn't mandatory
back when i did it and um some people
did about half the class did global
assignments and i'm very jealous of
those that did they had you know
fantastic experiences they were all over
the world
but i
chose not to do it
rightly or wrongly um i've been
traveling an awful lot i was still going
out of london every uh every month and i
had a very supportive employer at the
time
but not supportive enough to to let me
go away and do the global assignment but
um look i think from everything i've
heard about it that global assignment
has come on leaps and bounds since i did
the the program um and so many people
talk so highly about it just in terms of
experiences exactly as omnia said you're
you're learning from on the job
different cultures different skills
you're actually putting into application
you're applying that knowledge that
you've learned as well in in a very real
environment so
um
he hugely supports everything they're
great things to do
um and quite jealous of the people that
have done them
excellent yes for our audience uh to
clarify uh the gba
is a requirement uh as a part of the
program you do have the option of
completing a second one but one is
required it is actually a part of the
tuition so um as you saw in zara's
presentation she's listed uh the six uh
locations that are currently available
they may change over the years but we do
have um about six locations uh every
year for your global business assignment
which is an immersive uh experience
um my next question is another one that
we get quite frequently and actually um
there's going to be an entirely separate
event around this because it comes up
quite often but time management so
everyone on the program you have to be
full-time employed
so everyone is juggling
travel
often times full-time employment
families and of course a very rigorous
uh 20-month program emea you were
based in cairo you were traveling from
cairo to attend class and andrew i've
just heard from you that you as a part
of your job
were traveling anyway um how did you
manage your time
that's part one of my question part two
of my question is
what advice do you have uh
for for others who have so many balls up
in the air and they're all very
important so maybe some insight into
when you found the time to study for
example okay so first of all i was
required to travel to saudi in dubai as
part of my work schedule so i tried to
coordinate my work visits to dubai to
coincide with my week of classes so that
i go for example three times three days
prior to the start of the class and then
i start my class and saudi of course had
to be done every month and a half so i
also had to always be aware when is my
next
module so that i prepare ahead
you have to have the support of your
employer to understand that you'll be
out of office a lot to some of your
usual travel schedule in terms of
meeting with the other subsidiaries or
sister companies is not going to run by
the clock as it used to be it is going
to be done but it needs some flexibility
as well so the employer has to bless
this and understand that this is a
20-month visual program this this is key
family of course also to understand that
you'll be a zombie sometime that you
will
start studying after a long day from
work probably i sometimes came back from
work at eight or nine in the evening and
i started my assignments or studying so
it finished at
one in the morning or two it depends but
not all the days i are like this i mean
you get better with time it's sort of
you know
how much you can digest information
because i've been rusty for some time
it's been long since i've last studied
so i did not know
the discipline of sitting and reading a
textbook again so once you get the hang
of that okay i can finish this in a
couple of hours the assignment should
you need more than this i have a travel
schedule ahead of me for work it's like
that and you take a deep breath
except that some nights are going to be
completely
torturous and others are easy so it's
it's like
it's like having a tough day at rivets
like every day for 20 months but of
course you have some of the vacations in
between some of the courses were
kinder to us others as well
and believe me by the time you are
in probably in the fifth month it's over
you know what you're doing you
understand
the routine you sort of have also
routine for yourself of what if today i
had no time at all to look at an
assignment and it's almost you you know
how to manage your time the next day
okay great and may i ask when you were
you studying did you did you find your
other i'm assuming you found your rhythm
for studying was it over the weekend
early in the morning what what worked
best for you oh no actually in the
weekend i always like to spend with my
family because this was my way of
thinking i'm sorry i'm always busy so
it was late at night so i actually
compromised lots of my sleep time for
for giving myself some time off on a
friday and saturday
okay andrew how about how about you what
was what was time manager how did you
manage your time when did you study how
did you fit in all your competing often
competing priorities
look it's not easy i think the mba
teaches you lots of different things and
time management really is one of them
you become ruthlessly efficient very
quickly um you know the the program is
is highly intense and it's
it's not just the academic side of it
there's the social side of it as well
you're going to lots of different events
you've got the careers side you've then
got the out of class activities
and you want to take advantage of all of
it so
i think my advice is not to let it be
overwhelming because there is so much
it's an assault on the senses there's so
much happening in those first few days
and weeks
but
it's not to be overwhelmed by it i very
quickly as omni said i figured out my my
kind of the way i wanted to work um i
would do very early morning i would get
to the the coffee shop in the d i've
seen anyone that knows the diffc there's
a costa there i would be there as it
opened at 6 30 every day and i'll do an
hour and a half every morning
and then i would do half a day on the
weekend so i found that worked for me um
i like to have a day and a half off
every weekend
um and then i would try and fit in as
much as i could because
once you finish you you miss it you
start thinking what am i going to do
with my time so i think you know you're
trying to take advantage of as much as
you can you try and prioritize what you
think is most important you try and go
out of your comfort zone into areas that
you might not necessarily be comfortable
doing um but you know you do become very
efficient very quickly
and it's also about
you can't do everything you know if you
read every single book on some of the
professor's lists you would never finish
the mba there's an awful lot of work so
it's about challenging you to figure out
what is the best use of your time how
can you efficiently deliver what you're
being asked to deliver and you figure
out that is a that is a great skill that
if you have didn't have it before you
pick it up very quickly
yeah i think this is a very good point
um learning how to prioritize and as you
said in your own words being learning
how to be ruthlessly efficient uh with
time
because you have to be that's that's
great thank you now you did mention um
in your response to andrew careers
um and i have a couple of questions um
around this and um how useful was the
career center to you andrew
so look i was aware the career center
was there um i never went into the mba
as a job changer and i think some people
go in thinking i'm happy with my career
i'm looking to just expand my horizons
and so for me at the time i was aware
that it was there it was very very
active there were lots of different
opportunities to go and meet with
different companies had i wanted to
but my company at the time was massively
supportive you know and as
omni mentioned this
you have to have the support of your
company if you're doing an executive mba
if you're self-employed great if you've
got a company um even if it's not
financial more important than financial
is the time so
the career center for me during the mba
um i wasn't using it that much but i was
aware of a lot of people that were and
they're extremely useful and since then
i've always been in touch with them you
know you never know when you're going to
need them you know i know kai very well
he's
to the career center in dubai now
they've got great networks they leverage
the alumni network across the region so
it's not just one person when when i did
the mba 10 years ago it was 200 people
in the alumni network we now have two
and a half thousand so
it's not just about the careers center
you've got a whole network of alumni in
the region and globally as well so um i
would say as useful as the careers
center is the network and if you are
looking for new opportunities you're
going to learn and meet the right people
and you're going to use your time
appropriately to meet those right people
so um you know it is a great tool to
have but it's just one tool of many if
you're looking to get different
opportunities it's going to teach you
those skills and then you're going to
meet the right people to give you advice
and help as you go through your career
okay and you did touch on this uh before
um but i'd like to come back to this
it's about how
uh the mba changed your views um or
changed um your career path now i know
that yours was pretty consistent but it
sounds like as you
delve further into uh the program
especially in the elective phase you
kind of refined and discovered new new
things can you speak to us about that a
little bit please the impact of the
embark
you know i think that's in two phases
the first thing is i was never a career
changer but then i ended up being a
career changer i moved from technical
valuations into a much broader role than
private equity i wouldn't have been able
to do that if i hadn't had many of these
different areas of running a business
demystified so it's not just about
valuations it's about transacting due
diligence executing a deal decision
making so lots of the different facets
of the mba helped me to transition into
private equity and of course the private
equity course as well so that's kind of
i guess point one
i now run my own business and a lot of
the other skills come to um come to the
front so the marketing you know when
you're working for a big investment bank
you don't need to worry about what to do
when your website gets hacked which mine
did this week and how do you then go
about what do you do how do you then
think about very quickly crisis
management what do you do how do you
deal with that
and lots of skills you pick up around
the broader mba broader themes
things that you learn are just useful in
running a business so you know it's
things that you the marketing side of
things going um appointing um
people in lawyers that i may not have
done before so i think
for me it was the you know it lifted the
the fog in lots of different areas it
gave me the confidence to go
and then set up a business and run a
business um and then
by doing that it kind of expanded my
career so i think it's two phases one
was was never a create change it would
actually open my mind moved into private
equity and then in the second phase of
my my kind of career in life and running
a business even more skills have become
very very useful
okay so we're seeing actually impact
more than 10 years after you completed
the program
yeah no no i think the other point there
is
it's about staying engaged with the
school you know i mentioned my website
got hacked you're not learning what to
do with that in the nba but i did know
someone funnily enough who was an expert
in in this in cyber security so the
first person i picked the phone up to
was what do we do and you've got a
contact for life so i think as you move
through it goes from technical it goes
from you know you're focused on your
career but then the network that you i
mentioned the two and a half thousand
alumni in the middle east now
along so we're the second biggest
network globally after london so there
is always someone you can pick up the
phone and speak to so i think that is
hugely valuable we have a lot of on the
treasurer of the gulf association so we
have a lot of events with a lot of um
every month we've got events going on
but that network is hugely hugely
powerful so if you ever you do come
across a situation there's always
someone that you know you can pick up
the phone to so very very valuable in
terms of you know going forward for for
me certainly
excellent thank you um amnia
i'd like to ask you the same thing about
uh the career center did you did you use
it how did you use it when you were a
student at the same experience of andrew
i didn't go to the career center because
i have a very supportive employer and
also i am
sitting with a group that does
um
it's more of a
finance boutique it offers many of the
forms of the financial services it does
investment banking and consultancy does
asset management it does private equity
and it does green fields as well and
trading
so for me to change was was not part of
an equation i'm looking to because i'm
already exposed to most of the areas
that i like to uh operate in but
my connections with them remain with the
people themselves but of course
and
our class representative who was
handling the career center with him and
of course with all the experiences of my
colleagues who were looking for jobs and
trying to get good matches with their
cvs
okay and last time
could i say one more thing about the
career center because i'm just thinking
about it from the other side as well
it's
you know i'm now an employer and i've
worked with kai
for specific industries you know i've
worked with it on the actual the
employer's side so i've seen there's
dexa within finance and investment
banking he prepares decks of candidates
who may be looking to move and you don't
have to be presented as a candidate but
there are very very um uh
direct ways that if you are looking to
move into a certain industry you know
kai he will summarize the decks he has
helped with cvs and then those cvs can
go to employers that are looking to hire
and then obviously kai knows who's
hiring so i've seen it from the other
side as well where what we are looking
to hire it's great to get such a direct
exposure to mbs to mba graduates
and then you actually get to see who's
available and who's looking to move so
from the employer's side it's extremely
useful and that's come on an awful lot
in the last decade as well
that that's a really good point and
obviously you can you can speak about
that now because you have
um you manage your own business uh thank
you for that perspective
um we do have some questions coming in
so i'm just gonna wrap up my my last
question to you um
is the impact of the mba what do you
think now after having graduated
completed the program now spend some
time what do you think the impact of the
executive mba dubai uh program has been
on you personally and professionally
expanding my network is number one of
course and this was key also during
cover times where you get to
have some people you can knock the doors
on without physically visiting them
because you've already connected some
way somehow so it was good for me
personally and on the business side as
well where we had mutual interest of
course it was an eye-opener to me in
other areas i was not
always involved in and that would always
come handy to my current job especially
when it comes to uh marketing some
compliance issues and stuff like that it
was an eye opener or more of i needed to
polish more on this and to sharpen my
skill set
but most and for all the network is
amazing the alumni group is really
really really useful as well
and again i got to polish up a lot of my
prior knowledge as i told you earlier
okay great
uh thank you very much i'm going to stop
asking my questions now i'd like to turn
to the q a box
remind the audience that you are welcome
to ask and now submit questions if you'd
like to our panelists both to me or
myself and obviously andrew as well um
but we have an interesting question um
maurizio is asking other than course
options is there any material difference
between the emba in dubai or in london
class profile networking facilities etc
now obviously uh
you don't have experience on the ember
london program but i think his is the
next part of the question is is a good
one are there any pros and cons what do
you think are the pros and cons of the
executive mba program
so what
let me get this one in terms of the
location
actually we had access to most of the
faculty in dubai the same as london but
there were sometimes a last-minute
change in schedule i'm not sure if this
was specific to dubai or if this can
happen to dubai or london or not a class
profile
dubai is quite a diverse
place as well so i think you will get to
meet a lot of different profiles and
nationalities
uh networking i've told you my opinion
about that all your
facilities of course i love the london
campus much more it is a real campus
it's definitely you cannot compete with
that in dubai maybe in the future
for me feasible was more of the dubai
option because i had to travel a lot
while keeping a full-time job
but as i told you in my elective year i
was commuting i tried to divide it into
half i took half my electives in dubai
and the other half in london
okay andrew would you like to add
anything to this question
no look i think it's personal preference
i i started off thinking i was going to
do full-time mba but i actually switched
to the executive as i mentioned and i it
fit in better with my life at the time
um you know it's you get exactly the
same degree and i think that's important
to mention i don't know if that's come
out in the discussion but the mba is the
mba you get the same certificates
whether you do full-time
executive it's the same degree it's just
the way that the content is delivered is
very different so for me the executive
worked better i would say that the
average age is slightly older on the
executive mba
middle east uh participants on the
executive mba are more outspoken i would
say than the london mba just my
experience of studying classes um so
it's about the way the program is
delivered and what works better for the
individual i don't think there's a right
and a wrong answer i think the mba is
it's perhaps less intense in terms of
time but you might get a broader
experience if you're on the full-time
program because you're you're living and
breathing it day in day out but for me
the ability to put some of those things
into action immediately you know you're
learning skills you may be going to the
office on sunday and actually using some
of those you know decision making
analysis tools to actually put it into
to practice so for me the executive mba
was uh was better
i don't think there's a right or a wrong
answer it's just what works for the
individual
um
has a great question actually for both
of you um his question is i am from a
finance background and need guidance on
how i can differentiate myself
differentiate in order to make myself a
stronger candidate strong candidate for
the program what advice do you have for
life
or andrew you can go ahead
okay so look i think it's not just the
the way that the interview program works
they're not the the panel the decision
is not made on one area so it's not just
made on a test or a gmat or a an
interview
it's about showing that you have
something to contribute to that study
group if i was to
that's it's a it's a key question and
whenever i've done interviews
it is about what's your contribution and
i think if you really
look at what you've done within finance
there will be ways there'll be things
that you're going to bring to that class
that really no one else can and it's
making yourself unique and indispensable
to that
not just your group but the class as
well so i think understand what makes
your proposition unique
then deliver that proposition through
the materials and there's different ways
that you're being interviewed and
assessed but make sure that you've
figured out what your proposition is how
you make a difference how your global
experiences can really contribute to
your experience and it's not just about
what you're going to take out people
forget it's about what you're going to
give back so if i was giving you one
piece of advice figure out what you can
give back to the class and the school as
you go through that process and that
really does differentiate uh candidates
when they're actually thinking about the
broader school and what you're going to
do during the course of the 18 to 20
months
is what you can deliver for the group
and the school at the time
okay i was going to add something from
an admissions perspective but um andrew
you've done a more than adequate job so
i have nothing to add
that's excellent actually um we have a
question from vasil al-fazan that
actually i can answer
my second language is english not my
mother tongue will this affect my
education in the program
um ambassador we have um a number of
candidates are already on the program uh
incoming previous alumni whose first
language is not english
and what we require from an admissions
perspective is for you to have lived and
worked in an english-speaking country
for at least two years or of course if
your undergraduate degree was delivered
in english um that is is also fine but
it is not uh a barrier uh per se if you
do meet those requirements then uh that
that's that's absolutely fine like i
said we have a number of candidates on
the program whose mother tongue is is
not english first language native
language is not english
um and i'm going to have and actually
one final question unfortunately i think
amiyah um got disconnected but we
actually have time for one more question
andrew if i can direct this towards you
it comes from off raphael and i believe
it's related to the fact that you now
own your own business uh his question is
did you have an enterprise idea before
you started the mba program
i i did but it was a terrible idea um
and i figured that out as i went through
the the entrepreneurship program you
pitch a business idea uh and john
mullins pretty much said it was an awful
idea so
i learned an awful lot and as you go
through the process you learn a lot
about yourself um i never saw myself as
an entrepreneur i was very stable in my
job
i thought i had a business idea it turns
out i didn't and actually when you start
challenging it and getting under the
skin of what you think is a good idea
when you start writing the business plan
you realize it's not and i think what i
took away from that was it's focusing on
the course skills and now that i've run
the business it's it's affiliated to
what my my core skills are but it
enables me to kind of scratch that itch
of having you know my own business and
being able to work on marketing and
client delivery and much broader range
of skills so
um no when i started the mba i didn't
really have those
an idea that i was going to go and set
up a business or do anything on my own i
was very comfortable but that really is
the whole point of doing the nba it
opens your eyes into other areas so i
think you know it's one of the big
takeaways that i have is that
you know you you learn an awful lot
about yourself as you go through it and
perhaps where you start at the beginning
maybe isn't where you end up at the end
excellent thank you very much and
actually i think i'm going to end with
one final question
why should you anyone study anyone in
the audience why should they study at
london business school your final
thoughts please
you make a network for life i'm gonna
i'm gonna refocus on the people um
you learn an awful lot in those 18 to 20
months but it's the network it's the
people um it's the
uh opening your eyes to different areas
of business
and you feel like you're part of a
community that is always there to um
that is always there for you and i think
one of the challenges after the nba is
staying in touch with that community and
i would always everyone who's on who
joins or decides to to take up the
challenge and do the mba is stay in
touch with the community stay in touch
with the school afterwards because for
me that's what the mba is is all about
that network is always there for you um
and you know to me that's one of the key
parts of doing the mba
thank you very much andrew and on that i
would like to conclude the session for
today thank you to our audience for
joining us if you have any questions
about the admissions process
applications for the january 2022 intake
are now open i have just put in the chat
for you um the email address for the
admissions team at london business
school for the executive mba dubai
program i would like to thank you andrew
again and amia who unfortunately um was
not with us for the end but i'd like to
thank you both for taking the time and
sharing your excellent insights and your
experiences on the business school we
look forward to seeing the rest of you
hopefully at another event in the future
have a good evening thank you very much
thank you

---

### Introduction to the Executive MBA Programmes: EMBA London and EMBA Global
URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDleeAIhQ2o

Idioma: en

hi everyone welcome to today's webinar
we're just going to give it a few
minutes to give everyone the chance to
sign onto the webinar before we do kick
off
okay great i think that's a good number
um welcome to today's webinar my name is
zainab and i am the senior recruitment
and admissions manager for the executive
mba program the london stream
specifically today's webinar as you can
see on the screen is an introduction to
the executive mba programs and i'm
joined today by my colleague fiona
lennox smith who's director of the
executive mba portfolio the aim of
today's session is for fiona to give us
an insight um into the executive mba
program what the structure of our ember
programs is like the content that's
covered and you know what are some of
the things that you can expect by doing
a executive mba program at london
business school
and then at the end we will open up the
panel for you to ask any questions that
you might have
or any questions that you do send in
whilst fiona is presenting so feel free
to use the q a box but before we do that
i think it would be good to kind of get
you guys to engage with
before we do dive in um so can i get
everyone to send in on the chat where
you are currently signing in from so
which part of the world are you based in
i think it would be great to know that
because obviously our audience is so big
today
okay lots of uk canada
guatemala
norway
that's great
lots of london
which is great as always as well nigeria
very nice chicago
canada dubai
india that i think that makes me and
jonah very happy to see what a diverse
group you guys are
um well great welcome um it's great to
have you all here from so many different
parts of the world i think that kind of
really reflects how global and diverse a
program like the executive pro mbas as
well and i think without any further ado
i am going to hand over to fiona to kind
of walk you through the executive mba
program thanks guys
great thanks very much sonny and hi
everyone
and thank you so much for joining us
tonight
so before we get started with the
presentation
i would love you just to pop in the chat
um what you're most interested in
hearing about tonight just so that i can
tailor my presentation to whatever you
would like
so let's see what you have to say
and the global great we'll definitely
talk a bit about that
career transitions okay
global
the requirements to get into the program
i think we can cover that at the end
anything else
electives yes we have electives on our
schedule
the content of the program and elected
yes we're going to cover that
how it will help me to grow yes we're
going to cover that too
great
okay so
another question about experience
application so
when we get to the end of this and we'll
go through some of that with zeni
um
okay moving on to consultancy
course delivery
models
um
and scholarships
okay
those are some great um questions thank
you so much
and we can talk a bit about careers at
the end of this and what is especially
unique forever program about lbs
programs
absolutely these are brilliant questions
thank you so much
um for putting all of those
up um company willing to pay for the
program how do you get sponsored yeah
brilliant okay
so thank you very much for sharing let's
move on now with the presentation
so hopefully i can move on to the next
slide here we are so as a very brief
overview
we have three ember programs that we're
going to talk about
today well mainly
ember london and
and the global americas in europe um
so let's just cover what we're offering
so
ember london
is obviously a london-based program
although as you'll see going through
there are options to travel to our dubai
campus as well as well as international
opportunities
and exchange opportunities
the london cohort starts in january and
september
and after the first orientation block
week
um
which is a very intense week we then run
every other friday and saturday
and so across the year
there are 20 fridays and saturdays
when you would come to class for two
quite intense
days
um
there are 15 core and you can take
between six and eight
ten session electives
and at the end of that you get awarded
the mba degree from london business
school
dubai is really similar so if you're
interested in dubai the difference is
that rather than running on fridays and
saturdays
we run in a block week format so there's
a block week each month in dubai
everything else is very very similar to
what i discussed on london
the ember global program is a bit
different this is a program where we
award two degree two mba degrees at the
end of it one from columbia business
school
in new york and one from london business
school
and this is a residential program
it's much smaller than ember london and
dubai and there are class weeks um
in london and in new york
um so
we'll go through a little bit about the
structure of this this program starts in
may
it's very intense and these are as i
said residential block weeks
and students on this course take a few
more electives a few less core and at
the end are awarded these two degrees
so with that as a little framework let's
move on to a bit more
about our programs
so first of all when you're coming to
lbs
you're really joining
a great network
of many different um
types of students and ages of students
this is a slightly fuzzy slide and i
apologize for that
but um i just wanted to show you what
our community looks like
so um at the very
junior end of our community we have our
early careers programs that are
highlighted there in green these are for
recent graduates
then we have our full-time mba program
students on this program typically have
somewhere between
four and eight years of work experience
um
and are here in london for two very
full-time years
we have a master's in finance full and
part-time programs and then we have our
executive mbas
and also our sloan masters in leadership
and strategy
so really in terms of experience
we go from people with very very little
experience
on our early careers programs who might
have come straight out of a top
university
to us
and at the other end of the spectrum we
have our slow masters program which is
for people with upwards of
10 to 15 years of work experience many
have many more than that
very very senior leaders
so this will be your community if you
come to lbs
it's not just about getting to know
people in your stream it's really
joining this very large and engaged
community
not just in london but also extending
across the world
so how are you going to get to know
these people we've jumped on a slide how
are you going to get to know these
people well there are loads of ways for
that
first off when you come you're going to
meet people in your cohort they're going
to be very
close friends very often from very soon
after you start the program
right through to the end
um
then we also have clubs and we have a
lot of clubs in london so they might be
industry clubs like the consulting or
the finance club they might be sports
club like the rugby club the sailing car
club we have a ski club
and also we have sort of a special
interest club so there are clubs for
going for theater
or for wine appreciation
um public speaking things like that
so there are lots of ways to interact
with our community
um alongside that we'll come on later to
electives but on electives you will be
part of a very broad network of people
you'll be going to electives with people
not just from the other ember streams
but also
from all of our other degree programs
and our exchange students so again this
is a great way to extend your network
we run clubs um we run events at the
school as well and you'll be able to
attend and also on our global
experiences this is also a great way to
travel
meet new people and do
and really get to know people in that
way so there are many ways at lbs to
build your networks we have networking
events and as i said the clubs and your
cohorts and we will work with you if you
come to lbs to help you
hone your network and really make it
work well
for you
so
some of you asked about leadership
development so before i come on to the
formal academic curriculum i wanted to
talk to you as well about your
leadership journey through the programme
so you can see here we've got a number
of sort of different stages when you
start with us we will start and we have
a group that just started this week
working on exactly this
you will come
um having done a 360
and um
and another personality profile and
you're going to work right in the first
week with your study group and your
coach to build your own self-awareness
and you'll after that you will build a
personal development plan
you will have an executive coach that's
assigned to your study group in the very
first week and you will work with that
executive coach each term
through the program
and so that you can then develop your
personal development plan
so on this you can see here that you
start off with that
self-awareness
building that through some of the
academic courses and also working with
your coach and maybe careers
getting to know your complex getting to
know the industry sector that you're in
how does it sit
in
the marketplace how does it sit
in the global business landscape
and what does that tell you about how
you need to make an impact
in your industry or maybe to change into
a different one
you're going to be thinking about how
you manage yourself and also how do you
lead others
and when we get to the end of the
program we will have capstone which is
specifically there to help you to
reflect on how you've been transformed
through the program
and also to think about what are the
next steps for you
in what you're doing
um
and then after that we're really
encouraging lifelong learning so we have
ember alumni who come back to take
further electives with us
as alumni
and we have many alumni events
and clubs around the world so that you
can stay engaged with our community
this isn't just a two-year transactional
program this is something where we're
expecting you to be connected
for life it's part of your brand
let's move on so i can see there was a
question here about the personal
development plan
we do use the gmax soft skills
assessment but then the personal
development plan is actually
from your 316 and another
and another tool which is called the
five step
which looks at various parts of
leadership competencies
and assesses you um through those so
this is nothing to do with the tests
that you take to get onto the program
and these are the program aims and you
can see this is
some sort of lofty ambitions of where we
want you to go at the end
so those people skills are super
important to us
we want people who are going to be
willing and open to explore ideas and
connect to other people
who are going to inspire their own teams
and the people around them and who are
going to make a change and an impact in
their organizations and maybe in the
broader context of their industry as
well um to do that we're going to try
and give you as deeper knowledge as we
can
in the markets organizations and
technologies
um and we need you in order to do that
to really be prepared to explore and
probe into those
areas of knowledge that may not be
familiar to you
at the moment
and at the end of this we want you to be
able to create a lasting impact
so before we come on to what we're going
to teach you just thinking for a minute
about who is going to teach you
so
many of our faculty at lbs are
researchers most of the faculty you have
will be long-standing researchers and
you can see here the output of some of
the faculty
to draw out some books here hermigne
ibarra
writes a lot about
leadership and also about
making your leadership career building
your leadership career
behind that we have linda gratton andrew
scott who've written about 100 year life
and they run an elective on
longevity and how that
and how you might want to structure
your um
your future career in order to think
about what would that be like if you're
living to a hundred
or beyond andrew scott very often
teaches um some of our core
macroeconomics courses linda and andrew
both teach electives
we have julian birkenshield here who
writes about innovation
and about leadership
so you can see across here we have many
of our faculty
are producing the information that
sometimes they will teach you and
sometimes other faculty in the school
will also pick up
and be teaching you so what we're
teaching you here is very relevant very
current and certainly in electives and
sometimes on core
taught by the people who conducted
and led the research and wrote the books
you can see in the middle here we have
london business school review
which is our own research journal
where we publish many of the articles
written by our faculty and if you've got
time at some point to
look on our website you'll see there as
well that we have many
that we have many examples of faculty
research and up there for you to
enjoy
so
let's come on now to some of the more
nuts and bolts the academic programme
so first looking at ember london and
dubai
um there are three terms of core courses
and i'll come on to what those courses
are in a minute
so that makes up your first year and in
your second year you're going to be
doing electives you're going to be
having a global business assignment
and as i said you'll have capstone at
the end of your second year and also a
congregation which is what we call our
graduation ceremony
and at the end of this and you'll be
presented with the board of examiners
where you'll get your degree so
typically an ember program takes around
20 months depending on whether you start
in september
or in january but it's about 20 months
from start to finish
for those of you interested in ember
global
it's quite a similar sort of program
and so the first two terms you'll be
doing core but this note is a
residential program and you will
alternate between being in new york
and in london
in term three there's a blend of core
and electives so there's a couple of
core courses
and elective courses in term three and
again you'll be
moving between new york and london and
those electives in term three are
helpfully timetabled in with your call
so you will know pretty much when you
need to be
around for those
in the second year you will be choosing
electives and you'll be able to do
electives
between um
the portfolio at lbs and at cbs and this
means you'll be able to do electives in
dubai and hong kong as well and i should
have flagged that if you're on the
london or dubai program you can also
take electives in both dubai
and in london whichever program you're
on so if you're
coming to ember london you can still go
and do some of your electives all of
them if you really wanted to
in dubai
um and then at the end of the program
ember globals will have
two award degrees
um and they'll be able to come to our
london-based congregation as well as the
graduation ceremonies held in new york
so let's look at ember core courses
um
and here we have the core courses that
we teach on our ember london and dubai
programs
i've not listed programs um
the courses that we teach for ember
global but i would say that they are
very similar
in nature to these courses it's a very
very similar programs only in global
will be taught by faculty from lbs
and from cbs
both programs will start off with
executive leadership
in the very first week of the programme
and ember london and dubai also have
understanding general management
these are sort of pro courses that will
sort of lead you in to your studies and
interviewing but they're building on
self-awareness and you're thinking about
your future strategy
while sort of understanding about
companies strategy and starting to
understand case studies in the case
method
as we go through those before we go into
terms
one two and three where you will be
doing
your core
so you can see here
the courses that you would expect to see
on an ember program
let's move on now to your electives
so what you can see here is two things
the chart shows
what subjects you can study
so we have here
accounting economics finance marketing
management science operations
organizational behavior and strategy and
entrepreneurship so you can see
the greatest numbers of different
electives are offered in strategy
organizational behavior and finance
which are the areas that embers and
ember globals tend to want to focus on
who's sitting beside you in the room you
can see here we have all sorts of
different programs that are
that will be coming into electives with
you so this is an excellent opportunity
as a place to build your network
um so you might be sitting next to other
embassies but equally you might be
sitting next to early career students if
you want to do finance electives you
might find yourself sitting next to
the myths who are very often
working finance professionals with very
technical knowledge
about finance
so
what are some electives that we have
highlights on
um
negotiation and bargaining is an
elective that most of our students take
it's very experiential
and you will spend lots of time in that
elective negotiating actively with other
people
um
many of our students also like private
equity and venture capital managing
corporate turnaround is really popular
with people um who want to go into
consultancy
you can see some of the other electives
that are pretty
transparent about what they are
so new venture development another
popular elective that people take when
they want to build up their own
businesses
so those are a sample but actually
you'll see in a minute we have many many
different
streams of electives
um
on our elective portfolio
we have um more than 90 in fact this
year it's more than 100 different
electives on offers
now some of those are offered just once
and some of them are offered
two
three up to about 12 times in a year
so across our whole portfolio we have in
excess of 190 streams
of electives that you can choose between
those are offered in four formats and
i'll show you the formats in a minute
and across our seven subject areas which
i mentioned to you before that's
accounting
finance
strategy and entrepreneurship
organizational behavior
etc so they cover the whole
all of the strands of our program
what's in the portfolio so we have 10
electives that run in dubai all in block
week format i'll tell you more about
that in a minute
um
there are electives like that
negotiation and bargaining also paths to
power which is about office politics
um
and
electives on leadership that are part of
our organizational behavior courses that
are really highlights for many of our
ember and ember global students
then we have niche courses courses that
might just be run once so a new one for
this year
is on board effectiveness and governance
which is run um in the evenings
and on fridays at times when we think
that embers
can go
give you an example with that elective
there will be experiential parts where
people are playing the parts of board
members
there will also
be
um
guest speakers and panel sessions where
they're bringing people in from boards
to give their experience and that whole
elective is based on the research that
we do at school about boards and board
effectiveness
other niche electives that we have might
be around healthcare
might be around careers
might be
something sort of technical or um
something technical in finance so
something like fixed income securities
or it might be something
um
specific to entrepreneurship so we have
social entrepreneurship electives and
things like that
you can also do a business project so if
you want to explore
something within your own company you
can do that we have entrepreneurship
summer school where you can explore an
idea
that you have um
and at the end of that you you will
pitch your idea to potential investors
and then we have an exchange block week
exchange so that if you wish to
go to columbia business school or ucla
you would be able to go and do a block
week at their school
so moving on to those elective formats
and
we have these various formats so block
weeks you can see here they run out of
term time
and they
run
for two sessions a day
over a full week so monday to friday you
would be coming in at 8 15 and your
classes would finish somewhere between 3
30 and 4.
so all of our electives in dubai all 10
of them run in block week format
and a good portion of our electives in
london particularly the ones that are
attractive to embers and ember globals
run in this format so you can take a
week from work and really focus in on a
subject
on these alexa on those electives you're
most likely to find ember globals and
embers to sit aside
if you're able to come to regular
electives that run
once a day every week for 10 weeks so it
might be that you're coming in at 8 15
on a monday morning and leaving at 11 on
a monday morning or any other day of the
week in the day or the evening
um
so if you're going to those electives
you're very likely to be sitting beside
early career students full-time mba
students and if you're in the evening
ones masters and finance students as
well
then we have a slightly more intense
format which is our week format so for
that you would come in for two sessions
every week for five weeks
and then we have our ember friendly
modular format
which is
which runs very similarly to what you
had in your first year so that's every
other friday and every other saturday so
if you were to take two modular
electives you could continue to come on
a friday
and on a saturday every other week in
order to complete those two electives
so finally how are you going to choose
your electives when we get there so
you're going to be thinking about all of
these things from your career
um how um what maybe what your
organization needs from you
maybe you're going to be thinking about
who do i want to be sitting next to
who's going to give me what i need to
make that next step in my career
you're probably going to be thinking
about your schedule because most members
quite frankly
are fitting this in around work and
family and everything else
and possibly also your lifestyle are you
someone who travels a lot and needs to
focus on block weeks
or are you someone who's able to come to
the school
during the week for your electives and
some people we have who will come to
work one day a week from the school when
they're doing their normal business work
and that allows them then to take that
two and a half hours to go and do an
elective slot each week
and maybe you're also looking for
certain of our staff faculty
and um so you might be looking for
particular faculty that you would like
to get to know better and get to know
their work better
on their electives
so
though that was really what i wanted to
cover
um
so now let's move on
to some questions
[Music]
great thank you so much fiona so we've
had some questions come in
um and everyone feel free to send more
in whilst we do work through these
um so the first question is probably the
most obvious one but what's the key
differences
um between an executive mba program
london
and the ember global program
okay
so
the um i think there are two key
differences one is the format which
we've talked about already
because you um
you're coming together for one block
week in london and then the other block
week
in new york
um but i think what that format does and
particularly because it is a residential
format it makes for a very intense
program
so students on this program
tend to be people who are very global
who tend to be flying around
on planes quite a lot even in the
pandemic we're still seeing people doing
a lot of traveling so they tend to have
that real global
focus
and the courses tend to reflect that
particularly as
the faculty will be half from columbia
business school
and half from london business school so
we have people on these programs it
tends to be more accessible to people in
more locations so it's a very very
global program with many different
nationalities in it
and it tends to be for those people who
want a very intense experience it's very
much a work hard play hard
kind of a program
okay
and then we've got another question
comparing the executive mba to the
full-time mba so
is the difference in the course offering
um considering this the duration of both
programs is quite similar
yeah the
duration is quite similar but um
the offering is quite different so
um
on ember this year the intake we've had
we have average experience of 14 years
um i'm not sure what the average
experience this year from the full-time
mba is any but i assume it's about seven
eight years yeah
yeah
so
first of all we have that the difference
in the seniority
of the people
on the program
and then around that the full-time mba
is really focused for people
who have
had their first
maybe their second
role post-graduation
and they're now looking to
to go and be part of probably a big
program in a big corporation so a lot of
them will want to go afterwards into
consulting
and banking and they will go through our
recruitment processes they will go
through internships and these people
are full-time they're not working so
they are focused solely at that time on
getting their mba
the difference with an executive mba is
you're here on a friday and saturday
and then hopefully on a monday you pick
up your learning and you take it back
with you into your company and hopefully
you're applying it immediately after
you've come back
i think this program isn't for people
who want that internship experience and
want
to go into those sort of entry level
or more junior positions in the big
companies
and occasionally embers do do that but
really this is a program for people who
want to
accelerate in what they're doing now or
might want to pivot slightly from where
they are into a different career whilst
taking their previous experience with
them because previous experience with
recruiters matters
hugely regardless
of your envy or ember on its own will
not be
sufficient to make a massive career
change but with some great experience
and thinking about
the process and the stepping stones
along the way sometimes it is possible
yeah and just to add on to that because
obviously we get that question a lot in
admissions as well and i think my go-to
thing is who do you want to surround
yourself with
because you know the experience of
sitting in an executive mba class and
the experience of sitting in a full-time
mba class the people that are
surrounding you are going to be
completely different so do you want to
be sitting next to the someone who's a
ceo from an oil and gas background or do
you want to sit next to someone who is
pretty much at the start of their career
and what is going down that path of
exploring you know what lies ahead for
them so those are the you know that's
those are the sort of questions that you
should ask yourself you know when you do
compare
the executive mba and the mba
i think the other difference is
that level of perspective in the room
that that experience brings
um
so
because of the
the whole very
wide variety of the experience a faculty
member will throw a question to a room
and ten people might put their hands up
and have very different experience in
very different perspectives and
experiences that really make that
conversation come alive and that's
because of the experience that we've got
in the room on an emma program
definitely
um and then another program comparison
question
um so it's the difference between the
executive mba london and the executive
mba dubai um so the four-man facilities
are obviously different and any other
differences to highlight and the pros
and cons of each would i come out with
the same learning experience and the
structured networking opportunities
um very very similar
because the curriculum in london and
dubai is identical
and very often it's taught by the same
faculty so we don't have any faculty
that are based in dubai
our faculty
go out to dubai and teach
and whilst they couldn't during the
worst of the pandemic
this week the majority of our faculty
who are teaching in dubai have been able
to go to dubai to deliver their teaching
in person
um
and so
that experience has come come back
the classes in dubai tend to be a little
bit smaller than the classes in in
london
um
i don't think that necessarily
prevents networking there's a lot of
networking that goes on between
dubai and london
in any case and the dubai network tends
to be very close very tight there's a
lot of events that are run
in dubai as well as london but obviously
the diff you know on the kind of the con
side of things the faculty because
they're not based in dubai not maybe as
readily available all the time
but when the faculty go to dubai they
are kind of a captive audience for
the dubai students
and tend to do a lot of socializing with
them out there whereas the faculty when
they're in london
might be very focused outside of
teaching on
their research and other
responsibilities in their life so that i
think a difference to bear in mind too i
think there are pros and cons and if
you're based in the middle east or
somewhere where it's easy to get there
you need to weigh those up and think
what's best for you
yeah
um and then just in terms of the content
of the program obviously we have we are
on our way to coming out of a global
pandemic
um how do you see this impacting the
content that's delivered on the programs
because obviously lbs offers very
up-to-date research-based
um knowledge so do you think this is
something that could potentially be
covered in future classes you know the
global pandemic and how it impacted the
world
yeah i mean i think even during the
pandemic right from the beginning
faculty were setting aside some time in
the core classes to discuss that with
students it was really hard not to and
to bring their research to bear in it so
i know remember andrew stopped having
some sessions
with the students about what um
what was going on in the macro
in the macroeconomy with the virus for
example i think other faculty talked
about how you modeled it and things like
that
as we're coming out of it
i think some of that content is still
staying there but also we have some
new electives that are based around
crisis management
which is really
focusing on the thinking that we
developed and the research that was
developed in the pandemic
and i believe still on our website
somewhere near think at london.edu there
is a whole load of webinars about this
topic that um people can go on and find
and
watch if they're interested in learning
a bit more and seeing our faculty in
action
okay
um and then in terms of the two ember
intakes fiona would you that the
students of the september in the intake
get better opportunities to interact
with big groups of students on other
programs compared to the students of the
january intake due to its start date
um i don't think so i think it's
i think there are some differences
because the clubs do kick off in
september
but i think the differences are really
minor and i think the january students
have some other advantages
because um
because they have those
those two summers rather than one
because they've got those two summer
breaks so when they come back
is the end of the second summer break
they've they've got that
greater knowledge of the school
and seen and you see the january
students really often engaging in that
last term
with clubs and they're able to be that
sort of bridge for the full-time mbas
who stop running the clubs because
they're going off to work
um so i don't think there's i think it
is
i think it's slightly different but i
don't think it makes awful lot of
difference to the overall experience and
the essay will come and get to know both
sets of students
um we've got an admissions based
question and i'll quickly go over so
what happens if i don't have five years
work experience i have less so in that
case i would say you know hold your
horses
because we would obviously rather have
you invest your time and effort into
applying for the program when you do
meet most of the requirements to do an
executive mba program um however if you
do want to get some sort of assessment
you can still send us your cv to ember
london.edu and then what we can do is we
can do an initial assessment for you to
kind of tell you you know if you're on
the right track to pursue an executive
mba in the future date and even
potentially tell you how long to wait
before you do decide to go ahead and
apply for the program
but obviously it's always great to see
that people are already so interested in
the program um so much earlier on in
their careers
um so we've got question here about
lifelong
does lbs offer lifelong learning options
so attending one elective every year
after the completion of the executive
mba program
um yes
so to embers at the embers and some
other programs
and then the globals yes that's that's
true
and students can come back and actually
they can take more than one elective in
a year subject to availability
of spaces
there is a cost associated with that but
it's quite small
the purpose of the cost is to make sure
that people who come onto the electives
engage properly with the electives
because
because the electives are quite
interactive
and experiential the faculty want
everyone who's in the room to be
properly engaged and what we've found is
that charging
a relatively small amount of money for
an elective
engages you engages our alumni enough
that they engage fully
with that experience
that makes sense
yeah
right um
and then we've got a question here in
terms of the career center fiona so does
it provide career support for those who
are looking to pivot like 120 degrees
from what they are currently doing or is
it designed more for people who are not
looking to pivot more than say 30
degrees from what they're doing okay
very specific way of putting i do like
that
yeah
so um so what will the careers i think
let's start off with what will the
careers team offer for um negative mbas
so there is um there's a dedicated um
career lead and career coach
for the um the ember programs and the
global programs as well
um
and
that service will offer some plenary
sessions in terms of how to think about
your career and how to
how to do the next stages of it
be that um through thinking about how
you do your online presence or
headhunters
um
or
your career strategy networking all of
those kind of things that you would
expect
there's also um coaching so ember
students can come
for career coaching
and we also have
a large group of people who are
who can advise on various different
sectors
for people to go into
i think in terms of pivoting
um
depends on what what it is
you want to do
because the ember program isn't going to
do that for you by itself most members
get their next opportunities
through their networks and through the
school networks
rather than through
the sort of the sort of
typical mba hiring lines
um which are looking typically for less
experienced
um
people on those
now in terms of the pivoting
um if you want to make a hop
from
one country to another
one sector to another or one job
function to another
that those are not easy things to do but
students do manage to do them
if you're looking to
pivot
sort of hop over two of those things so
you want to change country and sector
that's going to be harder
country sector and function
is very very hard occasionally students
do do it but it's very hard work
and what we would say from a career
center point of view is this isn't about
making one giant leap
it's looking at lots of different little
stepping stones
so in order to make a big pivot
you may need a plan
that
involved going over
one two or more
um changes of role in order to get there
it might not be something that you can
just do
all in one go and you have to bear in
mind that your previous experience is
critical
to whatever you do
next as a member
so i think that's another really
important thing
to bear in mind when you're thinking
about what the future might hold for you
yeah definitely
um
and then we've got a question here about
electives now i know that you've
mentioned that you know amber london's
can do electives in dubai and epic
devices because in london i think one of
the questions i get quite often as well
is are ember london's and emma dubai's
allowed to do electives at hku or cbs
and if so you know what are the chances
of them
being able to secure those electives
okay
um so yes they can and at ucla as well
so and we also have a block week
exchange there
um
so in normal times it was very easy to
go to hkey but actually the pandemic has
made that very tricky
and the time difference also makes that
very tricky in order to be able to study
alongside people in hong kong
for cbs which is always in very high
demand
we tend to get
30 to 40 elective spaces from them in a
year
and we give them the same in return
and it's that trade-off between
because they will want spaces on our
most popular electives they
in order to get spaces on the electives
that they're offering us
so it's that trade-off
according to what we want so
many students will get one of those
places
but um there are 30 to 40 and that's not
for one cohort that would be for the
four second year cohorts
um
so i don't think you should come to lbs
purely to go on exchange to cbs or
anywhere else but um there is it is
possible and quite a lot of students
every year managed to know
yeah i think almost every intake that
we've worked with that all the students
always get the electives that they want
which is obviously brilliant
um
so
fiona where do you see the ember going
in the future in terms of the content
the elective offerings
um you know the focus areas that you
walked us through are there any changes
in the horizon
um i think there will be a few changes
um as we go through we're looking um
and some things have already happened so
on the recruitment side and scholarships
and it's something that we've been able
to introduce quite recently
um
and then we are doing a curriculum
refresh at the moment i think there will
be some
changes afoot
the key content of an ember
is not going to change very much
but really what we're doing is looking
to bring that a bit more
up-to-date
and a bit more streamlined um
so i think there will be a few changes
there in terms of careers one of the
interesting things that careers are
doing at the moment is that they
have introduced a kind of year three
forever because we know that a lot of
members
don't want to change jobs so much
particularly in their first year but
they want to work on it through their
second year and then sometimes not
really until they get to the end of
their second year so there's a year
three electives plan
that allows members to still access the
same level of careers that they would
get as a student
in their first year out and then after
that there is still some access to
careers but it's not as
unlimited as it is when people are
students
and in what ways do the alumni engage
with the lbs community post-graduation
oh quite a lot
so
in terms of actually at lbs we have
alumni coming
to do panel sessions for students we
have that
in orientation we have that at capstone
and then through those years we have
that on our
careers program so you get all sorts of
alumni panels and things like that
and we have alumni hub
where students can ask for a mentor from
an alumni and they're in quite high
demand but i know embers do get them
um
also we have quite a lot of the club
events alumni
will come to as well you'll get alumni
as guest speakers and occasionally there
are even electives where alumni come and
co-teach with the faculty if they've got
so julian berkinshaw's
kept not um managing
the technology organization or something
like that
is um run in conjunction with one of our
alumni
um so they're coming they're coming for
club events they might speak at club
events or just attend them and also we
have alumni clubs run by alumni all
across the world
that members can access as students and
as alums either because it's the alumni
club is somewhere that they live
or because the alumni club is somewhere
they happen to be traveling to and you
can reach out to people
and arrange to see alumni there so yeah
alumni are really connected to the
school and tend to stay connected to the
school
for a long time after they leave
yeah and that's i think i can vouch for
that from the admissions point of view
as well because almost every intake more
than at least 50
of our new students are actually
referrals from previous alumni so i
think it's safe to say that makes our
job a lot easier as well again
um throughout the year
um we've got question here about
face-to-face events and if we're
planning on doing them anytime soon that
is coming up so do watch this space
we're actually currently focusing on
going
um back to campus for our current
students and our new students so in fact
we've just had orientation we are having
orientation for our new september batch
this
week and it's all been face to face so i
know that i've personally really enjoyed
that and i think fiona's enjoying that
yeah i think a chance to meet everyone
um but it is definitely something that
will be happening very soon so do watch
this space
um in terms of assessments how are the
core courses assessed so for instance
corporate finance is a class
participation or a closed book exam
sorry
and secondly what is needed to pass to
go to the second year and what happens
if you fail a core course okay so three
things
let's do the mint order so how are you
assessed on the call courses
um
in a variety of ways so
with something like corporate finance
there will be an exam at the end of it
at the moment all of our exams are
online but um they will be within a
certain um
window and they are invigilated while
you're online
so some courses have exams
some courses have take-home assignments
where you might be doing a project or
writing an essay
or something along those lines
um very often our assessment is a
combination of individual assessment
which would be an exam or a take-home
assignment
with some class participation so not
every subject has class participation
but quite a lot do
which makes up maybe 10 15 of the
overall grade
um you might get problem sets if you're
doing accounting
um
[Music]
and you will get group work as well so
some of the work would be completed with
your study group so you're
you're put into a study group at the
beginning of your first year and you
work with that study group all through
the year and i would say probably
two-thirds of the core courses will have
group work
as part of it but not as the whole thing
every course will also have
some 50 or more will be an individual
component
so
that was part one
what was the second part of the question
um so it was how they assessed and how
do you get into the second year and what
happens if
yeah okay so to get into the second year
you should have passed all of your core
courses
and occasionally if someone's failed one
and hasn't had the opportunity to
retrieve or retake it
we might still allow them to go to
year two but we would be having a
conversation with them
about making sure that they didn't fail
anything else along the way because then
times start to get tough
and sometimes when students
do fail things they need a bit of time
out to get sorted
if you do fail something there is first
if you do fill a core course i should
say electives are a bit different if you
fail a core course
you get an opportunity to do a retrieval
which is basically
to retake another exam for that course
that covers all the learning outcomes of
the course hopefully you'll pass it the
second time
um one on average one or two people
might fail a call course the first time
around
never that many um
most nearly everyone will pass on the
second time around and we work with
people so that if they do fail we want
to know why they failed and can we get
them some additional help
to make sure that they're ready to take
the exam and pass it the second time
around
if you fail the second time around
we have something called a retake
process
which means that you would then be asked
to
retake the whole program from start to
finish
so you would then go back attend all
classes
and and then after that you have an
opportunity to take the exam if you pass
the exam that's great if you failed the
exam again you would have another
retrieval
so that lots of opportunities with your
core
to um
to pass it and we haven't yet had
someone who has managed to
fail all of the retakes and the
retrievals for a particular course and
we've been running that this system for
a couple of years
um with electives you can fail one
elective and still be allowed to
graduate but if you fail two electives
that's one too many and you would be
withdrawn
from the program
but again this is a very rare occurrence
the key thing i would say on failing
is that
if you have any concerns about
your courses we are students come and
talk to us really early on
um and we will try and put some tutoring
help in place
or figure out how we can best support
the student so that they don't get to
the exam
and
and fail because we want everyone to do
well we don't have any forced fails on
any subject so it's quite possible for
everyone to pass everything if they work
hard enough
and do the reading and seek help if they
need it
um we've got two questions here they're
admissions focus so about gmat ea gres
and you know not having
a bachelor's so i'll start off with the
first one so if you don't have a
undergraduate we would require you to
sit the gmat or the ea
and the reason for that is because
that's our way of assessing where you
stand academically in this moment in
time and that's obviously information
that we would then share with fiona's
team as well for when you start the
program so you will definitely be
required to do it um we would still
consider you obviously you need to meet
the other requirements in terms of your
experience tool day your management
experience your years of experience and
whatnot
the second question was around waivers
we do offer waivers for the ea or the
gmat however
you do need to meet the requirement for
that the requirement is for you to have
some sort sort of quants based
qualification so this can be something
like an aca acca cf cfa level one level
two um or if you've got a master's
that's very heavily quants based or a
phd we could consider you for it but you
do need to send your cv in order for us
to make that decision so if you send
that to emba at london.edu we can then
assess your cv um and give you that
feedback so feel free to send that
through great so we've got about one
minute left so i think we can
wrap up with the final question so fiona
what's the one piece of advice you would
give to someone who's considering doing
an executive mba program you know what
are some of the things that they should
take into account before they do decide
to make such a big commitment
okay i think first of all it's really
important
to talk to your significant others
um because this is a massive commitment
in terms of time
and investment of money as well
um
and so your family
you know if you've got a spouse or um
children need to be part of that
decision making process to make sure
this is the right time for you to be
able to commit to the program
and also the same with your employers
and your organizations so
if you can get your boss on board and
your work team on board you're going to
have a much better journey through the
program
what i'd also advise is when you're
talking to particularly when you're
talking to your company
don't think about it as time off work so
much as knowledge that you can bring
into your company
and the most successful members are
people who manage to engage their
company
in their learning
you hear of people coming back and
bringing learning into the company and
being offered really interesting
projects to do on the back of that maybe
doing some strategy work for their
company maybe attending some meetings at
a higher level to what they'd normally
be able
to achieve and that being able to bring
the learning into your company and
experiment with it and then bring it
back the next time to the ember
is really valuable so i think
all the pieces of information i think
preparing the ground properly for coming
and that means preparing the really
significant relationships is the most
important thing
great thank you so much for that fiona
and i think with that we can bring the
session to an end thank you so much
fiona for your time um i have left the
emails of all three emma programs in the
chat box if you do want to get in touch
with us feel free to drop us an email
and i look forward to receiving your
applications take care everyone and have
a great rest of the day
bye

---

### The Executive MBA Experience   EMBA London and EMBA Global
URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KgNqF3yhWY

Idioma: en

good evening everyone and uh welcome to
this evening's uh presentation on london
business schools executive mba programs
focusing this evening on the
ember london and the ember global
programs
um there's a good reason we're focusing
on those two is because we're joined by
uh two of our alumni of the programs uh
tokyo gemada who is an alumnus of the
ember london program
and uh raphael salazar who did the uh
ember global american europe program
uh and we'll be hearing some insights
from them uh a little bit later on uh as
we go through this uh we'll have a bit
of a fireside chat panel style um
question and answer session where um
i'll ask a few questions around what
their experience was on the program what
some key takeaways were
but really what's also important is that
um you guys in the audience also put
some questions in the
uh the q a
for us to uh to answer as we go through
we obviously really like to to hear a
little bit about
about what you want to know about the
experiences of students on our programs
a quick word of personal introduction my
name is brett hunter i'm the director of
recruitment admissions for leadership
programs here at london business school
and that obviously includes the the
executive mba portfolio
um
it's a fantastic portfolio really the
leadership programs as a whole which
also includes the the sloan msc
really focuses on executives and leaders
those who want to to gain insights into
their management leadership styles
and really there's three key things that
people get when they do
any of our leadership programs but
certainly our executive mba programs
and that's obviously insights into
general management and leadership a lot
of the academic learning side of things
um they also get a brand uh you know
it's quite a powerful brand in terms of
the executive mba uh london program
giving you uh the london business school
brand on your uh your cv with the ember
global program also giving you the
columbia business school uh brand on the
cv as well i'm sure we'll get some
insights shortly from raphael on that
um but the other thing i want to focus
on this evening a little bit is also the
third thing that you get from a program
uh such as these uh which is the network
um and uh the the network at london
business school and at columbia business
school is incredibly rich and diverse
and really does provide a lot more
benefit to you as you go through the
program than just the brand and the
learning
so just to focus a little bit on some of
those elements
now
it was often said that the sun never
sets on the british empire those days
are very much done but uh in the uh in
london business school we can say that
uh the sun never sets on our executive
mba portfolio
and this is because we uh we have four
locations that we actually teach our
executive mba programs in uh two of them
are our own that's london and dubai
obviously we have our main campus in
london uh we also have a campus in dubai
um which uh which covers the the gcc and
south asia we had a lot of interesting
candidates uh from from there
um
through our partnership with columbia
business school in new york we also have
um
the the north and south america covered
as well as other parts of the world
and through our partnership with the
university of hong kong business school
we also get students who are studying in
hong kong now what this means is that
it's not just based on nationalities but
also where people are based and that's
important because someone who is uh
living and working
um in hong kong will do something very
differently to how they're living and
working in new york dubai london as well
uh and it also means obviously you'll
get a very large catchment area so for
those who are uh studying in a london
campus uh from a very wide range of
areas across europe across uh north uh
north america across north africa across
sub-saharan africa uh and also some of
the middle east as well uh so it really
adds that uh that rich and diverse
experience of learning with and from
others from different uh different
backgrounds
just uh looking at uh some more of those
uh diversity stats in terms of what we
have as a school um you know
geographically this is where we spread
so it's pretty good um but it doesn't
just extend to the physical buildings
and where we are we also have uh over
150 faculty from 30 different countries
so again they bring different
perspectives in their their teaching
113 alumni clubs all around the world
and this means that for those who have
finished studying at london business
school are at columbia business school
as well for our ember global program
their network continues to thrive and
new people are at it every year
obviously as they they graduate from our
programs it gives you a sense of
community in the sense of
of network and ability to continue to
learn with and from each other as you
continue on your professional lives
we also have actually this this number
is a little updated now it's uh over
forty three thousand alumni now uh based
in uh probably more than 155 countries
um but again it shows just how uh far
the uh the spread uh goes around the
world for uh for our programs
and again it's really important to focus
on the fact that uh when you are doing
an executive mba program uh whether at
london business school or the
partnership program uh with columbia
business school as well um you're
collaborating it's very much a
collaborative rather than a competitive
experience
and you know it's often said that you
learn as much from each other as you do
from the faculty as you go through the
program
and just a sense of who those people are
in your classes we've just welcomed uh
the uh the amber london ember dubai
classes
um to campus for the september intake of
2021 uh they started uh about a week and
a half ago now um so
we welcome 107 students um that is uh
broken down to
63 in london and 44 in dubai so combined
107. um and some really impressive
numbers we've got here so you know 31
nationalities represented actually in
the london class alone
that london class of 63 uh there are 26
nationalities um so obviously dubai is
another five uh unique nationalities on
top of that but 26 nationalities out of
63 you know kind of you can tell just
going through the numbers that every
second you go to this there's a
different nationality and it's just
again that richness and uh opportunity
to learn from uh from different
perspectives
uh 34
of uh the combined classes is female
we're quite proud of that we're even
more proud of the london number which is
38 percent of the class is female again
that's something we're really trying to
drive forward across all of our programs
especially in the leadership programs
portfolio
and that is uh increased female
participation
uh 38 of that combined class of
commuters and again this is a very
important percentage because as i said
before the the people who fly into our
different programs from different parts
of the world bring those different
perspectives and you know to kind of
continue with that point um a japanese
person who is based in london has a very
different perspective in terms of how
they work uh to a japanese person who's
based in tokyo
um and and that is again that that
richness that that's brought by the uh
the commuters to the class
um we have on this particular class for
the first time ever broken the 14 years
of
work experience average typically these
classes have 12 or 13 years of work
experience uh 14 years is the latest one
and that's the um
the most experienced class we've had
on our executive mba programs and the
trend again is continuing on that the
diverse profession professional
backgrounds uh you know people uh come
from a range of different industries
obviously financial services i t
telecoms uh consulting healthcare legal
entertainment uh you know the the the
list goes on uh and again opportunities
to learn how business is done
in uh in different uh different
environments
and then looking at the uh the ember
global class the most recent one we
recruited was the uh the class that
started in uh
in may of 2021 so uh just a couple of
months ago uh that was 72 students for
the the americas in europe class it's
around a normal size class it's
typically about 70 to 75.
um
28 female again a good uh good number um
we'd like to up that into the 30s uh
like we have on the uh the amber london
class
um now just go around uh just 22
countries represented which is you know
again the nationalities but
an incredible 61 cities represented so
you know out of 72 students um uh there
are 61 different uh different cities in
terms of where people are living and
working uh 11 years of average work
experience on the the global american
europe program and again those those
same diverse professional backgrounds
often more diverse in the uh the umber
global program because of the fact that
people are coming in flying in from
from every corner of the world
and so
what that uh brings you is a uh a
combined leadership network of
incredible strength and and depth um
and uh these are the numbers i read
today that uh
of the current students we have there
are 272 ember london students so that's
because we have
uh two intakes per year um and obviously
it's a two-year program so we have
september and january and takes four ntx
represented that's 272 students that
that that those who are on the programs
right now have the opportunity of
networking with and uh you know finding
out more information from
um on top of that there's 181 member
students currently studying in our dubai
campus uh again same thing and and also
the opportunities to to learn with and
from each other um
is you know the geographic barriers are
not really there because obviously it's
uh it's a network that uh that is as uh
as much virtuous it is face to face
um and currently 98 ember global
students um uh that includes the ember
global asia students as well that's a
smaller number than normal because last
year's ember global class was suspended
because of the pandemic
we thought it was a little bit difficult
to offer a program that is so global in
its nature um uh virtually so therefore
we we suspected the last year's program
and this is the uh the first one since
um so that that in itself is a quick
nutshell on you know the kind of uh the
richness and diversity of the network
um but obviously there's a lot more to
the experience um than uh than just
those areas so at this point i'd like to
to uh to offer the opportunity to uh uh
to took here in raphael to give some
insights into their experiences
um
let's just start with you uh tokyo just
to begin with if you want to introduce
yourself and uh you know let the
audience know um who you are um and what
you do as well
sure uh thanks brad uh hi guys my name
is talk here jamidar uh i'm a product
manager at a financial services company
uh that is focused on the private equity
industry uh i'm based out of london uh i
was based out of london when i did the
ember as well in 2018.
okay thank you and uh rafael uh if you
want to give yourself a great journey
yeah hi everyone thanks brett for
for the opportunity yeah i'm um i did
the impact global america's europe
in 2021 so i just finished in may
and i'm based out of madrid spain and i
i have a fintech startup that i started
doing the mba program
it's a global payment for latin american
currencies
okay thank you very much uh rafael we'll
continue on with you just for uh for the
first question uh from me um and that is
uh
why did you choose to take the uh the
ember global program in the first place
yeah um
yeah i had a i applied to several
schools uh i went to the us and i
attended some classes in east coast and
west coast and i went to lbs and i i did
my round you know and um what i saw is
that most of the executive mbas that i i
had the opportunity to attend
like example classes
most of the people were from the city or
the region so
if you choose a
easter egg like the east coast in the
u.s
uh you have to go there for uh every
three weeks and then what i saw is that
most of the people lived in the city or
were from the city when i uh attended
lbs you know i did my like an example
class from the mba program i saw that
everyone was different you know they
they came from
literally everywhere in the world and i
that caught my attention i said well
this is this is really what i want to do
you know like uh uh like meet different
people like expand my network and then
and see see how people think across the
world not not just from from the city or
the country or the region what i what
i'm studying then added to that is that
the opportunity to go abroad and do the
the experience and takes literally take
some classes and half of mba was in new
york that was that was amazing like i
mean the travel commitment was hard i
know every month we had to travel either
to new york or london
but it was totally worth the experience
so my my three points would be like the
the network
the new york uh experience and and the
branding having two mbas and two brands
leaders in the mba industry was just uh
what i needed you know that's the
globality i was looking for
and just on that on the the two brands
um
why was that valuable to you what was
what interested you having both the
london business school and the columbia
business school brands yeah uh by the
time i joined the
the program i was i was a consultant so
uh
i was choosing my next step and i i
didn't know if i wanted to stay in
europe or go abroad
to the u.s or asia so um
lbs is a leader in
as a brand in the business school in
europe i mean it's known everyone is uh
recognizes you as an mba student from
lbs i i said okay if i stay in europe
lbs will be very powerful but if i want
to work in the in new york city and do
some fintech and or vt specializing in
financials i i'll probably want to look
more for the local experience of a
business school in new york so combining
the two programs allowed me to expand
like double you know double the
opportunities of
having the freedom to choose where
where my next step would be either the
u.s through the uh colombia network or
either in europe staying here in europe
through the lbs network so it's like
combining two networks in the same
uh program and then
i think it
[Music]
makes the opportunity larger for you
when you choose
what the next step will be in your
career
sure thank you and uh here what about
you what what um
what drew you to the uh the amber london
program originally
yeah so i i think a lot of my journey
was very similar to raphael's as well um
i've been super lucky in my career to
have had
a lot of different career and work
related experiences
but i wasn't polished i had a lot of
rough edges and so what i wanted to do
was go to business school and one polish
some of my rough edges but also upgrade
some of my skills and my ability in
areas that i haven't been i hadn't been
exposed to
um i actually looked at three business
schools so i looked at london business
school i looked at
chicago booth and i looked at cambridge
judge and i think
the thing that pulled me to london
business school was literally when you
walked through the front doors at
the main campus in london i don't know
everything felt like it was home so you
know that that felt great and then i
attended a session like this uh where
again like raphael says that you know i
got to experience um the diversity of
people and i think the wide range of uh
the alumni who were who you know were
there on the panel and just listening to
the experiences was
you know it did demonstrate to me you
know what the opportunities were
and i think what was super important to
me also was the brand you know i didn't
want to just go to a business school to
get an mba i wanted to do it from the
best possible option i wanted it to be
challenging because i
wanted to
really push on in my career
i'm a very ambitious person um and i
wanted it to really impact and add value
to the career that i wanted to pursue
okay let's let's look at that added
value so
you know it would be um an
understatement to say the return on
investment is one of the key things that
people are looking for and asking
questions about when they're uh when
they're looking into doing these
programs um
and people take progress for different
reasons um what was the main reason
for you i'm like was this something
about
um you know career exhilaration or
career shift or um
you know investigating doing your own
thing what was the the main objective
for you
i would say a little bit of both um so
career acceleration for sure um i i'm i
have a computer science background i
used to be a software developer at the
start of my career moved into consulting
and then moved into operations uh
the area that i found super interesting
was operations but it helped that i had
that diverse background and i wanted to
move into more senior leadership
roles you know i'm
i actively
pre-mba wanted to push for
a sort of chief operating officer role
or a chief of staff role to sort of go
on to that path
and
the
interesting element for me also was that
right from the start of my career i
wanted to change what i did in my career
every 10 years or so
just to keep it interesting and to keep
my career diverse
and i think
the thing that i realized the more i
looked into business schools but the
more i looked into lbs is that
the diversity from
the different nationalities the
different types of people who would come
to the business school would really help
shape some of my thinking
and
that would then help me become
a better decision maker a better thinker
you know
high level smarter person
and so
from that and i didn't get that for
comparison i didn't necessarily get that
feel when i went to the other schools uh
to sort of you know scope them out so
for me that's where lbs started becoming
a more and more
relevant and important aspect of what i
wanted to pursue
okay so that's some perspectives going
in
what about outcomes um uh did you feel
that um your experience at london
business school and some of those you
know those outcomes their successes did
that that meet your expectations
yeah absolutely um so to start off with
i transitioned into
my current company towards the end of my
mba but actually the thing that really
helped me was you know through the mba
whatever we learned on a weekly basis we
were going back and practicing it at
work
the more i spoke to people in the in the
industry about you know how i'm going
about my learning
the more people started getting
interested in me and my profile and
that's what led me to this opportunity
where i'm at now i didn't interview for
it i was brought in for a chat and then
it became a very very long chat
at the end of the day um but equally at
the same time i think
what has been really fruitful is
two years two and a half three years on
since i graduated i am now working with
some of my classmates on various
different projects they're based around
the world
um
again that's exposing me
different markets to help me grow
and i'm actually in the process of
stepping up into a senior role over the
next six eight months or so so you know
i i think it's definitely starting to
deliver
the
objectives and the aims that i had from
an edmonton
okay thank you and uh rafael what about
you what uh
professionally speaking what were you
hoping to uh to get out of the program
yeah i was looking for um
[Music]
the next step i didn't know if it was a
career change or
or
moving up in consulting so i i i started
the program with like a blank sheet of
paper like i i wasn't expecting any
any any any big change in my career but
i wasn't open to any new ideas and what
i discovered is
um
that i wanted to do entrepreneurship so
i i took some courses and i talked to
some of the lds professors that were
really experts on uh
doing innovation and and
entrepreneurship and they had startups
and they invited speakers uh that's uh
they created companies during the mba
program and sold the companies and
created new ones and this was like a new
kind of a way of life that i wanted to
go in you know and so i i started taking
some electives on entrepreneurship i i
think i i took all of them
and uh
all that was provided in the program i
took all of the entrepreneurship classes
and i
that i needed the knowledge like the
you know to make some solid concepts on
on entrepreneurship before
uh taking the step on
and create my own company so during the
program i started the the company that
i'm working on
uh and and
i i must i should say that
yeah i could say that
before the program i i was like
i had fears on entrepreneurship i didn't
want to go and and take the lead and
risk and embrace uncertainty and you
know i needed that i needed to close
like gaps and connect thoughts of the
knowledge that i had and i i think that
the combination of the different
different perspective on the american
side and the european side of
entrepreneurship really solidified uh
really close the gap and made me more
confident on my
on my entrepreneurial rule so yeah i
think that
that was the
since i went with a blank sheet of paper
and i got all these experience and
network and
and and mentoring and
and the entrepreneurship club and the
help of my
classmates and
the the support from the lbs
uh the professor and the staff
on how to make that big step
that step of your career i think that
was the biggest learning and the
experience that i got from the program
you mentioned one of the uh one of the
unique features of the ember global
program there and that is the um
uh the difference in perspectives now
you specifically mentioned you know
entrepreneurship in the us versus
entrepreneurship in europe and kind of
how the schools uh maybe teach you
differently can you give us a little bit
more of perspective on that you know how
the two schools differ in
in um
in how they teach what they teach um
kind of the
the the difference in experience
yeah uh sure uh
what i
felt i mean i took the entrepreneurship
classes from colombia and lbs
and i have mentors from both
acceleration programs inside the school
so the
the difference
that i could call from both perspective
is more on the market side the europe i
mean lps is more about the strategy and
the values of the company and the value
proposition and why
and the reason of being and and
why should you create a company
is it the time for you is it it is what
you are made for this is your call you
know this is more from a reflective
perspective on a person as an
entrepreneur what it takes to be an
entrepreneur or you prepare for this and
they they prepare you and they make you
discover if your passion is
entrepreneurship
the the u.s version or the u.s
perspective is more about the idea
itself this is the market opportunity go
for it is more
uh aggressive on the positive side like
they push you like that you go for it
there's an acceleration program and then
you you push your idea and they teach
you how to pitch and they they prepare
you to go to the market so
it's more the american style you know
like selling and then and how you market
your idea and the lbs side was more uh
like a reflection like a reflective
process of why and what makes you a good
entrepreneur and i think that both
pieces
are perfect
uh complement to each other you need
both
the inner voice of why
why you want to go into entrepreneurship
and the outer voice of the market that
this is what it takes to launch an idea
in the u.s so uh i i haven't decided yet
where where i i'm gonna base my my
startup for for the moment for the time
being and for the epidemic
um i'm still in spain and um this is my
my hometown right now but i as soon as
as we can move i i have to choose either
either london or the us so it's gonna be
a tough decision for sure
at least you've got those options as you
said yeah yeah for sure yeah yeah
another a few questions come in um from
the audience i want to take this
opportunity just to kind of pause on my
questions and focus on these uh for a
second um the first one here is is uh i
suppose uh the best way to breathe is
it's a question around uh career
services and you know kind of what the
uh the offering um uh there is um
and um uh you know did in terms of your
uh success the um uh the
the extra return on the investment that
you got going through the program um how
helpful did you find career services in
um in helping you achieve that uh we'll
start with you on that
sure and you've got to excuse me the ice
cream man has found the perfect time to
just drive outside my house
give it that
just as long as you don't go and get an
ice cream that's fine exactly exactly um
so i think um
the way to the way i would answer or the
way i'd look at it is the career service
played a part but also my classmates who
are our career reps uh played a very
good and strong part with the career
service right the the career service
have access to a whole ton of resources
through you know from the university's
connections and
partnerships
what our career reps did was they helped
tailor the exposure and the experience
with the career service so we got
exposed to a lot of
industry speakers who got exposed to a
lot of sort of different events and
opportunities around uh
you know executive career
exposure um and then we had a lot of
coaching and
uh support in how to build
your next step
uh from the career service um
certain people availed or used that more
than others
me for example i went down the coaching
route more strongly than
maybe
support directly from the career service
but i think the things that i really
appreciated and really helped me was
when we did get exposed to parts of
industry that i didn't know anything
about or i didn't know people in
and essentially it became an opportunity
to partly network but also partly learn
about where else you know i could
consider future opportunities
okay thank you and rafael same question
to you
yeah um
i i went more through my classmates i
mean i used the school resources i i did
my coaching session
but i i kind of this i don't know
how to describe it but i i kind of knew
what i wanted to do when i
when i started doing the elective on
about entrepreneurship
so that i use the coaching sessions more
about how to start
i mean this is i come from consulting i
come from a very structured
mindset
and how how can i get out of my comfort
zone that was my coaching
my the coaching program that they
designed for me was more about how to go
out in
and be more a risk taker so i i used my
classmate as a report and as a
validation source i when i launched my
my startup um i contacted everyone like
for validation ideas and feedback
so i was answering uh cj one question
about the
uh we use a network yes 100 i mean uh
and i coming back to my my first point
given that everyone was from a different
place
i could have the inside and the feedback
from the
west coast u.s they used a friend who
was my same um
class uh or in an elective or asking
someone from thailand or from china or
south america or africa so
and they they give you the perspective
that you need or like have like a global
idea of
of my startup at least so i used more um
classmates and the network for
like inspiration and feedback for my
idea and my transition into
entrepreneurship and the coaching and
resources from lds uh
more about how to do more like a
framework and
[Music]
more like
success cases from people like me that
came before and did the same transition
what was their recommendation so they
put me in contact with people that did
exactly the same and were successful and
and those who failed so i they gave me
the opportunity to compare what were
right and what was what went wrong in
some cases so
uh that was my experience and i think
that was very helpful in in order to
make people
launch my company now let's look at
specifically the coaching sessions you
mentioned were there any surprises there
for you um
uh in terms of you know maybe being
surprised about yourself anything you
uncovered or or surprised about what the
offering was a lot i i remember one of
the
tests that i that we did in one of the
coaches
of the hpvi which is like the the four
uh groups of characteristics you have in
your personality and i was surprised
that i uh it's about yellow green
blue red and it has to do more with
creativity for green yellow for
processes and i don't know blue for uh
structure and and incorporating like a
formal structure and read for social uh
connections and i i was very low on
social connection i said how can i be
i'm not
i'm i was an academic rep so i'm the rep
of the class you know i talk to everyone
yeah but you
you're not quicker for social
interaction so you should open up more
and be more
uh empathetic with uh people so i was
that was like a very
interesting discovery that the kai was
kind of coach that i have during the
program that he made
in one of the sessions and that that
really changed the way i i perceived my
profile like now i have to make an
effort you know to if i want to be an
entrepreneur i have to be more more uh
like a
extrovert profile i have to network more
i have to talk to people
either an investor or a potential
partner or client so
that really changed the perception i had
about myself and that was
thanks to uh kai one of the coaches of
lbs that went with me through uh the
process of the selfie self discovery of
who you are and what makes you an
entrepreneur
uh took here any um surprises for you as
you went through the uh the leadership
development elements
um so for me it wasn't a surprise that i
shied away from conflict uh but i think
my coach really helped me deal with that
better and actually
um
approach it with how to
really almost roll my sleeves up and get
into it to address it
what i didn't realize is i actually find
it comfortable to
deal with conflict i've always shied
away because i thought it's not the
right thing to do
to get involved in it so i think uh he
really helped me with that um i think
the other thing that he really helped me
with is i'm naturally someone who likes
to tell stories but what he helped me do
is
refine
conversations so you know identify on me
you know whilst you're on your feet
identify when it needs to be precise
short sharp and when it needs a story
so we did a whole bunch of work around
that it really helped it has really
helped me
in my career in like sales and business
development type conversations which i
started getting more and more involved
in this and as well
sure
now you um uh
you mentioned conflict there um i just
want to kind of expand on that a little
bit because um yeah one of the things we
do when we put together classes um
for uh for all of our programs and also
study groups
is that we look to maximize that
diversity right that's a pretty obvious
thing that we uh we aim to achieve but
what that often means or what that
always means is that you have in a study
group maybe six you have six individuals
maybe five or six different
nationalities five or six different
industries five or six different ways of
doing things um
so can you give us perspective of what
that was
what that was like in the study groups
you know some of the challenges and
maybe some of the opportunities of
working amongst such
different mindsets
yeah so we had we had a fair bit of
conflict in our study group due to the
nature of personalities um
you know we had an entrepreneur who was
just completely wild with ideas and then
we had uh the global head of hr of a 70
000 people organization was unbelievably
structured and rigid and
we always ended up having clashes um
it really helps
in you know with hindsight it really
helps
evolve your learning if you put the
effort in you know ultimately these are
circumstances that you will face in your
career at some point or the other
working with that range and variety of
people so at lbs it it gave us that sort
of safety net environment where you
could practice you know you had
you also had to get the most out of it
for yourself right that's why we were
there um i think it gave us the
opportunity to get out of our shell for
me it was a case of
uh you know we had a couple of people in
my study group who didn't pull their
weight and so it was having that honest
adult
conversation about you know
either get involved or let's have a
conversation about
restructuring the group
um
but it was the ability or that exposure
to those sort of circumstances
that helped me in my in my job today
where i have a senior role
i it's a fast growing company it's a
very complex product with complex
clients
and
hard conversations are to be had people
need to be motivated to move and behave
in the right way but a lot of that
practice and frameworks and structure
came from
some of the study group experience that
i had during lps
okay and raphael um
for your experience um you know i
imagine all i know that you would have
had uh a few extra time zones thrown in
as well uh yeah he would have had to
deal with a few times don't get me wrong
but uh um a few extra ones for you as
well so tell me about about that and
about the i suppose the the concept of
trying to balance the study groups
output
um when it's that little bit more global
yeah uh definitely yeah
i mean the travel commitment was was
tough we needed to travel a lot to the
u.s
in london in my case but uh
the study groups i i think it was made
on purpose they were literally in
different time zones get each one of
them so
that was kind of like a global how to
run a global team
and that was before the fundamental
before we have this online
experience that everyone is used now to
go and hire so we had to deal with that
before even knowing that was gonna be
the the norm for 2020 and 2021. so we
dealt with um
that time zones very in a very
optimistic way so one week
uh i sacrificed so i wake up at 5 00 a.m
or i go to bed at 1am and next week the
person in shanghai has to do the
opposite you know like arrange their
their their
schedule so they can meet on on the
evenings or early in the morning so it
was a matter of um how can we
make the sacrifices that group not
everyone
waking up very early every week i was in
terms of of time zone and
or uh dealing with conflict i remember a
very powerful tool that the coach the
first coach uh coach infection we had in
lds was about how to work with me i
don't know if you did the same here like
yeah that exercise of it's it's a
contract and they make you sign the
contract this is this is what it what it
is to work with raphael okay so this is
who i am this is what i like this is
what i don't like for my team so i i
remember i wrote like i i like brutal
honesty but don't be
too mean on me if i make a mistake i'll
allow me to have some room for um
reflection so
and i remember i see you have it and i i
read it like a month ago because i used
and now i use that exercise for my own
team so like okay did you
how do you
hire you can work with me but i want you
guys on my team from my startup to write
the same paper like how how is it to
work with you who are you
and that that i i i will say
it was the most
powerful kid of communication and
understanding in our team
you see this is who you are and if you
uh
i mean i'm a i'm a very creative pro
person i'm a very crazy
idea guy and
one of my classmates was from private
banking and the other one was from a
corporation we had different profiles
and that was the the agreement the
contract we did with
the team just to make it work
so that was very much
and i must just add that you know that
that how to work with me contract or
that one pager uh is so effective today
you know
i have grown my team from three people
to 12 people in the last 12 months and
it's a very simple easy
communication mechanism
and it's consistent people know what to
expect but they also know
uh what they think they know or what
they think they don't know right it's a
very easy way of making sure that
everybody works together in the right
way it also eliminates a whole bunch of
conflict because it just takes away
assumptions uh it's super powerful yeah
it's something that we
set ourselves up as well right at the
start it helped us in the long run
after saying something that i've used as
well i'm like i don't know if you guys
came across it was introduced to me from
randall peterson a faculty member at obs
i think a few ob uh professors uh use it
but yes i've used it myself it
is a powerful tool
yeah
talk here um
favorite moments what what was your
favorite part of the program or uh
um you know this could be the most
enjoyable or the most rewarding just uh
something that's memorable
uh so
one of the best experiences of my life
was the gba to buenos aires uh
i've never had any
ambition any
you know i've never thought of traveling
to argentina
picked it as a unique place to go as
part of the gpa and it was a
wonderful experience i absolutely loved
it
um
i did electives in dubai and in hong
kong and just you know it was more about
not even being in the classroom but
being sort of in an environment with
friends and
that was great and i think ultimately
it's the friendships you take out from
from the school um you know
the education is important but the
social aspect of you know the
relationships and the bonds that you
build with your classmates it's it's
almost like they are now your family uh
you know it's it's more than just
friendships in in many occasions uh so
for me you know
those were some of the best things that
that i experienced at lbs
and rafael what about you what's your
favorite moment
yeah my uh
i mean besides my uh obviously the the
trips and uh
time you spend with people that become
your friends for life
from the that is obvious i think we
still see each other we make so i go to
london i visit my friends i go to
portugal or brazil or colombia so we we
still have a lot of uh contact with each
other but besides the
personal side i would say that from the
academic perspective um
i i
i asked for one of the lbs professor uh
strategy
professor
dominique to be my mentor in the startup
and uh
and i was like expecting like a yeah
sure just send me an email you know and
then we'll see each other or whatever no
no he literally engaged in
in making it possible hey think about
this and he sent me paper then
he was like very very
committed to helping me in my
uh journey as an entrepreneur and then i
wrote to i did the same in colombia and
in cbs and i asked uh the professor of
operation management hey can can you be
my mentor i know nothing about processes
in startup and i'm doing with fintech
and you have a very regulated startup
and he said yeah sure uh who are you
talking to in lbs yeah professor dominic
oh yeah sure let's have a chat the three
of us and now they they became like the
two mentors from operations and strategy
and i i think i i i can say i'm very
spoiled to have two of the
best professors i had in the entire
global program being my mentor for for
just for the sake of of making it happen
you know helping helping a student to
make a career transition
in a seamless way so when i when i
realized i had in a chat the two most
amazing guys in my in my journey in the
mba program said wow this is
great i don't know what i'm doing right
but this is cool you know they they
reply to me they help me they they make
contact and they
they really care about the journey that
you are doing that that really impressed
my my
my
my my stay my career in my journey in
the mba
sure
um just there's another question i want
to address that's come in um it's quite
specific and i'll answer the first bit
in terms of the percentage but it's
about corporate sponsorship um
so uh you know the question is around
the ratio of sponsored students um i can
answer that it's about 30 to 40 percent
on both the amber london and
uh and the global programs but um uh
just in the 30 to 40 chance that either
of you were company sponsored did either
of you receive sponsorship at all or not
no i i paid for it myself
that's another question i'll ask then um
i was gonna uh you know see if you have
any perspectives in terms of how to get
company sponsorship um we can address
this with the person who's asked the
question offline a bit later or i can uh
introduce you to some people who have uh
received company sponsorship but um in
terms of the um uh the fees and you know
the return on investment piece and so on
um
you know
i suppose there would have been doubts
in terms of the the price i mean it's
quite an expensive program um uh you
know both the amber global program and
the um uh the ember london um
did you did you have any thoughts about
about that you know that channel the
investment piece the you know whether
it's worth it um any hopes in terms of
you know structured return or anything
like that as you've been through raphael
i'll start with you
yeah of course it's a it's a very
important
financial commitment that you're making
in such a program but i
uh i mean it's been just a couple of
months i graduated i haven't seen the
return of course i take some time
but uh
as a hint as a tip or as a
an advice to those of you who are about
to start the journey i
i applied to every scholarship
possible in the us and i mean come
university in london business school i
got one from lbs
uh then i i had there were some grants
that if you like the consulting project
uh award that we
i mean we gathered in a team and we won
the project so we got 20k and uh uh the
entrepreneurship program so we got a uh
like a financial support from uh the
acceleration program in columbia
university so that helped me pay my my
loan
so it's it's a it's important in terms
of the amount of money that you are
you're paying the university
but there are ways of
finding um
loans and
grants and scholarships so
i have a concern actually in my
interview at lbs i say oh i don't know
how i'm gonna pay for this and they say
yeah
ninety percent of the people
don't know it so don't worry about it
they you'll figure out just
you know it works i mean i see all money
in the bank of course but uh i'm very
convinced that this is worth the money
and then uh these uh impulse in my
career is gonna it's gonna allow me to
repay
with uh within the next year for sure
sure and they took here
uh
yeah i mean for me
uh
i figured out how i'm going to structure
it and how i'm going to pay for it
i took a loan and i went for it you know
um
from my perspective this is about
my development and i think you know
again the hindsight view post mba is
that
anything worth doing will have a price
associated with it right and it's not
going to be cheap either um
ultimately
the transformation that i've had as an
individual
and you know this is validated one by uh
the
start of the program and end of the
program surveys that we do with uh folks
around you you know with
employers friends etc
and it's quantified right you can see
the difference between start at the
start and end of the program but just as
an individual i'm a fundamentally
different person today
as a result of the program
so from my perspective
either looking for financial payoff or
non-financial payoff
it's absolutely you know it's been spot
on uh it was the right decision um in
hindsight and i had no hesitation
actually that i just had to figure out
how to structure it but i had no
hesitation to
you know make sure i figured out the
money to get on the program sure
there's another question here it's
coming from one of the attendees um
about how much you actually enjoyed the
program um and you know
whether the professors are knowledgeable
but solemn or whether they um they make
a little bit more amusing um took here
just so to begin with you what was your
perspective of the way the program was
delivered
so um
there are
i wish i could show a photo because i
have this iconic photo from our class
where one of my classmates who we called
the general was standing right right in
the back row sort of pointing out the
professor he was very animated but he's
making his point and the caption that we
had for the whole two years was who's
teaching whom um
so you know i think what is interesting
is the engagement level in the classroom
so the professors are fantastic and i'll
come to that in a second but actually
the amount that you learn from your
classmates is absolutely incredible
i spent an entire term sitting next to
the vice president of kazakhstan
no you know no business school class
could teach the perspectives that you
could learn from a deb a diplomat or a
head of state we had the cfo of a
deutsche bank middle east in my class
this stuff that you learn from him that
you can't learn in class the reality but
then we had amazing pro professors such
as professor ian cooper who taught us uh
corporate finance uh he got us five
minutes standing ovation in the
graduation ceremony because of how
awesome a professor he is but his
background in history was
stuff that we learned of in terms of not
only about corporate finance but how to
think of industry
we had
the the
one of the entrepreneurship professors
that we had as an elective who is a new
zealander who lives in oxford and boston
michael davies uh you know
his experience in patent and technology
areas
is unparalleled microsoft and apple use
them for patent disputes so
the quality of professors is
unparalleled the style of teaching of
course varies from each professor but
the way that we learned through the
engagement in the class has to speak has
shows a little bit about the
style and quality of the professors and
i keep in touch with two or three
professors
you know i have kept in touch since
graduation just because for me it's that
constant learning that i get to get from
them
and raphael were your perspectives and
i'll throw in a bonus question as well
was there a difference
generally between the
delivery from lbs and cbs
um
no i
probably know that
the case studies that we saw in both
schools were
international very
global so i wouldn't say there was like
a an american focus no it was very very
broad everywhere in london and in new
york
uh in terms of a network and and
and how we leverage the professors uh i
mean i was the academic prep so i i was
lucky enough to
invite every professor uh for dinner you
know so we went out a couple of times
with uh i remember corporate finance and
strategy marketing so
we even made some friendship there so
i'm going in two weeks to new york and i
i already have some uh
two dinners with two professors from cbs
so we keep in contact so we have the
network and relationship
beyond the mba so
answering the question yes it was
amazing we have some speakers and
professors who have an amazing network
uh everywhere in the world so
and they they
it was tough i remember some tough
courses like uh uh
responsibility and and accounting and
and sorry and finance i was very tough i
remember the longest exam i've ever done
in my my entire life was a six hour exam
in new york city and i said wow man this
is just the beginning of the nba and i
and that made me think about how
this is gonna teach me for for my career
and i wasn't making that that professor
is still in contact he's uh he he is an
advisor
in one of the most uh the biggest visas
in the us
so he it's more than the the teaching
and the
methods and
the structure of the class it's it's
about who who is teaching you know who
is entering the room with the the broad
network and the experience and the
knowledge and the
the work they've done so it's it's like
a package you know that you are
you're buying when you enter the
classroom you see who is teaching you in
front of
the blackboard
sure um there's a question here about
the um uh the work and
mba balance um and i suppose i'll throw
in life work life and an mba
uh balance uh raphael how was that for
you
honestly it's tough uh and i i think
it's
that's why one of the uh one of the
essays you have to write for the
application is how are you gonna deal
with that
work life balance and
your personal life
so yeah uh my experience uh it was about
the the
commitment to
to travel you know to new york city or
everywhere we had to go so it was about
blocking like one week of your of every
month for a very intense course
during like uh or several courses in one
week so you know that from sunday to
sunday you you are offline from your
work and that was
that was hard that was really hard
because you you have clients you have
projects i was working consulting
so how do you explain your client that
you're gonna be off for one week you
know uh but but we did it i mean i i'm
here
they didn't fire me so i we survived
it's it's doable
it's you you end up enjoying it because
you say okay i've been away for one week
and the project is
running so they i'm not that
you know important anymore so the team
is the team is running
the program i mean the projects are you
just survive
the the personal side is more
challenging it's
uh yeah you need to make a
sacrifice and and spend more time
with your uh partner your wife or
husband or friends but you know you need
also to explain that you're gonna be
in in a
in a very challenging
moment for 20 months
my program was 20 months uh and most of
my friends and family they just
understood that i was going to be
studying during the weekend and that was
going to be away from one week
and and i i mean it's it's all about how
you explain it and how you communicate
it both in your work
and in your family or friends
okay and to care your thoughts on the
work life study balance
yeah i think this is one area where i
think i could have done better um you
know i was working 60 plus hours a week
and trying to balance the study um it
can be done but i would strongly
recommend not to do it um you know you
set the expectations with your employer
set the expectations with your family
that this is going to be very very
demanding because it's not just about
the classroom there are social aspects
there are
study groups and assignments that will
be outside of class
um you know there will be events that
you want to attend and be part of it is
very demanding um i think the
um
the setting expectations of my employer
part that's something i did pretty badly
i used my annual leave to
you know attend classes what i would
strongly strongly recommend is even if
you cannot
get financial sponsorship
get that time off get that sponsored i
think that even that makes a significant
difference because i was near enough
burnt out after 18 months because i
hadn't had a break i was full on at work
or at study uh for 18 months so
that that's my key takeaway otherwise i
agree 100 with everything rafael said
and what i did was i didn't ask for i
mean i asked for the
scholar i mean the sponsorship from the
company but what i got is the time
sponsorship so they are good they are
agreed to give and to respect their one
week per month
so that i think that made the difference
yeah yeah yeah i have to agree that's
very important because that
that is really what has the biggest
impact on on your um ability to kind of
experience the program you know be
present there focused on on not just the
study aspect but as to clear the social
aspects as well um without uh too many
distractions from from the workplace
um now we've got other questions but i'm
afraid we've reached the uh the end of
the session uh there's a pd because
there are some questions there's a lot
i've got some some more questions i'd
like to ask too but we have reached the
end of the hour um first of all i'd like
to thank both tokyo and rafael for uh
for giving up your your time this
evening um your insights have been
invaluable um it's always great to hear
um straight from the uh the horse's
mouth so to speak and uh to kind of get
the sense of what it's like
going through the program and
some of the the benefits you've had from
that um for uh for all of you who've
have joined us this evening i hope you
have found some benefit in what we've
been talking about um there is so much
more we could talk about and that's why
we should continue the conversation um
if you've already been in touch with
anyone um
in any of the admissions teams whether
it's london business school or columbia
business school please do continue those
conversations with us maybe get in touch
and request a conversation with an
alumnus you can get more perspectives
for a different person as well um maybe
come along to a class as well to see how
they are
if you haven't yet reached out and
spoken to us please do that's what we're
there for we've got teams in new york
and dubai
in london and hong kong to uh to answer
your questions um so at this point i'd
like to say good evening um or good
morning well good afternoon wherever you
have to be in the uh the world thank you
for joining us and we we hope to hear
from you soon thank you very much
thank you

---

### Reboot your career: In conversation with EMBA alumnae
URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDAahkPEWv4

Idioma: en

to fill the gaps i'll introduce myself
my name is julia marsh i'm the senior
associate dean at london business school
taken on a new role around innovation
and transformation and used to look
after our students
and we have some fantastic panelists
today we are waiting for one panelist to
join uh there's always some technical
issues
but uh let me cover some housekeeping
rules
um we will have some chats but also as
we we are talking and talking to the
panels please do put your questions and
i will keep an eye on the questions and
as we have discussions i will pull in
some of the key questions in there and
also we will leave some time just to
answer questions directly we might not
be able to answer all of them if there's
many but each school
will look at the questions and then
redirect them to individual panelists
and we'll get back to you on that
so we have 46 panelists and we have an
hour so let's kick off
uh as i'm speaking please go to the chat
and just write what country what
continent you are dialing in from it
would be great to see us spread so all
right let me put i am in the uk
um if our panelists can also say where
they are okay uk
austria france
virginia london uk oops germany
kuwait philippines amsterdam so i'm
reading
all over the world fantastic this is
actually amazing amazing ladies that uh
for my assuming sadie oh david sorry
everybody that is all over from all over
the world fantastic so
to kick things off i
i'll do a very short introduction and
this is really i think we've all it's
not a surprise for all of us that we've
gone through and still going through
some challenging times with the pandemic
and it's interesting that it's thrown
some questions some opportunities and
questions and i see that in my work our
current students and also people coming
in are really looking at their careers
in a different way what they want to do
some big questions are emerging maybe
that we haven't faced before
so
this is a time and i i will admit i'm a
huge advocate of education so you'll
hear i'm very biased and i've i think
education for me has set me free and i
would like to hear also from our
panelists what has education how has
education helped them but also knowing
what the challenges and maybe
specifically for women have been during
the pandemic and currently in the
workforce i'd really also like to hear
that angle
why you decided to do the executive mb
what were the challenges when you were
doing this from a work perspective if
you had responsibilities parenting
partner children responsibilities and we
just had a quick chat with the panelists
before and i think we've all agreed that
we'll be honest we will really tell you
how it was so that you know
what the lows were but also what the
highs were
so i will have framed it like this and i
will now like our panelists to introduce
themselves so please let's start with
brooke
if you can say a couple of words about
uh what school you went to your current
job what you did before and maybe a
couple of highlights from your
experience
okay sure um so i'm brooke bornick and i
am a recovering lawyer
based in houston texas
and um the way i got to
you know the recovering part of recovery
lawyer is that i did my emba at
cambridge judge business school from
2016 to 2018
and um since then
i've had the chance to work in private
equity legal tech and my husband and i
now have a prop tech company
uh lodger and i actually ended up
marrying one of my classmates
um the day before graduation so um it's
been a very personal experience for me
um
and my daughters are seven and nine now
but they were one in three when i
started the program so um
any questions about what it's like you
know
being a parent with young kids
i've got it um i can tell you all about
that
thank you brooke ramsey over to you
hi so my name is ramsay sargent um
i graduated quite a bit ago in 2005 i
did the emba global program between
london business school and uh columbia
business school in new york i was living
in new york at the time
and um working at aol time warner
through the
merger and uh in a in a corporate role
and uh realized that my
wonderful background in psychology and
women's studies had not sufficiently
prepared me for that so
i took i chose to go back and
do the embl global program i had a great
time i was think well i actually uh
started dating a guy and we moved in
together and broke up before over the
course of uh of the school but um
but it was it was an absolutely
incredible experience and now
um after
i was spent a long time running um
international marcoms for international
media companies and then after i got
married and had kids i've sort of
pivoted a bit and have been doing a lot
of work with um
lawyers around the dieselgate and
emissions um tampering
so
quite a change as well
thank you ramsay tandy over to you
please
thank you julia uh so um yeah my name is
tandy i'm originally from south africa
currently living in the uk
um
i started with syed business school
oxford um ember in january 2020
uh at the time i was pregnant with twins
i had a two-year-old daughter and we
were i was going to just take sabbatical
and focus on my studies for a bit of
course the pandemic happened and a whole
lot of things changed we moved to greece
at some point in the middle
um and then i um
i deferred my ember and now i'm back on
with the
january 21 group and so hopefully i'll
be done at the end of this year so it's
been almost a three year in total of
their three year journey in that time
i've lived in three different countries
we now have three kids we had two new
kids in their time and two different
jobs in two different industries so um i
could talk about change and pre-pandemic
during uh you know completely online
studies and now this hybrid world that
we're living in
well i definitely hear that there's been
a lot of multitasking and i wouldn't be
surprised that questions will be coming
through so any insights will be very
welcome
so uh
jane i'm assuming jade will join us i'm
assuming later on so i'll introduce her
i'll ask her to use herself but let's
now jump into
a poll and
i will launch the poll and if the
question is what reservations do you
currently have about undertaking an
ember
what that will help us is
for you as as you're all
voting it'd be really interesting for me
to see
which questions are up
to so the first level and i will then
moderate the conversation around these
questions
we are seeing
so it's a lot of movements actually
don't know do do you guys see the pole
or am i the only one yeah fantastic
fantastic so we can see right
ah
so i see the first question really comes
the funding question
then the emba impact is it worth it and
then juggling family korean
responsibilities should we start with
that so i'll be really keen to hear from
each panelists how you tackled the
funding and any tips you had for example
if you're employer funded or if you
had a loan or how did you go about
navigating that's quite tricky path
so
i'll start i'm looking at my screen i'll
start to the left ramsey you're the
first one on my screen how did i
navigate sorry funding yes
um
so i actually
was fortunate my employer i i made the
case
because we were going through such chaos
at time warner or aol time warner for
any of you familiar with it um
i was contemplating going back full time
so i was really weighing up do i want to
go full time or do i want to do the exec
program and then my boss at the time
uh
when i spoke to him about it he said
well if you decided to stay i might be
able to get the company to sponsor you
and so i said absolutely and then i made
the case to do the global program what
the the relationship that i worked out
with my company was they didn't they
were sort of okay with the time off as
long as i made up the work
i covered all of the flights and then
they were willing to pay sort of the
academic portion only so
thankfully for the emba global program
that actually includes residential for
part of it but um
that was that was a a massive a massive
factor for me because i think if i
hadn't had that sponsorship
i might have more seriously considered
just going back full-time so i could
concentrate on that and sort of proceed
with those loans and just handle it very
differently but um
yeah so it was a combination of my
employer covering a majority of it and
then me paying for flights and room and
board and that sort of thing
and did you need to put a business case
did you
oh absolutely yeah i
so in in theory it was all great but i
was actually the first person at the
company
at a corporate level certainly to say
it's worth paying for me to do this
academically and interestingly after i
made the business case successfully
my boss and my i had a new boss by the
end of it but uh he did it and like
three other people from my department
managed to to
get it done as well so um
clearly they saw the value and any tips
again again i think any practical tips
that how you put it forward or anything
that you felt that helped your case
yeah i think i think partially because
the com it was a big company anyway
um so it helps that they do have a
little more um
uh liquidity when it comes to doing that
kind of thing but um
but fundamentally i looked at it as days
out of the office and what the impact on
the business would be versus return and
the
ability to
at the time i knew the company very well
so they didn't really want me to leave
because i had all of those contacts and
relationships and
um we were in the group that was
supposed to foster communications across
all of time warner so it was it was a
pretty niche role that we all that that
my team had
and um
but i literally counted every day i
would be out of the office and said
you know ultimately the impact on the
business is like 20 days or something
and uh over a year
as i minimalize it
and
and yeah they they
said okay
thank you so maybe if i hand over to
brooke and then i will welcome jade
and but brooke if you can tell us a
little bit more about how you managed to
fund your experience
sure so my experience was a bit
different um my employer didn't know i
was doing the program i would have lost
my my job
um so by continuing to work it was
easier to you know pay for the travel
and everything um
as an american i was able to get student
loans from the federal government
for tuition
i also
negotiated
a bit of a discount with the program and
i have since found out that i could have
also negotiated to pay over time
um i'm probably not supposed to share
these things but if you talk to the
admissions office there's often
a bit more flexibility um
and then the other thing is that coming
from the u.s the programs in the uk
were so affordable um by comparison even
with the travel it's half the cost of
attending a program here
so it was i mean that was a no-brainer
the business case made itself
sandy if you can tell us about how you
fund our funding your program now
uh sure so mine was probably similar to
ramsey um i made a business case um
and got my
former employer to cover a lot of a
significant portion of the cost and it
was
really pricey considering that i was
earning south african grants so when we
converted that to pounds it was quite
scary so when my employer first saw it
they were just like this is insane why
can't you do a local mba or or do a
one-year normal mba like everyone else
the executive mba is comes with a much
higher price tag but then i guess part
of the business case was to convince
them that this is look this is the
profile of the people in mba and yes it
would have been a marvelous if i was 27
but i'm long past that
um and now i need to you know get
exposure to people who have significant
experience in leadership but that could
potentially help our business in the
future um
and but my tip i guess besides having a
compelling business case is to get
sponsorship like get your line manager
on board and also to other decision
makers in the process because usually
it's not just one person that's going to
make that call
in my case it was a bit of a panel
discussion and so if you get the right
like decision makers on board convince
them um it just makes it a lot smoother
and jade welcome
if you can just say a couple of words
about yourself what program you what
school program you did when you did it
and from a career perspective what
you're doing now and all a couple of
highlights of your experience on the
emba program
absolutely and apologies for being late
um for somebody who uses zoom every day
i managed to have an almighty nightmare
whether it's with my apologies i'm very
glad to be here and so my name is jade
fallon
i've literally just graduated i finished
my program in december 2021
and got my results in february so it's
so fresh for me
um i went to imperial college business
school and did an executive mba program
there um so it's about an 18-month
program
um i work in the financial sector um
spent many years um at credit suisse and
i now work at jp morgan where i'm
currently a program manager um
the highlights for the ember personally
um
i went into the mbird purely from a
personal growth perspective
um but got so much more out of that than
expected um i unfortunately lost my job
um at the beginning of the crisis so as
the world closed down and the job market
closed down i ended up being made
redundant and i can honestly say without
having the ember in my life at that
stage i can't see that i would have
possibly got back into the job market as
quickly as i did so very personal and
very true example of what a difference
an mba can make
and maybe a little bit expand on the
funding and how how have you funded any
insight or any tips that you can share
yeah i self-funded um i had savings
which were meant for something else and
it was something i i decided to divert
resources to that instead and my company
at the time did not sponsor mbas they
did give um 10 days annual leave um for
studying so that influenced my choice in
which school to go to
and i think that's a big factor that was
the biggest factor for me really um i
wanted something which would help me
manage my work schedule um around
studying so i chose imperial because i
could do it mainly the weekends fridays
saturdays and sundays
um but yeah my savings all went on my
all of my amber i did however i was very
fortunate um
i was awarded a partial scholarship so
that was a massive contributing factor
as well um it was a women's program they
also provided um
sponsorship and mentoring also which was
um yeah absolutely fantastic
thank you so just to summarize what i'm
hearing there's one business cases
definitely it seems like you were
putting your case forward and ramsey was
saying really counting the days so
there's something that making uh the
case that it's a benefit to the
organization
line manager sponsorship has come across
quite strongly uh having that sponsor
within the organization
loans as a as a opportunity self-funding
but also i think it's already a couple
of mentioned scholarships and definitely
i know all four schools definitely has a
dedicates lots of money to help
especially female candidates so that's
something to explore
i have do you have a question from rahul
who's an entrepreneur in marketing
communications space and is wondering
if there are many self-employed and
self-funded students on your ember
courses and are they a minority compared
to company-sponsored senior executives
they may be quickly um
if if who might want to comment on that
what you've seen on your program uh the
balance between self-funded and company
sponsored and any insights
you can share on that
uh any anybody wants to yep ramsay
please
so certainly i mean so i was a
bit ago right but um and i know when we
did it i would have said it might have
been about 50 50. it was probably like
um you maybe had 20 or 100 company
sponsored maybe 20 were 100 self-funded
and then you had a huge group in the
middle um but i also know so i graduated
in 2005
in 2009 i would imagine that was not the
balance at all and um i don't know i
would actually be curious from the other
panelists i would imagine it's still
a lot of people who are
because because emba's are
if you are self-employed they do allow
you that flexibility to to maintain a
job and
if you are a really passionate
entrepreneur
i mean we had loads of them in our in
our year and they were
i mean
they they continue to be like uh
incredibly talented and and one of the
really nice things is
with the um
exec mba you can still work on whatever
projects you want to work on so
you can direct those toward whatever
your passion is
brooke i see you've been muted
yeah so
uh
you know cambridge 2016 to 2018 and
about a third of our cohort started out
as entrepreneurs about a fifth of our
cohort ended as entrepreneurs
um and i would say 50 to 70 percent were
self-funded
jade danny anything to add
yeah i mean on my side currently our
cohort majority are self-funded actually
um very very few have company
sponsorship um
so that was quite interesting for me i
don't know um
uh but there's probably 30 that have
some kind of scholarship
you know that's that's assisting them
um also quite a mix what i find quite
interesting is quite a few companies
have really started so in the past um
two months i know of five people who've
resigned from their corporate jobs
to run a business so that's that's been
quite exciting to see
jade and your experience of your class
yeah from my cohort i would say that um
around 60 were self-funded actually um
but that
that includes some people who had um
scholarships as well so the 40 or more
where the company pays 100 for their
studies so of the remaining 60 i would
say there were a number of us who had um
[Music]
some level of sponsorship also so um
that's applying through imperial college
business school
so it's a really very diverse mix from
every everybody i'm hearing self-funded
backgrounds and i guess for me that
makes a
program very interesting very unique
it's diverse
sponsors diverse organizations diverse
backgrounds
continents and countries and that's
again um if i were to say and
the next question the next big question
well was it really worth it so i would
like to open this up
ladies was it worth it
um who wants to go first
jade
was it worth it
was the number worth it
100
um i mean i for anybody considering it i
would say do it um
before i started my ember journey i
visited lots of schools and spoke to
lots of people on their open days and
every single person i spoke to said
it is the hardest thing you'll do in
your life it's the hardest thing you'll
do in your life and even with that i
started my amber and the first few weeks
i remember thinking it's not that hard
i'm you know it's it's you know when
people tell you it's going to be really
bad the reality ends up not being quite
as bad it almost felt like that and then
it got bad
and then i realized oh okay this is what
they meant
so even past all of that you come out
the other end and
the
it's not just you know
managing to juggle so many different
things all together and coming out of a
different person
you cannot understand like all the
different levels of learning you get
from a number the different subjects you
cover the detail you go to the network
you build the support you get from each
other that ability to collaborate with
so many different people
i've come out of it so much more
confident um in myself and in my ability
i think i probably had a little bit of
self doubt there before
and and that's why i went into the ember
i think you really have to think about
what it is you want to get out of it and
for me it was to be an accomplished
professional and i really feel like i've
achieved that
i think we also talked about it before
ramsey baroque and handy we were talking
about was it worth it and there were
a couple of you mentioned what was the
surprise is the network so maybe if
one of you can expand on that
was it worth it what you gained
hopefully besides an education i'd also
would like to hear about the education
what you learn from an academic point of
view or practical point of view but if
one of you can comment on
what you gained
as being part of the executive mba okay
uh i'll take that so i found the
experience to be
the best thing i've ever done for myself
um and completely transformative um
anyone can learn corporate finance
online
you know for free
um
that's not that's not really what what
you're buying what you're buying is this
transformative experience with a cohort
of brilliant different people
who are you're each going through
different um challenges in life but
you're doing it together and it creates
this incredibly powerful network of like
of impactful meaningful connections so i
can reach out to somebody years later
and
you know get a recommendation get any
advice that i need um negotiating a
salary anything uh from someone in
an industry that i don't really have any
contacts in because
like
you're just i i don't know it's hard to
explain but you just have such a deep
connection
uh to these people um and then building
on that the women you meet none of them
work at your company
um
you you can share anything you want in a
completely safe way and get
really good well-intentioned advice um
from women who have been there and seen
everything in a totally um different
industry but it's you know the same
story um that was really powerful
um
one guy in my cohort found the
experience so transformative that he's
arranged to fund
20 executives at his company over the
next 10 years at our business school
because
he he believes so much in the value of
that transformative experience beyond
what you could get from khan academy or
youtube videos
i guess a question
for you when you were going into them
but what were your expectations yeah
when we compare was it worth it you sort
of you have a list of possibly
expectations where they met where were
they exceeded or maybe not met
so i just wanted a new label i just
wanted to be able to tell people i was
something other than a lawyer so i could
get a non-legal job
and i thought it would be really great
to have a weekend a month um where i
wasn't changing diapers
and
that i mean and i had a chance to study
at hogwarts so of course i took it and
um what i didn't expect was the power of
that network um i have a whatsapp group
with my cohort where we have something
like 400 000 messages
um it's
it's just we're very very close there's
not a day that goes by that we're not
messaging
um
it's a family and we go back most years
um for electives and a sort of standing
uh family ring you lift him up
and ramsay you have a little bit more of
a distance now since you graduated
what was it worth it and maybe over the
years now that you know it's
more than how many 10 15 years that
you've graduated
was it worth it what was worth it
yeah i mean i i think it was absolutely
absolutely worth it i think the irony is
from a corporate sponsorship standpoint
almost everyone i know works somewhere
else right and by the end of the degree
program was working somewhere else so it
was like
i'm not so sure if i were a corporate
entity i see
unless you unless you're 100 just about
supporting your people i don't know if i
think it actually pays off from a
business perspective but from an
individual perspective
totally invaluable i think as brook said
there's there's
some aspects it's just regarding your
confidence and and learning all the
terminology and what you need to know
and
uh for me personally because i was
working in a media company
most people don't have an mba there so
um i think there's a there's a really
rocky transition back to real life when
it ends because you've been so
exposed to all these opportunities and
ideas and ways of thinking and people
doing such different and interesting
things and it's like oh wait now i'm
still in my little job that i was kind
of annoyed by before i started the
program and so now i really need to
think about what i'm going to do
um but what's amazing is and i saw
somebody asked a question about doing it
when you're a bit older so i said i
started when i was 28. i was incredibly
young and i do you know totally being
candid i think it was because
i was a woman i worked in media and they
needed more people who fit my you know
my profile was like a perfect one and i
did well on my gmat but
the
vast majority of people in our class
that we've got people who've retired now
i mean we've we had a um
a huge range of people experiences we
had several lawyers we had um some
doctors
and
that's part of what's so amazing about
an emba
that you don't get with a full-time
program is everybody's get everybody has
experience everybody has something to
add and i was actually laughing because
i was at an event on campus a few weeks
ago and i was laughing with one of the
professors who only teaches emba's
because she was saying it's her favorite
people to teach because they all have
that real world experience they all have
real value to add and and it's
interesting for the professors as well
like it's just it becomes a really great
relationship across the board i think
and did you
if you have examples how people did
pivot careers i know brooke you were
saying you've pivoted careers i'm just
looking at a couple of questions it
seems like
it's that change i mean it's careers
it's it's a sector function
geography if uh some of you can reflect
on either your experience or maybe your
classmates experience how hard was it
easy what did people need to do to make
those changes
any takers um sorry julia just before we
go into that one i've been thinking a
lot about the is it worth the question
so if i could just do my one little go
for it with it
um
mine is i guess there were three things
i wanted to get out of this program um
and i got way more so the first thing
was the learning and
i know i could go and pick up textbooks
of my own and educate myself but i
probably wasn't motivated enough to
learn or going on my own about corporate
finance for example
um
and so the format of learning um where
you're just experiencing the case it's
almost like case studies come to life
because there's always somebody in the
room who worked at that institution that
you're reading about who has inside
information or the i mean the level of
the professors is just incredible where
they're not just academics but they've
also got like exceptional experience in
industries so the learning the
experiential learning for me has been
incredible the second part was
self-reflection i thought i just need
some space to be like oh okay what else
is out there what could i do and i
thought maybe it would be one of two or
three like very narrow things and i was
shocked at how
dreams that i had buried were surfaced
and that was a bit overwhelming i was
just like well didn't expect that
um but it's been incredible and not not
just from the quality of the people
around you that evoke that or like you
know in you but also from the quality of
the coaching that's available to you on
on these programs um and then the third
one
was i wanted to advance my career and i
thought okay once i get that stamp
of approval on you know at the end of
this program my cv fee will be more
attractive i'll probably get a promotion
you know things will look great i was
shocked that
within the first
or but yeah by the end of my first year
i was really getting a lot of offers and
that's how i ended up changing jobs so i
was sitting tight just trying to
mind my own business keep my head down
raise my little babies
and then suddenly there was just these
offers and one by the time i took this
opportunity now i'm currently a business
performance director at visa um by the
time i i took up that offer there were
already you know two other offers on the
table that were also really attractive
and the only thing that's changed is
that i have this you know ember
candidate
on my profile but for you knows nothing
was different about my profile i didn't
do anything different so it must be this
that's elevated
me in the eyes of you know
employees and recruiters
so it's worth it
jade
you mentioned that already but maybe if
you can again expand a little bit and
and again it's the question
it seems to tie in with the questions
around is it worth it and it's tied with
the pivoting so if you are either you've
done or your classmates have have done
it was that worth it
yeah i mean in terms of pivoting i feel
like um
the mba is really important but you can
still never rest in your laurels i think
like i mentioned before the mba gives
you a lot of confidence to go and ask
where you may not have felt confident to
ask before so it's not a magic one just
because you have an mba doesn't mean
people will just hand you an opportunity
but they're more willing to take the
risk um an example of that is you know
after a year of being in my role at
jpmorgan um i wanted to make the move
into program management
and so i asked for it and
literally
it was not a problem and like i just
can't see how that ever would have
happened before before now having had no
experience in that space in the data and
digital space at all
and it just wouldn't have happened and
it's my confidence of being at an
institution like imperial where they
live breathe you know speak data
technology all the time i'm just so much
more confident in speaking fluently
about things which you know aren't my
bread and button actually
i'm just looking at time if we can shift
to the third bucket and then i'm also
looking at the questions i think we
might come back to to some of
the the pivoting and the uh the worth it
but if we can
cover a little bit the juggling there's
there are and there are also questions
coming in around the
challenge also the advantage of the
amber is that you you're working and
studying
so you can
as you're studying you apply your
knowledge immediately but also you do
have that challenge of work
responsibilities family responsibilities
so
if you and all of you experience that
either the commute family
uh employer who didn't know
that brooke was doing remember can you
talk a little bit more about detail
how you juggled all of this what were
the hours on the embers oh
how much did you need to study during
the week any tips around
when was a better time to study group
work there was a question here around
social events after the classes how did
you fit that in also with the family so
i've opened it up um
who wants to go first
um i'll go so i
i've learned a multi-task i was
practicing law in houston
uh full-time my kids were one in three
and so that's what made um studying in
the uk more attractive for me
it was easier than studying locally
because i could compartmentalize my time
i knew when i went for a weekend
in the uk that was my time and
the flights were amazing no one asked me
for a snack they brought snacks to me
um then when i got there
i could just totally immerse myself in
this world and
after class you know when we all go out
for dinner drinks everything together
um i don't have to go home i don't have
to be the one who like leaves early to
go to
you know
real life responsibilities it was like a
retreat every weekend uh that i was
there and so that also helps you know
sort of build those networks um and a
lot of the learning that comes from
those conversations after class where
you're talking to the guy who's super
high up you know at the global bank
about a
you know concept from corporate finance
for example right um and so a lot of the
learning comes from those sort of
gray spaces before and after class
and for me because my kids were so
little
it was easier to go back to school than
if they were older because when i was
home
i could fit their schedule around mine
they weren't in school so i could see
them you know whenever it worked around
my schedule if they were school age it
would be harder i mean when your kids
are babies is the easiest time to do
this
for sure
others ramsay i think there's a um so
certainly the flight was a benefit so
the way my program worked we had
um one month one week a month we were in
london and one week a month we were in
new york and when i had that play time
it was like okay wait now i can catch up
on reading now i can finish those last
bits of homework do whatever else um
that i really needed to get done
but um so there was a benefit for that
which obviously won't apply for
everybody i think
the um i did have one our um
uh
statistics professor was really
insightful about this and he used to say
you know
after this this week
go home hug your family spend some time
with them like you haven't seen them at
all it's important that you recharge
that not just think about school all the
time think about work all the time like
you definitely need to have that balance
but i think
as brooke said that the sort of ability
to compartmentalize it and if you are
married have a partner who's really
supportive of that because if they're
not supportive it's just going to be
10 times harder like you need them to be
willing to carry the load to accept
you're going to be working you're going
to be in school right now and school
time isn't the same like as
play time and and it doesn't mean that
you're getting even downtime necessarily
right like i still need down time to
relax time
because i do have all of this happening
i think the the other thing is and one
of the things that's nice
and i would imagine this is true for an
mba as well but with an emba
you do because everybody's corporate
they are understanding like these are
reasonable professors for the most part
as well and they know that you're an
executive so if you've got a big work
project due you can talk to the
professors if we need to shift something
or you know if you do have work
sponsorship you can talk to work about
when you've got a big project due like
it's there's juggling but i think the
more you're communicating that and just
proactively managing it
it's it makes your own life easier it's
a ton of work i mean it's a ton of work
and when it ends you're like what do i
even do with all this free time i don't
even know what to do but um but it is
amazing to see how efficient you can be
as long as you do rely on the support
structures that you have ask for the
help when you need it and and and i
think have the confidence to ask for the
support we had one person in our class
who would take all of the homework
sheets and put them together and outline
all of the homework for the next month
so that everybody had it and nobody had
to go through the books themselves and
like put all the assignments together
and she did it the entire time and i
remember how many people used it because
at one point she left one piece off and
the teacher was like none of you did
this part of the homework it's like oh
it wasn't on lauren's sheets so we all
skipped it
everybody relied on that and those sorts
of like working collaboratively and
supporting each other just
they not only made it fun but
but it is totally different when you're
all adults like it's just not the same
as um
when you're in like university or um
i find in an mba program most people
seem to revert like some sort of high
school mentality that i don't totally
understand and i did not experience that
nearly to the same extent doing an exec
program
jade
tandy
yeah i mean i compliment definitely
ramses and brooke's comments so i mean i
didn't have to travel quite so far
um however i still would book overnight
stays sometimes when i was on campus for
a block because i just found mentally it
was good to zone out and similar thing
i've got young children as well mine are
a little bit older
and but it was just good to have that
break where you just completely focus
and my course um definitely i had about
10 to 15 hours a week of home study i
saw somebody had asked that question
um which sounds horrendous and when you
say it like that but
i used to study on the way to and from
work so that's an hour commute each way
so there's like your two hours pretty
much done and then i would do a big
block on a saturday which meant that on
a sunday i had family time this is our
time i'm present i'm here i might have
to do a little bit of the evening i
might have to recall but for the most
part and that's how i managed to get a
bit of balance um and i recommend when
you do go away for a weekend come back
with treats because it makes that
weekend so much happier for everyone
sandy you're doing it now you actually
you did say that you actually are on
campus so tell us how you juggle
everything actually as i'm listening um
to the comments that have been made and
i think while these are such brilliant
tips and i've used pieces of them
actually all of them um along the way
uh and i do love the fact if you have
the opportunity to really book our time
it really does help you even just even
if you don't have kids just to get away
from work in your familiar you know
familiar environment
to really just absorb the um context and
those gray areas that brooke spoke about
because that's where a lot of the magic
lies
but where i'm at right now
so i'll give you a quick i know we don't
have that much time but just a quick
insight into that the reality of my life
so
um work is really crazy right now so
we've got a big deadline we're working
towards i'm on campus as we speak up our
classes so i'm in and out of classes at
the moment
um and we're preparing for another move
because that's what we do we just seem
to move every every year or so um my
family and i
um so there's a lot going on and i think
i have i'll speak to my mom about this
this morning i have like this
spreadsheet example of how i should be
like if i got up at 5 30 and i did this
before six and i packed the lunches
before and i did everything perfectly it
would work like like clockwork it'd be
wonderful but i'm just not like that and
i'm tired right now and
um i just don't feel like doing certain
things at certain times and that's okay
and so
the tactic i'm using is to say all right
i'm just i'm not balancing and i'm not
multitasking
i'm swaying so i think i saw an article
about this uh last year work life's way
um
not not balance
and so i sway in lot in terms of what is
needed in this moment so right now i'm
fully present on this in this um you
know this discussion and i'm loving it
i'm lapping it up and i'm reflecting in
this context when i'm after this i'm
going to fully be in class and it's
going to be great and then in my tea
break i'm going to be fully on a quirk
call because i need to sort something
out so i'm kind of just in the morning
spending a few like 10 minutes planning
out what is critical for that day so
those things i just cannot just not do
that's absolutely critical and then in
an in and out i just sway in and out as
as and when is needed if my daughter
needs me i will call and we'll have a
video call or if i need to get on a
train and hit back because we don't live
too far from from oxford that's what
i'll do and that's okay so i'm just
practicing just being kind to myself and
prioritizing and saying well what is my
why for doing this and if your why is
about you know really networking then
don't stress so much about getting that
you know distinction go and spend more
time
having dinners and coffee catch-ups and
really engaging if that's your number
one just don't beat yourself up about
not being super woman or superman at
every single aspect of your life and so
i think i'm trying i'm finding that very
liberating and calming at the moment
just
sway do what you need to do keep the key
priorities top of mind and everything
will actually just work hard
and i as as we now start pivoting to
questions i actually wanted to pull one
question that is from claire around what
advice would you give on finding the
appropriate work education life balance
to avoid burnout i mean it's not just
only juggling but actually it is
which we're hearing more and more
that there's there's this sense of
burnout out there
anything that you can share
you've already talked about the juggling
a
very good diary management i'm hearing
that
uh
special time for study special time for
a family anything else that you can add
to that that um
helps avoid this sense of this is too
much
i think ramsay oh sorry sorry
and i was gonna say i think ramsay
touched a little bit and she said that
down time so
you know you're running between all
these different priorities but i think
it's making sure you schedule that time
and and allow yourself that time just to
say well i'm actually just going to
sleep i'm not going to be productive
between these times or i'm going for a
massage or
i think that's really important that you
just listen to what your body or your
mind or your soul needs and for that day
even if it's just a two-minute little
break um but just making sure you
ask yourself that question daily um and
then do what you can to fill that need
ramsey i think it looks like
yeah no i think to that point i remember
being in um
las vegas and uh during the program not
related to the program but for work and
i remember i got a massage and the woman
was like okay you know these are they
can do relaxing i can do energizing and
i was like well i'm really stressed out
i think i need energizing so i can like
you know keep going she's like that's
not really how it works like you gotta
you gotta let yourself calm down
sometimes you have to let yourself
recover
and i think that's a
you know burnout i had i heard a great
analogy where someone was talking about
like you know you get tired and that's
like kind of having a sprain and you're
not optimized when you're burned out
it's really a break and you really have
to let it heal and you really have to
take the time and you need to avoid you
want to avoid having that happen
but the answer is not to like
jump from one
uh rabbit or ferrous whatever wheel to
in the next one right hamster wheels the
next one like the answer is you stop you
relax you force yourself to just have a
day and i actually i love what you're
saying tandy just about i mean it sounds
like an exercise in mindfulness you know
it's like i'm just going to be present
and this is what i'm going to do and i'm
going to have to worry about that
tomorrow because if i worry about all of
it i'm just going to fall apart
and also we touched just before the the
call we talked a little bit more about
your networks and it sounded like it was
interesting you you're referring to the
networks class networks classmates
female and other classmates not only for
my educational point of view but it
really sounded this th these people
these groups have become have become
your support networks again coming back
to that balance and to the juggling and
people who are going through the same
experience as you are
work life
everything children parents
friends
and you you're constantly juggling and
that came across at least in our call
before that you were saying the network
was almost um lifeline for some of you
yeah i can speak to that i was going
through a divorce during my umba
and
um
you know it's really hard especially
when you've got little kids and i
mentioned
um
you know it's my cohort hey i'm going
through this so
you know i'm i may not be the great the
best uh teammate on group projects this
summer but you know um i'm giving it my
all and so many people came out of the
woodwork i've been through the same
thing or i'm going through this now we
ended up having a separate whatsapp chat
just for that um
other people um
you know had their unemployed chat it
was
whatever problem you had or whatever
life transition you were going through
you had a built-in support network of
people you could absolutely trust
who don't know
you know the rest of your family they
don't know your job they don't know any
of those things so um
there's just no judgement and it was
incredible to every month get away and
have like you know that that love and
support um surrounding me it was really
powerful
i'm looking at question and i think this
it says to all panels and it has a
couple of upvotes so i'll read it out to
all the panelists to all panelists did
you achieve a quantum leap in terms of
both pers personally professionally and
financially
quantum leap
did it make a difference to you
um i can answer um
so in terms of uh quantum leap i would
say
not a quantum leap no but has it
positively contributed i would say yes
um and that's why i said at the
beginning that you have to be very clear
about why you want to go into an ember
for some people it's the most critical
steps for them to achieve the next stage
of their career and in fact some people
can't move up without it that's just a
fact and for other people actually the
business confidence the knowledge etc is
what you need on a personal level to
give you that confidence to really push
and achieve that next level
the difference between an ember and a
normal mba program is that support you
get on the leadership skills so they
devote learning time to developing you
as a leader
and that's what makes a difference in
your professional development
yeah if i can be if i can be mildly
pedantic too you know the irony of a
quantum leap of quantum is actually the
smallest distance distance an electron
can move and have an impact so it's like
a teeny little bit but it has an impact
and i think the irony being and when it
comes to a quantum leap sometimes you
just don't see it right away right so
from my perspective like i think you
guys are you're not even out far enough
to really know and look back at just
what an impact it might have had
um
from my standpoint certainly i've gotten
jobs because companies are happy to know
i have an mba and um it reassures them
when i don't have a track record with
them uh especially as a now because i'm
doing more contract work
but i think
one thing that i wanted to add and i
know there's been a lot of talk about
the network and cohorts but actually
one of the things that has surprised me
and really delivered for me personally
has been the larger alumni network so
it's not just the people in my cohort
like and i can't speak for the other
schools but from an lbs standpoint
we've
i i can post things to the entire alumni
body and get help or support or answer
questions there and that it like
exponentially increases the amount of
guidance support and and uh connections
that you can make and when you want to
get that promotion it's like oh wait
actually somebody who went to my school
works there and i can find that person
and
and they'll talk to me because we went
to the same school like it's
um it's really invaluable that way but i
think it's like all things it's going to
be how you use it and uh it's not going
to do the work for you
and i have a couple of i've been pulling
out some questions i'm not sure if i've
done justice to all the questions but
i've been pulling them in as we were
talking about so we've talked about
uh the funding
is it worth it
the juggling
what you actually did get out of the
program i guess my question as we have a
couple of more minutes to all of you
now with hindsight what advice would you
give yourself
pre the amber as you were considering
the executive mba you we have people on
the call now so imagine that you were
one of them what one or two key pieces
of advice would you give
so
me personally i i really felt that um
like i kind of narrowed down the schools
i was looking at like i mentioned just
because of my work schedule i needed
something which worked for me and for my
family
um but
once you've done that go and visit the
schools
most schools do
a half day or an evening where you can
go along meet people meet students past
and present and sit in a sample lecture
it's really weird because you get such a
gut feeling when you do that about
where you actually want to spend time
learning and the kind of people you'll
be studying with and so that for me i
think is the best thing um really talk
to people understand
you know how many hours are
needed that kind of thing so you've got
a really realistic idea of expectations
going into the program as well
i'd say to add to that is because i
really really wanted to come and visit
um oxford i'd been on the campus before
and i loved it it was so magical but
that was probably four or five years
before and i never thought i would ever
find myself here um
but i couldn't come and visit the
business school because it was just too
far and too expensive flying from cape
town
but what helped me was chatting with the
program
or the recruitment team and asking them
to put me in touch with uh either
current students or past students who
are in the same context and that was
incredible because those conversations
just get helped me think practically
like what is the flight i think that's
one question about how do you manage on
the weekends and i want to know like
where do you stay like how expensive is
it really i mean i'm seeing this these
amounts and pounds does it really is it
really that bad like how do you manage
how do you work it out with your you
know the work context here and that
really um just gave me the clarity i
needed i think and the motivation
because i saw how well i spoke to two
different people how well they were
doing and how much they were soaking up
from the program
um and then i guess the piece of advice
because i when people ask me about doing
it during the ember especially they've
got really small kids or they're
thinking about getting pregnant
i always well i i tend to wish they
could have a situation where they could
just take some time off work especially
if they want to pivot and just really
focus on the program because then you
can immerse yourself fully you can be
present and also be present with your
family and not have you know an intense
work situation all at once because it
can get a bit overwhelming it's doable
obviously
um but but if you had the choice to not
you know have that which is what which
was my initial plan but then in
hindsight would i not have done it given
i mean the pandemic threw all my plans
out
you know
but um
i think back and i think well i would
still do it and so if you're not in a
position to just take a sabbatical and
just do this
executive mba full time or just pause an
aspect of your life i think my big
message to myself in hindsight would be
just roll roll with it know why you're
doing it be flexible
don't fret about you know changes that
you cannot control um brooke had
mentioned something in our chat before
we started around like life's gonna
happen anyway like
so just do it like add the things that
are going to
bring joy or stretch your or just give
you more and i think the fact that
you're on this call right now means that
you just want more in terms of your
thinking or your career or your life
and i think this is a great way to get
it so just do it don't stress too much
about the intricacies and how the road
may change be open that's that's my
advice
brooke ramsey a couple of words and then
we have a poll to do and then i will
finish wrap it up
brooke anything anything to add
i wish i had known how powerful um just
being able to say that you're an emba
student is for uh making that pivot
i didn't realize until a bit later in
the program that i could cold message
anybody on linkedin and they would
respond because i i was a cambridge
student and i could ask them
pretty much anything um when i was
looking to pivot i was you know looking
into different areas i could get
informational interviews lunches
anything with nearly anyone um we used
our group um our team consulting project
to work from possible foods they never
would have talked to me as a lawyer
about working on a strategy project
um
but as an embassy student of course yeah
we'll fly you out here um you just
you wouldn't believe how many people
will give you the time of day as a
student and you can say that you're
researching anything
oh i'm researching this as a student it
doesn't matter that you are in corporate
finance and this is a strategy issue you
i mean you are student and so they will
talk to you and they will help you and
they will connect you with other people
other resources doors open everyone
wants to help a student
ramsey
um and i'm sorry they seem to be doing
drilling right behind me that i have no
control over so if there's background
noise i apologize but the um
i think the main thing for me because my
company paid
i felt a tremendous sort of
responsibility that my project should be
related to my company which i'm not even
sure they appreciated
um i know they didn't fully appreciate
but i think i would have taken much more
liberty in doing things that i thought
were really interesting that had nothing
to do with media or
um anything that might get back to my
company and much more pursue things that
i just found personal passion points
so that's not something that would apply
to everybody anyway
thank you so we now have a poll
following this event are you now please
answer the questions more likely less
likely to apply or the same it's just to
get a sense and also as those who are
responding also you can just put in a ch
in the chat
one one or two words how you feel
how are you feeling it now and
uh
about embarking on the executive mba
you'll still have questions
um appreciate the insights and then that
will help us wrap things up and i'm i'm
aware we haven't responded maybe to a
number of specific questions but all
schools will get back
and
ah we're seeing that uh more likely to
apply to an executive mba so ladies
thank you i think you've from my
perspective you've given very insightful
and very honest
answers
the good bits and also the challenging
bits but as a couple of you said go for
it
and the rewards you reap from this
education is way beyond what you expect
but uh just to balance it is not an easy
journey but i guess i don't think
anybody who's on this call
is expecting an easy journey i think
tandy you said that if you're already
thinking about it it means you want more
you want to push yourself
so thank you thank you everybody ramsay
tandy brooke jade thank you very much
thank you
thank
you everybody

---

### Executive MBA: Spotlight on Entrepreneurship
URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=upmJhIlu4_4

Idioma: en

all right uh good morning good afternoon
or good evening everyone depending on
where you're uh you're joining us from
and um thank you very much for joining
us today for this uh london business
school webinar um today's uh topic is uh
uh the focus on entrepreneurship um for
our executive mba students a quick word
of introduction my name is brett hunter
i'm the director of recruitment
admissions for leadership programs here
at london business school uh so that
includes the uh the amber london program
the uh the amber dubai program uh the
ember global program which is a
partnership with columbia business
schools in new york and also the lbs
loan msc uh as well which is a full-time
program for senior executives
um so today i'm joined by three of our
uh best alumni um sweat kumar um
sharazad jamali and oyen solebo
um and together we'll be discussing what
uh the ember program did for them um
their
experience on the program a little bit
about uh
where they've been uh since and what
they're uh what they're doing
um i like to make these uh sessions
relatively interactive so um please do
feel free to
you know ask any questions uh using the
chat function or actually the q a
function i believe
um and we'll endeavor to answer some of
those questions as we go uh but
otherwise i'll be asking some of the
questions that i think are um you know
most interesting uh for this particular
topic
um we should be around for uh for about
you know 55 minutes to uh to an hour um
so uh so hopefully uh you'll like you'll
enjoy the uh the session as we go
through it
now um obviously i've introduced myself
um but now i'd like to uh to give our
panel an opportunity to introduce
themselves so boy if you want to to
start
brett
hi everyone my name is oine chanevo i am
uh ember
2017 london which means that i graduated
from the london and class in 2017
um currently i am uh
i was when i went in and still am the
co-founder and ceo of a company called
move me back we are a google funded
venture we support a global community to
connect with african opportunities
thank you ian and share that
well hello everyone sorry i had to
unmute myself
um
i was recently uh working with early
stage studios which was a startup in the
fintech edtech
space as the chief operating officer
and we grew from eight people to around
50
across
asia canada north america
and right now i
am focusing on starting something on my
own
thank you very much and uh
hey good morning good afternoon uh brett
thanks for having me here
uh my name is shweta kumar i'm from
india but living in the uae for almost
two decades uh i work for predominantly
for a sovereign fund called mobile
investments uh in abu dhabi
but
last you know three years i started my
own company focusing on startup
ecosystems uh also launching our own
fund uh in imba i was part of dubai
uh 2017 badge
okay thank you very much um that's the
center let's kind of you know explore um
your experience a little bit um you know
through a bit of a back and forth with
the three of you so um just wait till if
we can start again with you
um
obviously you chose through the the
executive mba happened to buy a few
years back um what what you know what
drove that choice for you what was the i
suppose you know the view of success
what were you hoping to to get out of uh
out of the executive mba
so actually you know my
look my background i'm a commerce
graduate and also i'm chartered
accountant from india so coming from a
strong accounting and finance background
my aim was always to be a cfo of large
organization
right so all this year like i worked for
uh you know textile group i t industry
and the last 18 years with
sovereign funds which what i realized
that i mean of course i can grow in a
corporate ladder but then
uh what's the end game is that what's
something i want to achieve or is there
something i want to do something
differently so when i joined lbs it was
more of kind of seeing that how i can
upgrade myself i know and be aspired to
be a leader of the company
but
during the i think halfway uh everything
got changed i realized no this is not my
passion this is not something which i
want to really pursue my my truck is not
that i want to be a ceo or ceo for the
company i want them and i said oh this
this is something very the what mba is
offering actually you can be your own
entrepreneur you know you can change
completely the different track why to go
with this one so the
the turning point for me when what i am
doing today is i think thanks to him by
open a new door and i'm proud to say
that i'm very
proud
and successful entrepreneur
thank you
and um uh shares that what about uh what
about you what was um what was driving
your choice behind doing an executive
mba program
so i was part of the amber global a eas
of america's in europe class of 2017.
i came from a
strategic human resources
background
having worked
you know in traditional consulting with
kpmg
in financial services
in north america
and in the middle east i had already
started an hr consulting company on my
own
focused on southeast asia
so i was looking more at developing my
finance skills
because obviously you know i was strong
in strategy in hr and finance was one
space that i really
did need to develop further uh as well
as uh you know increase uh my network
uh for europe and for united states so
this was like the perfect combination uh
i could find and i came with the
intention like you know how is it that i
can grow
the
hr company
but as it happened as we progressed
through the emba
i met
these folks that had participated in the
entrepreneurship
summer program at lbs uh and they had
one uh funding from tech stars
right and they were looking to uh grow
that startup so post uh graduation i
focused on that
and it's been growing and i've learned
quite a bit
i think the the courses at london
business school as well as columbia
really did assist and we had a great
network
for uh fellow students professors to
help out
i'm actually before i move on to oyen as
well because um you know obviously you
took the amber global program which is a
partnership program um
but i'd like to kind of
explore that a little bit what was
behind the decision to do that
particular program rather than
a domestic program you know whether it's
our own domestic program or columbia
business schools domestic program
so this is interesting um i was the
header ahead of hr planning and reward
for gulf bank which is
the second largest bank in the gcc um
and i had all these nationals
the high potential
high potential staff that needed
you know further education so that
we could have proper succession planning
in place so i had been looking at london
business school for
at least five years before i applied
um and i had looked at the domestic
program but i was based
in kuwait
right so i
i didn't want to stay in london
uh full-time i wanted something
or the flexibility of being able to go
back and forth so there was an option
that i could do a saturday
program uh
a london ember i believe which is on
weekends at least they had that program
at that time
but i also wanted the north american now
why north american because uh my
undergrad is from the united states
uh and looking to explore
um
growth for my hr company i just thought
that having that combination
would be better because it will open
two
networks
for me and
i could combine the strengths of two
schools
plus it was
a week at a time
and
as a
mom of a
four-year-old
that seemed to work out much better
for myself
okay thank you
uh annoying kind of getting back to the
original question um
what about you what was uh you know
driving your choice to do an executive
mba program
yeah excuse me it's interesting that
transad said that she'd been looking at
the amber for a while um or at lbs for a
while i had also been looking at lbs for
a good few years
um my background was i started my career
in investment banking so i was at
goldman's goldman sachs for four years i
then spent a year in strategy consulting
and then after five years i found myself
in leadership positions very quickly so
i found myself managing family offices
um and then doing startup as well
and um i felt like i'd kind of missed
the boat to do the to do the full-time
uh mba degree so i was kind of waiting
for a couple of years until i almost
felt
mature enough in my experience to do the
executive mba i always felt that just
doing an mba would finish off my
education
um i then chose that time because as i
went into the startup world
i
i found i found it very challenging um
you know the startup world is one where
you become an expert at constantly
learning constantly failing constantly
you know having to explore
new avenues for information for insights
etc and i wanted to learn
i wanted to learn more i wanted to feel
more equipped to do the startup um you
know to do the startup lifestyle um i
don't know i'm sure that we've got some
you know finances and investment bankers
on the on the line but i found that
whilst that
that career had taught me a lot i didn't
feel like it had put me very well to run
a business
um so i wanted more exposure and more
insights to enable me to do that better
and then the second thing is just to
expand my network i think it's very
difficult um the older you get to really
have the opportunity to expand your
network and lbs and in the amber
afforded me a great opportunity to do
that
let's stay on that topic then the
network piece
um did you
did you look beyond your own classroom
did you look at the wider school
community in the alumnus community in
terms of network opportunities
um so i did a little bit um and i have
to be honest it was it's difficult you
know it was difficult kind of
running my own business doing and and
people have to be aware of this right
there is a time constraint so not as
much as i'd like to what i did do is i
was part of the um the african
the african society i believe it's
called
um and still african club
um which was a great network which i'm
still in touch with today and you know
if i'm ever on the african continent
meet up with with those that are based
there um and then post
graduation actually is where i found the
base value actually the alumni network
are amazing um i i think every couple of
months i'm putting something on one of
the discussion boards and someone that
i've never met before is connecting me
with someone of value that is supporting
my business so i'd say that yeah beyond
my class at the time not as much as i'd
like to but after the um
the ember um far more
sure thank you
um now correct me if i'm wrong the three
of you but i i gather that um oyen was
um already kind of down an
entrepreneurial path uh when starting
the program but for swettell and uh
sharazad you were
uh you were not you kind of had you know
that that's an idea that was developed
whilst on the program is that correct
yeah that's good
yeah
so
sorry go ahead and share this one i
already had a company set up
okay so you and oya were both um
and i had already worked on projects i
had a small team
but i had absolutely no idea how i would
grow that
um
you know beyond the network that i had
in middle east and asia
and i i think the the networking
opportunities at london business school
were fantastic because we had everything
from sundowners to you know every module
we were there
there was a networking event and then we
met the sloan program
we met the
the weekend members
also came across the regular mba
students
and then you know you have that
wonderful annual
uh
london business school uh event
that was just fabulous right
and it's so really well organized
um as well as the the ball so i think
if you really want to leverage uh the
opportunities there's a calendar
and
you can make the effort
to coordinate if you have time or kind
of you know get the contacts from there
and maybe connect on your own later
so going into the program uh shares like
were you
you because there's a couple things you
mentioned there in that statement so you
started out by talking about how you
know you
when you started you didn't necessarily
have a plan or you wanted to kind of
formulate a better plan but then also
you spoke about the network were there
you know was there a focus going into
the program were you more interested in
you know kind of learning the building
blocks the fundamentals or was it about
expanding that uh that network that you
have
well there were two things uh so one was
you know the
fundamental skills right uh required
like i mentioned finance then i
realized um
there's behavioral economics
you know and there's this entire thought
around that so i discovered
uh fabulous modules around that um
then i realized there's specialized
pricing
modules uh part of marketing right um
and as a as i went in i discovered this
so much more right i had this narrow
focus i'm like okay yes i need to move
finance and i need to know how to do
this and i must have network network
network but once i got in i'm like okay
there's a lot more
um
that is offered for like you know a
holistic uh kind of think of a 360.
degree solution
and london business school does a
great job of
you know the first year with the
fundamental uh basic courses that you
take
um so yes i think in terms of learning i
i i got to learn much more than i had
actually anticipated going in
sure
sweat tell you um you mentioned that you
were kind of you know on a different
path when you started the program but
then went in your your own
entrepreneurial direction
tell me about that yeah what was it that
changed um was there a moment that kind
of you know
altered your path or was it a gradual
situation
i see actually i always wanted to join
the best school you know because i
wanted to sort of upgrade my you know
career aspirations to be more in the
leadership
positions uh i was doing good i was
anyway in that one of the senior
management level but it's that
aspiration was completely different
but uh so to select selecting the school
was not that difficult for me because i
wanted to go you know buy the best one
uh
um i think the final one which i
acquired was only albious and insead
and i got involved but first for some
reason i decided to go with lpsa
you know i was uh you have the divine
chapter and for me it was much easier
even though
inside
uh but in terms of the course offering
in terms of the you know the
international assignment the flexibility
in electives so i was more inclined
toward lbs and i chosen that one so
when i joined that uh if it was very
clear that you know how i can upgrade
myself in my career corporate ladder
right but then over the period i decided
okay i mean
you know the the different courses are
of opening the new ideas and i know like
you know i'm very creative person and i
know like so sort of uh the how uh you
know these courses are
kind of
more prompting you to think like an
entrepreneur right so this was like oh
this is great why don't i start
something my own and i started smaller
you know like i started sort of thinking
about some ideas and i said okay let me
start my own startup so pretty much in
the midway i launched a company called
mitra they start up it's more of it you
know
collecting connecting the volunteers
with the people of determinations and
you know the
the senior citizens i launched in india
but it was a really really good
good experience at the same time it was
difficult because while you're working
you're doing entrepreneurship journey it
was not that easy but uh so i in your
post graduation i also continued that
for another one year so i gave a short
for two years in total but that that
gave me another opportunity to you know
follow my entrepreneurship journey but
then i was trying and testing few other
things here with some bobs and then i
came with the second startup idea we
with one of my friends actually i
happened to meet at one of the lbs event
in dubai she she was
from stratford business school and it
was a joint event and we found a common
interest and we say okay let's do
something something
different so we launched the second
startup and it was more of a prototype
right so we
it did not fly off after that because
she has certain different
priorities so but we launched till prior
prototype
and then in the in the meanwhile i said
okay let me
let me
do something in the restaurant industry
and we wanted to start our you know our
own restaurants and this is right before
code so what i was trying to say that
like after lvs it was the idea was like
you know i'm being innumerous like
different you know you talk to different
people in your network uh and there's a
great part of that each you know if you
reach out to lps network they'll help
you with somewhere another you know they
bring connections so that was really
helping us you know they helping in
us doing whatever we want to do
uh but anyway by
end of 2019 uh i finally take a i took a
call say hey i think it's not going to
work when you're working and doing your
entrepreneurial journey you have to
choose one over other so i decided to
leave my job full-time job and then
started my own company you know here is
the difference that i wanted to start my
own startup but eventually i realized
that uh it's you know i can do much
you know beyond uh creating startup i
thought of actually helping the entire
startup ecosystem so we started like a
you know more of a ecosystem building
platform so that's that's a
journey for last three years where i
have my own company and now uh you know
we're setting up our own fund
thank you
um going back to you so um
you you had your objectives going into
the the program you had direct
expectations and you know what you're
hoping to get out of it um when you
think back um on the program what what
was it that was most helpful um or
you know better positioned you for
success uh based on what you were
looking to achieve
yeah i think because i think translates
kind of touched upon it it was both it
was two things one is the skills it's
the breadth of skills um you know
as a as a ceo as a co-founder and
you do everything right you do finance
you do marketing um easy operations you
have to build a strong organization and
so for me modules around kind of
organizational behavior
marketing um and managerial accounting
was super helpful for me so yeah i think
just the breadth of the um of the
of the uh
sessions
was really valuable particularly in the
first year
and that really helped me and then the
second thing yeah the network i have to
i really can't
um i can't over emphasize that um
because it was super valuable at the
time there were various people that i
connected with at the time that are
still supporting my business today and
there are people that i continue to
connect with post the mba so yeah it's
really is a combination of network
skills
and you know was it as expected though
i'm like you know did you
i suppose did your course change in any
way did you um
did did it make a fundamental change to
how your business was was developing
um it's a really difficult thing to
measure i think it was there were just
so many small touch points
um that i think helped me along the way
i i think in particular the stuff on
organizational behavior did particularly
help help me it helped change my mindset
around the kind of team that i'm
building and you know making sure that
certain biases don't creep in making
sure that culture is really really
important
um so i think of all that you know i
still have my course material on my
dropbox and of all the course material
that i tap into i think it's that in
particular that i that i most often go
back to
what about you share as i is there
anything that um you know that you
learned on your program that you still
kind of
really tap back into today that's still
very useful
i think uh just like her
i have all the courses uh saved up i
still refer back
to business cases
i still maintain um
a diary of sort with you know
key milestones you know the gratitude
journal
um
professors
i think um
discussing um
business issues with professors um it
was really valuable insight from their
experience because many of them
were practitioners right so they were
not purely academic
um
and i think
that added a dimension which i was
missing
also learning the latest frameworks
i think being in the middle east um you
know i had i spent nine years there
uh moving from north america so
i was in a different mindset and i got
to learn all the latest frameworks and
the latest thinking
um
and then in strategy we had
guest speakers come in
i think
bouncing ideas off of them
you know because they're subject matter
experts i think it added depth which i
was missing
because sometimes
um you know you have a tendency to think
in a narrow way
when you've been in a particular
discipline and then you have to
widen
your perspective and i think london
business school does a fabulous job when
it comes to
setting a great strategy for a business
it just gave me
you know various aspects which i wasn't
necessarily thinking of
i'd like to touch back on the um i'll
probably keep on doing this so apologies
but touch back on the you know the amber
global element for you and you know you
obviously had two schools involved in
your journey
um
did that add value did you find there
was a different way in how content was
was delivered from london business
called columbia business school
i think um sharers that might be uh
frozen there um
sweat out i'll move on to a question for
you hopefully we can come back to to
share his art afterwards
um
so
again a very similar question to you you
know you took the program out of the
dubai centre which is obviously one of
our campuses so it's not a different uh
different school but but did you find um
you know what was that like having uh
you know two different campuses in your
experience you know you you did the bulk
of your you did all your core courses in
dubai but then some of your electives in
in london is that correct or did you do
most of them still in dubai
uh actually i chose to do most of the
election elections outside dubai so i've
done five in london
uh two in hong kong
and i did extra international assignment
beside the mandatory one one in cape
town and one in buenos aires because i
wanted like literally global experience
so the core model you have to do in
dubai because that's that's how the
program is structured uh but when it
comes to elective i chose in fact
outside
you know middle east
so why did you do it that way why did
you choose to do um electives outside of
where you were
doing the bulk of your learning
i think there are two reasons say the
electives in doing that is in london has
a very different experience because you
get to know
you know the full-time mba if you know
the students from so on student from
different school columbia school
hong kong
uh
and again it's a dynamic plus again
doing the net you know
knowing the international market like
europe uh you get to get to know a lot
of people from europe you know when you
are in london whereas in dubai you see
yes there is good mix but still less you
know compared to compared to london when
it comes to electric so that was one of
the reasons
uh and then secondly of course i wanted
to get more international exposures so
that's what uh you know choosing
different locations east to west uh was
you know necessary to do it
oh yeah what about you did you um
internationalize your your program in
any way or did you do all of your uh
your electives in london
i did it all in london i had a lot of
colleagues that wanted to buy um and
they loved it uh for me it was just a
bit of a challenge you know given that i
wasn't in the early stages of startup
um with the team that yeah where it was
you know it was already ready some
conversations over you know not being
there every other friday
um i did get to obviously do the um
get to do the
what we call it got to go to argentina
for for a week well back then i think
it's called the international assignment
now we call the global business
assignment okay
rebranding
cooks do that which was fantastic yeah i
was in london for all of the actual
tuition
speaking about the um the global
business
like a lot of people talk about that as
their favorite part of the program um
would that be a fair representation for
you i'm like what was your experience on
the gba
yeah it was fantastic i think you know
one of the things that i was always so
jealous of when i saw people doing
full-time um
full-time and mba was the amount of time
they got spent with each other so i
think the yeah the global assignment was
just one step you know one step closer
to that actually being able to spend a
lot of time with your cohorts
socializing but also working with them
you know being able to actually
understand um or revisit your your
teamwork skills and your leadership
skills and that setting was fantastic um
just having also the time away from your
full-time work to really focus on
yourself
um and really assess your own
professional progress was was great and
then it was just a lot of fun it was
super well organized um you know i don't
think many of us slept
slept a lot between between the work and
the social activities that lbs had um
had organized for us it was it was
fantastic
all right
sharers welcome back uh we'll get back
to you in a second
i'll get back to that question i'll ask
you in a second but first i want to get
back to us fatal as well his experience
with the the global business experience
[Music]
so like i said i chose
two international assignment
what you said is rebranded as a global
business
uh the first one the mandatory one i did
it in uh uh kept on but why i chose the
second one because of the two different
types of assignments the cape town was
more of a consulting base we did for one
of the very large uh
telecom company actually it was a real
life problem which
the problem statement was presented to
us and we were asked to kind of come
with the solutions for that it was
really good like so it's one of the
largest uh african-based company based
out of uh cape town and we were looking
the entire operations uh you know the
all the part of africa
and came with the recommendation that
what should be you know what's our view
and what the company should do
and uh we're very pleased to
share that like company actually adopted
some of our recommendations and they
came back to us after sometimes say that
hey you know what we have actually
selected these things to implement you
know we want trying to do some changes
so that was actually a
real life experience working with the
good character you know great company
and coming you know
knowing about the solution where they
are adopted so that's one aspects of the
international assignment which i really
loved it and
when i my experience with that one was
extremely great so i thought why not i
will go for the second one which is an
optional actually it was not part of the
program it was options to choose them so
i chose the buenos aires one uh a of
course
this was a great opportunity to knowing
south america you know otherwise who who
thinks of traveling to south america
other than another other than tourism
but again you have to plan a lot even if
for tourism perspective for if you have
to travel all the way to south of
america so i thought it's great to know
in south america as a market and b the
the assign the international assignment
so this one was different than the south
africa this was more like a field trip
you go series of
companies you actually meet series of
people and at the end of the
program you actually come with a report
right so report was very general about
it could be like it's recommended
recommending about the companies over
there uh what they should do are
generally as a country what what what's
the micro
micro micro and micro economic factor
could be affecting the the company
actually the topic itself was great uh
the topic was how
how corporate in argentina survives even
though the country is always in the
brink of bankruptcy so extremely
interesting topic right so knowing what
always happened in argentina that you
know you have a uh you know the
the the amount of debt issue which they
always have repayment of imf the dollar
transactions restriction there's so many
challenges in the countries and
understanding how the company still
survives how they you know uh they make
money they still last with international
call companies it's very interesting to
know so so i chose the different types
of assignment for very obvious reason
that that was more knowing about the
more of a micro microeconomic factors
which one did you prefer controversial
question which one was better cape town
or a bonus errors
figure which one did you prefer cake
channel bonus aries
i like both i like both for different
reasons you know the consulting was like
as if you're going on a real life case
studies to identify the problem and
implementing that ones and recommending
some solutions so so that was really
really different approach you know and
the cape town has the city was really
good i mean i loved it the good weather
uh beautiful town
and then
obviously buenos aires is a different
experience because
uh like i said the the topic was really
challenging uh and understanding those
kind of
the company's issues and the challenges
what they have day to day it was very
interesting to know about so it's a very
different things and i love both
actually sure and uh share is that
obviously you have a um
more choice in yours because you're able
to choose the uh the international
assignment or global business assignment
from london business school and columbia
business school which one did you choose
in the end
uh i went for something that uh i never
thought i would do i selected russia
i'm not sure if it's uh
still offered or not um no not this year
yeah but i think maybe our year i'm the
class of 2017. so i think we may have
been the last here
and the reason that i selected russia
was a
i've never been
okay um
i've only
read and heard about the culture
never been there physically and the
other thing was that it was going to be
a practical consulting project
so we we get to solve a real life
problem
so you know it's it's pro bono
consulting services
so it's a tough one but i wanted to do
that and um
it was uh super exciting
i think everything from you know it was
so different even like you know the visa
process um dealing with intelligence
agencies uh
given that i'm a dual citizen
um you know so that whole process
everything about it was unique uh once
we
got there um i learned to appreciate
what they have to offer because you you
don't hear much
of the country from an internal
perspective like you know they don't do
marketing per se right um so
i got to experience the culture i worked
on a project with the oldest economics
university they were struggling with the
admission numbers
so how to up the admission numbers you
should be working with us but
see so uh yeah having uh worked in
higher education
um
for uh
southeast asia
um i i did come with some good
information which we could actually
utilize there as well and right and we
combined a lot of
learnings from the mba in terms of
offering the right kind of metrics um
and how to navigate a a different
culture
all together right like you know um
i think the schools did a good job to
prepare us
to uh diplomatically channel
and be
memorable positive ambassadors
you know
coming back i of course yes had a lot
more choice because colombia has
fantastic options as well
um but i chose just to do
the one um you know i had a young child
um so that i had to kind of balance you
know family and studies and work
so yes i think
it's it's it's a valuable part of the
ember experience
um i think it would be incomplete
without doing an assignment like that
sure
now i just want to go back to the
question that uh uh i asked you before
you dropped out right at the beginning
of your answer but it was uh you know
around the experience of doing a program
at the two schools at london business
school in columbia business school
whether you know there was a difference
in how the teaching was delivered
yeah so for the first year you share
faculty uh between columbia business
school and london business school so for
the same
course you do one month in london and
then the subsequent month is in new york
uh and it's fantastic how you know the
the american faculty comes together with
the european faculty um
there is a
different uh perspective obviously right
and
you become more aware of it during the
amber
london business school has in in my
opinion
has a strength uh
in you know
strategy and in certain areas
uh whereas when i was at columbia
i truly benefited like in the second
year when we took
really
specialized finance courses like uh
value investing right
um
so
we
we had that option
and it
opened a lot more choices
uh just having two faculties
uh and the other great advantage is that
for life
you can go back to columbia and take
courses for free
so you know right now uh it's been a few
years out if i want to refresh something
um as an alumni i can i can join
any amber class
um
and go over it so i think
that is a great selling point because
you tend to forget after a while if
you're not using that skill set and then
of course things change technology
changes
thought leadership comes up
with the latest i i it's a great way to
be
in touch with school with your faculty
uh with your networks if you if you go
in you know you can still continue to
expand that and yet learn at the same
time
sure thank you very much
um oh yeah i want to just quickly um
focus on you know some of the the more
specific elements the entrepreneurial
elements um uh or the offerings that the
london business school has
um you know when you were you know
tailoring your program looking at
electives um did you
did you go down that entrepreneurship
path did you did you choose elected
specifically based on what you were
looking to get out of the program
yeah it's interesting there were so in
the second in particular so in the first
you think that was one compulsory
entrepreneurship um course
and then in the second year there are
quite a few things tailored to
entrepreneurship
and i actually steered away from them
and i stayed away from them because i
was already doing i felt like i was
already doing entrepreneurship um
um
and i instead focus on the courses that
i thought would just be more relevant to
me at that time
um
there was actually i think there was one
around a social entrepreneur social
entrepreneurship that i did do
because my business isn't so social but
still has it we operate in africa so by
nature always everything you do in
africa has to have a social impact
because um that is a demographic that is
best served um but yeah i actually
deliberately stayed away from from most
of them i did do one on um emerging
markets
um because again yeah because i'm
operating in africa i thought that there
was a lot i could learn from
from doing case studies and other from
other emerging markets beyond the
african continent
um
but yeah so i know that a lot of my
friends
who then went on to do entrepreneurship
found all the value from that course but
i think because of where i was at the
stage i thought it was more valuable to
to spend my time on courses where i
didn't have so much exposure
what about community-wise did you engage
with others uh in the entrepreneurship
community at lbs you know other
entrepreneurs other people who are
doing similar things to you or did you
uh you know kind of look more broadly
yeah so again i think more more after
the fact than that then at the time in
my class i think there are a couple of
us that run the entrepreneurship um
you know uh trained so uh so focused so
so spend more time i think than than
spending time with others just kind of
sharing war stories etc but yeah i think
i think i found the the course um plus
during the startup
was
you know there was just so much to focus
on that i've actually again i found that
after after the fact connecting with
people
via the alumni network um or i found
more kind of fellow entrepreneurs
sorry go ahead no no go and go
um i do i have an over um a couple of my
classmates i'm not sure if anyone
recalled his benefit from this has since
been part of the uh is it called the
house
at lps
yeah the house is the um uh the
entrepreneurship incubator yeah yes yes
i know that a couple of my um classmates
have gone on to do that
um and have also actually um been able
to kind of find uh you know venture
venture capital through that but yeah
for me at the time it was it wasn't
really my focus the focus really was
just like embedding myself in all of the
skills in the network
and um
shares i will go to you next did you
engage in any of the the entrepreneurial
infrastructure um at either obs or cbs
um
well uh
you you have the the summer
entrepreneurship program right we had a
great idea
and in my second year i was
toying with an idea of
of a unique
high school system
so i went in and i spoke to the
professors i mean i didn't pursue the
idea further at that point in time i was
like okay i can always come back to it
right because the beauty is that even
right now if i have an idea and i want
to work on it i can join the summer
program
um so i kind of kept in touch with that
then there's a great uh incubator
at lbs um
i would
message them on linkedin right i had
questions like i'd met them on a
during a networking event
right and you had combined classes from
different programs and then you have
in-house entrepreneurs at lbs so i
connected um and i had questions and
they would you know help me resolve some
of the issues that i had and i found
that tremendously valuable
at
columbia business school you have
entrepreneurs in residence experts in
residence
really really senior people that you can
tap into i didn't tap into it i i kind
of had it at the back of my mind but i i
didn't utilize
any of those services i know my
classmates did
and also
they have an incubator
that you can join
and it's open even now
um
where if you have an idea you can spend
a year i believe so at lps it's it's the
summer program and then you you can you
can be part of the
incubator whereas over there i believe
it's a one-year program
sure and sweater what about you did you
uh obviously your journey was a little
bit later but did you engage in any
entrepreneurial elements of the program
while you're on them
no actually i'm not joining any
optimistic program much as part of the
core
the whole lbas
the two-year journey whatever i learned
was that i have you know i've been
applying now
um i actually am an entrepreneur in
residence for lba so i
it's more of a giving back now so a lot
of young
or prospective startups from lbs
community they connect with me uh and
just like i share my experience
uh and help them in terms of you know in
their in their journey
um but there are bits and pieces some
pro you know like events happens here in
dubai as well as wherever i go if i go
in india i try to
network with people so i try to join uh
there's some informal way of like let's
say uh connecting with the people to
learn about their entrepreneurship
journey that sort of opportunity again
i think
both the panelists have already covered
about the network strength in lvs i
think that's extremely good you don't
need to really join any formal setup you
know you can always connect in an
informal way um i mean as you know that
the best best networking and the best
community uh is literally at the windsor
castles from where the whole journey
starts right
and it is by the way for those who are
listening it's a pub outside the mbs you
know in london so i've seen the best
networking and the best best community
started from there
uh but then of course the joker part i
think uh
what i've seen that like whenever i need
it
uh in in different stages of my life i
have managed to tap network as and when
i hasn't been required i mean right
after the graduation i was kind of
looking at uh should i continue in my
current organizations or should i switch
my job uh so first thing what i did that
literally i started reaching out to a
lot of uh lbs alum in in in dubai and
saying hey you know what let's catch up
i want to learn about your company i
want to learn about your cultures uh you
know
do you think i should switch i mean like
it's very open discussion right and the
majority of them have seen that they
respond and they say hey yeah let's
catch up for coffee and so that's uh
that's that's the best thing which i
have seen that whenever you reach out to
a lbs community it's always been
embraced always been like you know
welcome
i remember in fact we as a family
decided to go to thailand on a bus you
know on a holiday actually i looked at
the lvs element
alone directory there and i started
reaching out to them saying hey you know
what we're coming for a family trip uh
but i would love to catch up and in fact
it was really good some of them have
organized trip for us and one guy was oh
you know he wants the biggest theme park
in
uh in
bangkok and one more region i think he
or arranged an entire trip for us it was
so lovely to see that how lbs
communities so it's like a family
and uh when i left my job uh and when i
was you know when i was literally in the
very beginning of my entrepreneurship
journey where i was not very sure that
how how will i shape up my business
model i know i have to do something
instead of ecosystem uh but i wasn't
real really sure how do i monetize that
what sort of revenue model i'll cover
i went to india i went to new delhi
where i reached out to a lot of
you know the
uh
lbs alum from ecosystem to just to get
their perspective just to understand
what they are doing in india because it
is the second largest startup ecosystem
so it's very close to dubai to learn
what's happening there
and i managed to met really a lot of
people in the three days trip you know
like i think i had 20 meetings and
pretty much everyone from lbs and they
also got a lot of connections right i
mean once you meet them once you come
back they say hey you know what uh you
should meet this person that person so
you know it's like a kind of
webs of network connections that you get
through the through the lbs community
i like to add to that um
yes the
london business school chapter in dubai
is fantastic you know you arrange like
great networking events and i believe
this one coming up in may
um so you know that's a wonderful way uh
to get in touch and i was in vancouver
canada during
the pandemic time
so i emailed
the columbia alumni network
and the london business phone network
and i must say the lbs was very
responsive
and i actually during covert when nobody
was meeting anyone i still met a couple
of alumni and i think uh
that is tremendously valuable also
the
the email threads that we receive i
don't know uh what you call that system
um yes in the portal system right uh all
kinds of questions that you may have uh
you know you put a heading you can go in
you can get contacts you have questions
that need to be clarified uh
it's a great resource
the uh the alumnus community in dubai is
called the golf association and yes i i
agree it's one of the the best and most
engaged ones um just to continue that
theme and i'll start with you uh we'll
stay with you uh uh sharazad and that's
um uh i suppose that the main return on
investment from from your experience the
main thing you took away um
uh the main benefit of doing the program
what would you say that was for you
where's the brand name
right
that it's it's a big deal i think it it
brings a certain
credibility
uh
to your
resume or cv um
and it opens a lot of doors
which i
feel it makes it easier so uh i think
that's that's one uh two
obviously um
the the learning
in specific areas where you can actually
utilize it
in practical life so it's not just
theory that you read in a book and then
you kind of put it out you know in a
bookshelf
for your children to read when they're
grown up uh you can actually apply it so
you hit the ground running while you're
working you're learning you can go and
apply it i mean uh i think that's a
fantastic roi uh right there and it's
got a lot to do with your attitude and
initiative
i believe and if you if you take the
initiative
um there are a lot of folks out there at
lbs
uh that are willing to help you
um and
i i think um
maybe other schools have it i just
applied i applied to the lbs uh columbia
program right and it took me three years
to get in by the way
so i had to try it three times it's my
first night that i got it
you know but it just had to be this
what about you
what was uh what was the the key
takeaway from you was that the main
thing you got from the program
it has to be the network
um i think one of my most memorable
moments was in one of our i think it was
in one of the organizational behavior
sessions where we were talking about how
to build network
um and i'm not sure if everyone did this
but perhaps they do and that's why the
the network is just so open to
contributing helping each other but the
question was posed you know how do you
build a great network
um and the professor got us through an
exercise where everyone went up to the
board and asked a question something
that they needed from someone else in
the class
um
and just through doing that exercise
there were so many um so many
partnerships that immediately came out
of it because everyone was able to get
that answer their question answered by
someone else in the class and i've just
found that culture of
asking questions and getting someone to
provide you support be it on whatsapp be
it viva portal via via just actually
sending an email to an old professor is
absolutely phenomenal
um and you know the tuition is great but
i guess tuition is only great if you
remember everything and it's impossible
to learn everything remember everything
right and i think the more senior you
get as well the more you realize that
you actually just don't have the
capacity
to
build knowledge but what you can build
is an ability to find and connect to the
right people when there's knowledge that
you don't know
and i think lbs has just created an
amazing network that's enabled me to do
that constantly
very well paul
and uh sweat al what about you what was
the the main thing you took away from
doing the program
i think there's two things
which i must say
that a
the the various tools techniques and
frameworks that you learn in over two
years
you know in the school that's amazing
uh i would say your assets right that
you can apply anywhere at
career wise or entrepreneurship journey
anywhere
um so that's that's something i still uh
use that i it's so such a valuable uh
you know the resources that we have you
can access still your you know the
different case studies now we sometime
like you know because no more i'm into
on you know my own consulting forum i
have and we are setting up our own fund
so there's so many things when we're
speaking with startups i you know pass
on that knowledge to them you know the
the the
the founders the
uh how to uh work on strategy how to
work on the corporate governance or
application of the right marketing tools
so so many things actually there's a lot
of takeaways that actually you can
either use for your own you know uh job
or you can actually pass on to others so
that's one thing and of course no doubt
networking network is extremely great
it's amazing
and i've already given an example of how
i'm using and you know get benefited
there's one thing which i want to
sort of uh
you know it's just a piece of advice the
people who's listening
that you know when you join lbs or any
other business school the top-notch
business school uh and when you're
working for a corporate don't think that
you know you're gonna get the
quick jump or kind of promotion right
it's not gonna change the needle to be
honest it's not gonna move the needle so
fast but the way you
change your personality for sure it
changed the way you you know the mindset
is changed when you are in the meetings
you know in a large meetings dealing
with the senior leadership team you know
the the your language actually it's so
much changed you know i have seen that
when when post mba
because you started knowing the
different uh different functions the way
it works different sort of the area you
have exposures so you can actually speak
on literally in every every side of the
business you know at least you can you
understand what you're listening and you
can put your opinion that so that
actually was a really big change right
but that because a lot of people think
oh if i become
you know mba from london business school
great brand i should get promotion you
know they go back and talk to the
company i should get promotion no you're
not gonna get promotion just because you
got the brand
on your cv uh and in in overnight you
know you cannot prove that you have the
uh
right credentials for the promotions
right uh but it actually over the period
if you continuous work on that is
definitely accelerate your promotional
pathway because you start your thinking
changes you can apply that and if you're
smart you know you know how to
get the best of it and
kind of
uh try to try to improve your
credentials in a more more better way uh
but in terms of the the bigger change
what i have seen lbs likes of business
school has given is the is the leaf rock
which you sort of apply on on switching
from
your carrier to entrepreneurship
that that's i've seen a lot of cases i
myself is a great example of that it
took me a few years to take the
decisions but finally i took that and
that's the major major you know it moves
the needle you know for most of the
people who graduate from uh business
locals likes of envious
well thank you i think the three of you
kind of described um really a lot of uh
of what you take away from uh from the
programs brand learning network uh
framework but then also you know that
that ability to kind of take the the
next step with uh with your careers uh
so thank you uh to the three of you for
uh for joining us today um
i know i've learned a lot um hopefully
everyone else on the call has has done
the same i'm sure they have
but we have reached the end of our hour
um so uh at this point i would like to
uh to thank everyone else for joining us
um as i said i hope you've you've
managed to take a lot of insight from
our my three excellent panelists um
uh this doesn't have to be the end of
the the journey for you obviously
there's uh there's a lot more
information you can find out from us so
please do engage with us uh uh the the
details to get in touch with the uh the
recruitment admissions team at london
business school and so it's all on the
website um we'd love to hear from you um
we'd like to answer any other questions
you might have further down the track so
uh again thank you to our panelists and
uh we hope we'll see you again soon
thank you bye thank you

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