2022 Best & Brightest MBA: Victoire Ferrari, ESMT Berlin
by: Jeff Schmitt on  May 01, 2022 | 0 Comments Comments | 0 Views
May 1, 2022
Hometown: Lyon, France
Fun fact about yourself: I strongly believe that there is only one way to eat French fries: from the shortest to the longest. Undergraduate School and Degree: Master’s in marketing and international business – INSEEC, Lyon, France
Where was the last place you worked before enrolling in business school? Expedia Group – Marketing Manager
Where did you intern during the summer of 2021? N/A
Where will you be working after graduation? Adidas AG – Senior Manager Brand Calendar
Community Work and Leadership Roles in Business School: Co-president, ESMT Berlin Women in Leadership Club, 2021
Which academic or extracurricular achievement are you most proud of during business school? Together with my team, we created and hosted the first ever ESMT Women in Leadership Week, incorporating conferences, workshops, and networking events to raise awareness, create opportunity for empowerment, and build a community supporting more equal chances in the work place. What achievement are you most proud of in your professional career? Having built and run my own wedding planning agency in the French Alps. Being your own boss is an incredible opportunity to understand all the aspects of what business is. Mistakes are fully on you, hence you learn hard but fast; successes, though, are all yours and this is the most rewarding feeling I’ve ever experienced. Planning weddings is extremely demanding as well as fun and magical! Why did you choose this business school? I chose to do my MBA at ESMT because of the strong international exposure of the program. Our batch was made of 27 different nationalities, and our teachers and lecturers are also from so many different countries and cultures. This is something books cannot teach, the open-mindedness you grow when collaborating with different mindsets and ways of working. Who was your favorite MBA professor? Professor Guillermo Baquero, our finance professor. Finance is not my thing. At all. But Prof. Baquero has so much passion for it. He is so eager to help you see the beauty in it and so full of positive energy that you can only have an incredible experience during his module. What was your favorite MBA event or tradition at your business school? I am very biased here but my favorite event has been our first ESMT Women in Leadership Week! We were not expecting the amount of support we received from inside and outside of ESMT as we started putting it together. Men and women, from all generations and backgrounds: so many raised their hands to be involved. This energy can move mountains! Moreover, I do hope this is going to be a tradition moving on. Looking back over your MBA experience, what is the one thing you’d do differently and why? 2021 made it a special year. In other circumstances, I would have pushed my introvert self to get out of my comfort zone earlier and mingle with my classmates. This is all about human relationships, friendship, and networks, make the most out of it! What is the biggest myth about your school? ESMT lived up to all my expectations and beyond. And if you hear about squirrels in the garden, even this is not a myth. What surprised you the most about business school? I was expecting a very competitive atmosphere amongst our class, but it has been very collaborative, actually. It seems like we were all competing against our own selves, willing to be a better/different version of ourselves at the end of the program. The group dynamic and mindset have been of tremendous support. What is one thing you did during the application process that gave you an edge at the school you chose? The interview process that was actually more about mutual discovery rather than a one-way discussion. You could tell that the program managers were trying hard to create an actual diverse group. Which MBA classmate do you most admire? Li Gao, hands down! Not only is Li one of the smartest people I have ever met, but she went through this crazy MBA year while raising her toddler at home (because of COVID). Her ability to be fully invested in our class lectures and conversations while having her daughter seating on her lap is truly humbling. She is such an inspiring example that it may not always be easy to balance all one’s life choices, but it’s up to society to be flexible and adapt to make it happen. Li, you are my hero! Who most influenced your decision to pursue business in college? It’s a role model, a woman who made me open my eyes on this opportunity. I’m grateful to be surrounded by people like her, who once in a while will shake me up to make sure I make the right and sometimes bold choices for myself. What are the top two items on your professional bucket list? Managing a team
Mentoring younger women
How has the pandemic changed your view of a career? It opened brand new perspectives to me. Just when we were all lock down at home, I felt more freedom than ever to drive my career above and beyond thanks to the generally available option of remote working. I looked at this crisis as a sign for me to invest in my career by doing an MBA to continue fueling my professional trajectory in our new normal. What made Victoire  such an invaluable addition to the Class of 2022? “Victoire is indomitable once she gets an idea in her head, and she’s always thinking of new ideas. She wants to live in an empowering environment that provides opportunities for each person’s path to success, so as soon as she started her MBA program, she started taking actions to cultivate community at ESMT. She brings her quick and reflective mind, big heart, and dedicated soul to the actions she takes, whether in the classroom, in one-on-one discussions about personal and professional development, or while creating and implementing initiatives and collaborations at ESMT. Victoire served as co-president of the school’s Women in Leadership Club and she was a driving force behind its progress in 2021. She and her teammates conceptualized and carried out Women in Leadership Week, the school’s first event of its scope to focus on and promote awareness of the necessity of gender equality in the workplace. For her contributions to an inclusive campus culture, her leadership skills, and her commitment to furthering ESMT’s sustainable development, her classmates and ESMT’s faculty and staff awarded Victoire the President’s Award.”
Karen La Macchia
ESMT Berlin

2022 Best & Brightest MBA: Victoire Ferrari, ESMT Berlin

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Business schools, and their portfolio of MBA, Masters and executive programmes are a powerful career accelerator, often enabling their graduates to subsequently take on senior leadership roles. So is the diversity and talent mix of the MBA classroom a solid indicator for future trends in the C-Suite? Sixty years ago, the all-male faculty at Harvard Business School voted to allow women to apply to the full-time MBA program. Eight women were accepted in the following admissions cycle, and began their studies in August 1963. By 2004, 35% of the HBS MBA class were women. The same year, the proportion of leadership roles held by females worldwide stood at 19%, according to the Women in Business report published by professional services network, Grant Thornton. In 2021 this figure had reached 31%. There is still a long way to go to, but it is encouraging to see that Wharton’s latest MBA class is more than 50% women for the first time in the school’s history, with Northwestern’s Kellogg at 49% and Duke Fuqua at 48%. A number of European business schools can also claim among the most gender balanced MBA programs. ESSEC Business School in France matches Wharton at 51%, with Italy’s MIP Politecnico di Milano at 49%. The percentage of female students at Alliance Manchester Business School, Oxford Saïd, RSM and Imperial College Business School are a match for Dartmouth Tuck, MIT Sloan and Chicago Booth. MORE FOR YOU
But a recent GMAC study investigating diversity in graduate management education, found that in Europe women only account for around 38% percent of graduate business degrees in the region. To help boost the numbers of women studying business, institutions across the region have introduced scholarships to help provide a greater equality to the field. The 30% Club
When it comes to providing women with opportunities to pursue business education, the 30% Club have helped pave the way. The charity is a global gender diversity campaign, with the aim of increasing the number of women in board seats and executive leadership of companies all over the world. It started in the UK in 2010 and has expanded to fourteen other countries or regions. They aim to develop a diverse pool of talent for all businesses through the efforts of its Chair and CEO members who are committed to better gender balance at all levels of their organizations. As part of this initiative, the 30% Club have partnered with numerous business schools to provide scholarships for women in graduate management education. Germany’s ESMT Berlin is among them, offering full and partial scholarships for women looking to advance in their career through their partnership with the 30% Club. Carina Brehm is an industrial engineer and VP of Strategy, Sustainability and Technology Office for Siemens Energy Transmission, pursued the Postgraduate Diploma in Advanced Management and General Management at ESMT Berlin, and acknowledges the importance of the ESMT Women’s Scholarship to develop her career. “ESMT scholarships are open and accessible to woman everywhere. This brings an enriching diversity into the teams at ESMT. As a decision-maker, you will only succeed if you embrace others’ opinions, perspectives and be open-minded about controversial standpoints. "As a decision-maker, you will only succeed if you embrace others’ opinions, perspectives and be ... [+] open-minded about controversial standpoints." Carina Brehm VP of Strategy, Sustainability and Technology Office for Siemens Energy Transmission
ESMT Berlin
Pursuing her studies at ESMT through the scholarship allowed Brehm to meet inspiring people who have support her on a development journey to become a better leader and entrepreneur. “I found it very encouraging to have access to those valuable ESMT resources via a scholarship,” she says. Trinity Business School have a similar partnership with the 30% Club, providing one full scholarship and six bursaries worth €5,000 across the full-time and part-time MBA programs. The Dublin-based school introduced this scheme as part of a conviction that gender balance at the senior leadership level not only encourages better leadership and governance, but further contributes to better all-round board performance, and ultimately increased corporate performance for both companies and their shareholders. Alliance Manchester Business School offers one full scholarship and mentorship with the 30% Club for a candidate who can demonstrate both depth and breadth of work experience, as well as academic excellence and high potential for senior leadership roles. The recipient must also show their determination and commitment to act as a role model for other women. To provide further support to women outside of their work with the global campaign, Alliance Manchester also offers Alliance MBS Women in Business/Forté Foundation scholarships, contributing up to 50% of the student’s tuition fee, along with other benefits that come from being a Forté Fellow . This scholarship offers the chance for a larger number of female students to receive help with their tuition, rather than simply one student receiving full financial aid. The Forté Foundation has a mission to launch women into fulfilling, significant careers through access to business education, professional development, and a community of successful women. Since its creation in 2001, $334M in Forté Fellowships have been awarded to women MBA students, and partner schools have seen more than 11% increase in women’s enrollment. Imperial College Business School is another leading institution to offer women scholarships through partnerships with both the Forté Foundation and the 30% Club, including two scholarships of £25,000 towards their Executive MBA. For Michelle Tang, the Forté Fellow Scholarship covered 50% of her tuition fees, and has made a tremendous difference to her full-time MBA studies. “The scholarship has helped me unload some of the financial burden so that I can keep focused on other important aspects of the MBA journey – to be fully immersed into a new life in London, meet new friends, learn from different cultures and fully enjoy my studies at Imperial.”
“The Forté scholarship has helped me unload some of the financial burden so that I can keep focused ... [+] on other important aspects of the MBA journey at Imperial". Michelle Tang, full-time MBA at Imperial College Business School
Imperial College Business School
The award also connected her with other like-minded professionals and alumni who had previously received the scholarship. “It was a great ice breaker to be able to introduce myself as a scholarship holder this year, and this has definitely expanded my professional network within and beyond Imperial College Business School.”
Different schemes on offer
UCL Global Business School for Health (UCL GBSH) offers female postgraduate students, who demonstrate leadership potential, a sum of up to £5,000 to help with their education. Professor Julie Davies, Director for the MBA Health programme at UCL GBSH, expresses the importance of such schemes to help support women: “The FT Global MBA Rankings clearly indicate slow progress toward equality in business schools world-wide in terms of female students and faculty. It is vital, therefore, that business schools offer scholarships for women and members of other underrepresented groups.”
"We hope that UCL’s dedicated scholarships for MBA Health and other GBSH MSc degrees inspire more ... [+] women to apply for graduate management education programmes to advance their leadership journeys and improve global health systems.” Professor Julie Davies, Director for the MBA Health programme at UCL GBSH
UCL GBSH
For Davies, business schools need to embed the UN’s sustainable development goals (SDGs) of achieving gender equality and reducing inequalities in their own operations. “They should practise what they profess! We hope that UCL’s dedicated scholarships for MBA Health and other GBSH MSc degrees inspire more women to apply for graduate management education programmes to advance their leadership journeys and improve global health systems.”
NEOMA Business School has used strong ties with industry to support women students. The French school with a campus in Paris, Rouen and Reims has partnered with luxury champagne company, Maison Veuve Clicquot, to finance tuition for 10 female Master in Management (MiM) students per year. Florette Richard, a current MiM student at NEOMA Business School, explained how the support has helped her focus on her studies: “The scholarship allows me to continue my studies in a more peaceful atmosphere. Indeed, I did not want the financing of my studies to be an obstacle to my ambition and my will to succeed. Without this scholarship, I would have been forced to work more outside school and home to do a lot of part-time jobs.”
“The Maison Veuve Clicquot scholarship at NEOMA allows me to continue my studies in a more peaceful ... [+] atmosphere." Florette Richard, MiM student at NEOMA Business School
NEOMA Business School
Self-funded scholarships
Vlerick Business School in Belgium offers a Women in Finance Scholarship, in which female students with an outstanding academic record and leadership potential can get up to 70% off the tuition fee for the school’s Masters in Financial Management. Similarly, the Frankfurt School of Finance and Management in Germany awards either a 25% or 50% reduction in tuition fees as part of their BSc and MSc Diversity Scholarships for female students with a proven motivation in business. The UK’s Durham University Business School also independently funds their own funding support, supplying up to five students with the Executive Dean’s Women in Business scholarship of £17,500. Camila Sant’Ana, an MBA student at Durham University Business School and recipient of the scholarship, explained how important scholarships like hers are to overcoming inequality. “Women’s scholarships are important for improving gender equality and overcoming gender barriers in employment. In many areas men are disproportionately the majority in leadership roles, however, recent studies have demonstrated the importance of diversity for successful businesses. Therefore, having dedicated scholarships provide financial stability, an essential requitrement to encourage many women to defy the status quo.”
“Women’s scholarships are important for improving gender equality and overcoming gender barriers in ... [+] employment." Camila Sant’Ana, MBA student at Durham University Business School
Durham University Business School
The future benefits of female business scholarships
While scholarships are demonstrably encouraging more women to pursue graduate management education, only time will tell whether their increased presence in business school classrooms will further strengthen the number of women in leadership roles. And of course the number of female faculty will make a difference too. Sixty years later, 30% of the faculty at Harvard Business School are women. Follow me on  Twitter  or  LinkedIn . Check out my  website .

Scholarships And Opportunity For Women At Business School

On International Women’s Day 2022, Meet The B-School Female Founders
by: Catalina Vlad on  March 09, 2022 | 0 Comments Comments | 5 Views
March 9, 2022
Female-founded start-ups and female-led businesses are becoming more commonplace, though their numbers are still disproportionately low. According to Statista, only 20% of start-ups globally had at least one female founder at the start of 2022. But business schools around the world are playing their part to drive change, helping a growing generation of female graduates from their MBA, Masters, and Exec Ed programs to pursue their entrepreneurial ambitions. This International Women’s Day, we spoke with a number of female business school graduates that have successfully started a business. They include Jordan Sale, an MBA graduate from the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley. Sale was drawn to the small MBA class size at Haas, and the focus on social impact and exploring the intersection between doing well and doing good. Women Who Leveraged Their Business School Education To Do Startups
Entrepreneurship runs in Sale’s family: her mother and grandmother both started their own companies, and Sale has followed this family tradition by founding 81cents , a salary negotiation platform that helps underrepresented candidates negotiate their pay. “I’d always been interested in entrepreneurship,” she explains. “My mom and my grandmother actually started their own companies, so I grew up watching smart, ambitious women start things! I was also lucky enough to spend a few years pre-Haas working at an early-stage start-up so I felt like I had an understanding of what it might be like.”
Miriam Agüero Lorenzo, a Masters in Management student at ESMT Berlin in Germany, is another founder with an entrepreneurial heritage. “I have always dreamed of founding my own non-profit organization. My parents founded an NGO in Seville, my hometown, in 2000, so I have been volunteering in different social projects my whole life. You can say that social volunteering is part of my DNA.”
While studying at ESMT Berlin, Lorenzo wanted to volunteer with a non-profit in Africa, ultimately decided to forge her own path founding her own non-profit, the Meraki Smile School. Focused on providing free and high-quality education for the underprivileged, Meraki Smile School provides education, food, and healthcare to children in Madagascar and is the first school in Africa to offer its students International Baccalaureate (IB) education for free. The Greek word ‘Meraki’ refers to when you do something with so much love and passion, you leave part of yourself with it. “I think it is clear the future is female,” states Lorenzo. “More and more women are getting promoted into powerful positions among different sectors. We need more women stepping up and helping to shape this new century.”
For Altyn Bolat, an MBA graduate from Nazarbayev University Graduate School of Business in Kazakhstan, it was her father who inspired her entrepreneurial journey. “My father runs an agricultural business; he owns quite a lot of land and his own machinery. I have been told since I was a child that any good career has a certain ceiling on earnings, while you can grow as much as you like if you have a business. The question was only in which area I would choose to start a business.”
The area Bolat eventually settled on was the education sector, founding Bridge, an educational company providing a number of different products. One such product is Bridge Kids which prepares children for top global universities – Harvard, Stanford, MIT, Yale – from an early age through programs such as “Super Brain” and “MBA Kids.”
Her advice for any women interested in potentially founding their own company is to not focus too much on public opinion. “Society needs women, first and foremost, to lead by example by showing that women are perfectly capable of getting an education and building a business.”
FORGING HER OWN PATH
Outi Somervuori, a Management Science Ph.D. from Aalto University School of Business in Finland had also always dreamed of becoming an entrepreneur, and much like Lorenzo she had to find her own way. Somervuori grew interested in learning more about pricing. She originally looked for courses to further develop her knowledge but was unable to find a suitable course. A professor from Aalto University suggested she research the topic herself, which inspired her application as a doctoral student at Aalto University. She went on to found Cambri , an advanced, easy-to-use consumer insights, and concept testing tool But Somervuori warns the road to entrepreneurship is sometimes a bumpy one. From her experience, her most important piece of advice is to surround yourself with similarly motivated and ambitious people. “Before Cambri, I founded a few companies, but struggled to find a team with the same goals and ambitions as mine,” she says. “My advice is to find a good team, test and adjust your offering, and start selling as early as possible.”
Somervuori also proposes that women use their strengths to their advantage in entrepreneurship. “Don’t undervalue yourself and your skills, and with good prioritization, you can combine you work with your values, whether it is building a sustainable world or finding a good work-life balance.”
SURROUND YOURSELF WITH THE RIGHT PEOPLE
In contrast to the long-held desire of others to become entrepreneurs, Irina Gheorghiu, never considered it a goal to found a company. Gheorghiu gained an MSc in Digital Transformation Management and Leadership from ESCP Business School, studying at two of the school’s multiple campuses across Europe. But she didn’t conceive the idea for her company, ZIM Connections , until traveling to the Philippines. “While traveling, we encountered a problem – connectivity. My co-founder, Giulia Acchioni, and I waited for one hour in queue to buy a local SIM card to be able to then order an Uber, as well as call our families to let them know we arrived safely. It was frustrating and this frustration became a great opportunity to start our own business in order to solve this issue,” says Gheorghiu. ZIM is based on the concept that travelers want to be connected from the first moment they land and provides this by offering travelers local mobile plans through simple and easy eSIM technology. Gheorghiu also advocates the benefits of entrepreneurial women surrounding themselves with the right people: “Being a woman in entrepreneurship is even harder. My biggest advice is to surround yourself with a great team. Create a great company culture that will allow your employees and management team to become your
This is a concept shared by Danya Sherman, an MBA graduate from Georgetown’s McDonough School of Business. “Believe in yourself, and invest in yourself. Surround yourself with people that challenge you and lift you up. Surround yourself with people of different life experiences and views.” Sherman says that in the early days of growing your company, people will give a lot of unsolicited feedback. “Hear it all. Absorb it. It’s not your responsibility to act on all of it, but only a fool does not listen.”
Sherman originally aspired to become a journalist. However, she pivoted in her career goals after noticing that the issue of drink spiking was not being reasonably, commercially addressed. To contribute towards this, Sherman founded KnoNap in 2017 with the goal of empowering, educating, and advocating against drink spiking. “We empower through Knope, our discreet, portable, gender-inclusive detection device for rape drugs disguised in the aesthetic of a stick of gum,” she says. “Knope can be integrated into any social setting and used by anyone, circumventing the concern for consumers to choose personal safety or social comfort. JUST DO IT 
The advice from Angelica Conraths, MSc Entrepreneurship graduate from Trinity Business School in Ireland, is straightforward. “Just do it and get started. You will never feel entirely ready and you will face a lot of challenges along the way, but you will figure everything out.” 
Using the skills learned from her business school course including brand management, finance, pitching, and networking, Conraths went on to found fembites, dedicated to closing the gender data gap in nutrition and draw attention to the specific needs of the female body during the menstrual cycle. Conraths explains, “We started by developing a chocolate free of nasty additives, refined sugars, and supplemented with Vitamin B6, which contributes to the regulation of hormone activity. This makes it the first-ever alternative to conventional chocolates for the female body.” 
Sold out in less than two weeks of launch, fembites now produces two more products: fempow, the first-ever supplement cacao power using Vitamin B6; and femgums, the first-ever gummy vitamin supplemented with vitamins to support the female body during the menstrual cycle, specifically catering to pre-menstrual sensitivity. YOU CAN HAVE A FAMILY AND A BUSINESS
From nutrition for women to nutrition for animals, Valerie De Clerck, an MBA graduate from Vlerick Business School in Belgium, is the founder of CURAFYT which develops natural food supplements for dogs and horses. De Clerck’s story behind founding CURAFYT is two-fold; first training as a veterinarian due to her passion for animals, she then felt the calling of a different path. “After a year in practice as a veterinary physician, the entrepreneurial urge itched and I decided to choose a different career path. I worked for two years as a researcher in two digital healthcare start-ups abroad and then for a large corporate in pet food. Soon I realized that I needed an additional business education to accelerate in the corporate world.”
She chose Vlerick Business School for her MBA as the school is known for its innovation and entrepreneurship, along with its large network of entrepreneurs in Belgium. When it came to starting her business, De Clerck was at a stage in her life where she also wanted to start a family and she was initially scared of doing both at the same time. However, now she has an eight-month-old daughter and is expecting her second child, while simultaneously shifting up a gear in their growth at CURAFYT. “I don’t feel like I have to choose between my family or my business. I think you can combine both,” she says. “I don’t remember exactly in what words Sheryl Sandberg said it, but the message has always stuck with me: do not let opportunities pass you by because you have a desire to have children.”
While De Clerck started her business and family around the same time, Kathrine Molvik took the big entrepreneurial leap after becoming a mother. The idea to start a business came to her while on a course. “I suddenly felt a need to make a change and do something in a different way.”
Molvik decided to quit her job without telling her family. At the time she had four children between the ages of three and ten and suddenly felt her life was very unstable. However, she went on to found FeC , an expertise centre in welding and materials. Molvik founded FeC before pursuing business education. “When I started, I didn’t know anything about business at all. I just had a gut feeling that this was something I really wanted to do.” She then joined the Executive Master of Management at BI Norwegian Business School in Norway. “At BI, I learned a lot about myself and my self-confidence grew. For me, this was important. Education can teach you a lot of things, but in the end, it is the things you learn about yourself that make a difference,” she says. “By learning about myself, I also got to learn a lot about others. And as a woman in business, we face other challenges than men do, even in 2022. You need to believe in yourself, not everyone wants us to succeed!”
DIVERSITY IS AN ASSET
In a business world dominated by men, it is sometimes clear that people do not expect women to be at the head of a company or business. Hannele Anita Piipari, a Flex Executive MBA (EMBA) graduate from MiP Politecnico di Milano (MiP) in Italy, is all too familiar with the realities of being a female founder. Piipari is the founder of Palazzo Florio , a boutique residence in Italy which opened to guests in June 2020 during the pandemic. She hopes more women will get the opportunity to become entrepreneurs and assume leadership positions, as this will be a huge benefit for everyone – diversity is an asset after all. But to get there, Piipari is aware a lot needs to change: “I keep receiving emails addressed to “Mr”, and phone calls where the caller would like to speak to the owner and is surprised when I say they already are. Not to mention, face-to-face situations where people ask my husband questions about my business, in my presence. We’re still a long way from women entrepreneurs and business owners being a normal everyday occurrence.”
Piipari credits her time at business school for enabling her to successfully found and run her business. Her course of choice at MiP, the Flex EMBA, allowed her to complete her degree while traveling for work and living far from the Milan campus. Speaking on her experience on the course, “It helped structure my thinking and communicate the vision with more clarity. It taught me to collaborate with people from different industries, backgrounds, and viewpoints, and produce something viable under time pressure.”
“I DIDN’T KNOW WHAT AN ENTREPRENEUR WAS”
Some founders come from backgrounds not often associated with entrepreneurship. This is certainly true of Aurélie Hélouis, an MBA Strategy graduate from McGill University, Desautels Faculty of Management in Canada, and former officer in the French Navy. Hélouis eventually became interested in becoming an entrepreneur while studying at McGill. “Before I was a Navy officer, I didn’t know what being an entrepreneur was,” she admits. Surprisingly, the skills she gained from her time with the French Navy have also been applicable when founding her company, infinityQ . “I knew I loved people, technology, and challenges. And I had good training to deal with stress and complex situations. I learned leadership, resilience, and perseverance, especially during operations onboard the aircraft carrier.”
InfinityQ aims to develop a new type of computer called “quantum analog”, and software solutions to tackle complex problems, impossible for classical computers. Right now, they are focusing on solutions for the gaming industry and have just closed a seed extension round to bring the next generation of their technology to the market. DEVELOPING HEALTHY PRODUCTS FOR PEOPLE AND PLANET
For many talented young professionals, the MBA is an increasingly popular choice for those wanting to make a career transition and start a business. Tina Chen had worked at Accenture in Los Angeles for three years before heading to the UK to study at Imperial College Business School. She was drawn to Imperial for the diverse student body, distinguished lecturers, and the business school’s reputation as a home to innovation. “I wanted to study for a one-year Full-Time MBA degree in the heart of London at a leading, world-renowned institution, so Imperial was a no-brainer for me,” she explains. “I was also impressed by the Full-Time MBA program which included a week abroad to learn about business in another country and the array of core courses and electives offered from finance to sustainability.”
After completing her MBA, Chen founded HumaniTea , a company that produces Oat Milk Tea Lattes in Matcha and Earl Grey flavors. The products are 100% vegan and low-sugar. As well as being the founder, Chen is also Chief Tea Officer and heavily involved in the day-to-day operations of the business: “My goal is to continue to bring our delicious plant-based tea lattes to as many people as possible, to increase sales and brand awareness, and to generate additional profit to help us flourish as a social enterprise. I aim to develop our range of healthy, innovative products with people and planet in mind.”
BE GRATEFUL AND BE BRAVE
While Chen was drawn to London for her studies, Shan Xu was drawn to Frankfurt for her education. After a five months exchange semester in Germany, she felt like she could really learn a lot in the German education system and also wanted to study in a metropolis at a university with a good networking platform. Xu eventually gained a Master of Finance (Bank Management) at Frankfurt School of Finance and Management. “Frankfurt School provided me a great view to see the demands of a high-end circle. They have never forgotten me as an international alumnus, and have organized selective lectures, events, and networking opportunities.” 
She went on to found the āmasian brand, which includes two business units: āmasian Wedding Studio GmbH which focuses on destination wedding and theme event planning in Europe, and āmasian Event & Business UG which focuses on high end offline matchmaking. When it comes to advice for others that wish to found their own company, Xu suggests, “Be grateful, be well prepared and be brave. Action is important.”
WORKING TOGETHER
Many of the aforementioned female entrepreneurs founded their companies as sole founders but some, like Gheorghiu, involve a partner to co-found a business with them. This is the story of French clothing and accessories brand RUE DU COLIBRI and its co-founders, Angeline Ribadeau Dumas and Lucie Gueyffier. Both Executive MBA graduates from emlyon business school in France, Dumas’ inspiration for RUE DU COLIBRI came to her after her breast cancer diagnosis in 2018. Dumas explains, “I went through cancer treatments for 15 months. After the first chemotherapy session, I wrote down what I was missing and began to imagine a range of products that could help people maintain their intimacy, bring them comfort in their daily life, and reinforce their strength during treatment. I then sent the project to Lucie.”
From there, RUE DU COLIBRI was born, providing a range of accessories and clothing products aimed to make those undergoing cancer treatment feel more comfortable. For example, some maintain privacy by concealing certain medical devices, makes accessing certain body parts easier for treatment, and using ultra-soft materials for sensitive skin. In a world where women can often be underestimated or underrepresented in many different sectors, what Altyn Bolat mentioned rings true; society needs women to lead and demonstrate that women are perfectly capable of building a business. And that is exactly what these women have done. From nutritional supplements for horses to clothing for cancer patients, non-profit schools to boutique accommodation, all these female B-school graduates conceived a business idea which they then brought to life.

On International Women’s Day 2022, Meet The B-School Female Founders

Entrepreneurs perform better if able to choose ideas or team members
written by LLB Reporter 3rd Dec 21 9:00 am
Entrepreneurial teams perform better if able to choose their own team members or their own ideas, finds new research from ESMT Berlin. However, this benefit to performance disappears if given autonomy to choose both. Scholars suggest autonomy can lead to better entrepreneurial team performance, but there are different types of autonomy. Viktoria Boss and Christoph Ihl, both from Hamburg University of Technology, and Linus Dahlander and Rajshri Jayaraman, both from ESMT Berlin, investigated how two types of autonomy affect the performance of entrepreneurial teams: choosing project ideas to work on and choosing team members to work with. The researchers ran a field experiment involving 939 students on a startup entrepreneurship course in which students are organised into teams to develop and pitch business ideas. Individuals were assigned to one of four scenarios: 1) choosing their team members and idea, 2) choosing their team members, 3) choosing their idea, or 4) choosing neither their team nor idea. In teams, students developed an entrepreneurial pitch deck; a presentation aimed at hypothetical venture capitalists to secure funding. Pitch decks were assessed on six criteria: novelty, feasibility, market potential, likelihood of success, likelihood of invitation for follow-up, and investment amount. Results show that teams with autonomy to choose ideas or team members outperform teams without the autonomy to choose either. However, the effect of choosing ideas is significantly stronger than the effect of choosing teams. Also, these benefits were not seen for teams granted full autonomy over choosing both ideas and teams. Professor Dahlander said, “Choosing ideas or teams can lead to a better match of ideas with team members’ interests and prior network contacts among team members, respectively. Also, granting autonomy increases feelings of confidence which can have a motivational effect. “However, if confidence rises above a critical threshold, teams can experience overconfidence and exhibit complacency and lack of focus. This points to the possibility that those who chose both teams and ideas experienced too much confidence too soon, reducing subsequent effort.”
These findings are important to the professionalisation of entrepreneurship, particularly incubator and accelerator programmes, most of which give aspiring entrepreneurs a choice on both ideas and team members. These results suggest granting autonomy solely over choosing ideas would lead to the highest performance outcome.

Entrepreneurs perform better if able to choose ideas or team members

Palo Alto,  UNITED STATES
PALO ALTO, Calif., Oct.  07, 2021  (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Engageli, a purpose-built virtual learning platform designed to improve student outcomes, today announced a new partnership with ESMT Berlin, a top-ranked, triple-crown accredited international business school. Through this partnership, ESMT will utilize Engageli’s platform for its Global Online MBA program. This announcement follows the completion of a successful collaboration earlier this summer, in which Engageli partnered with ESMT and the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS) to support the Industry Immersion Africa© program. The program’s classes foster the employability of STEM graduates in African business through a hands-on curriculum. The program leveraged Engageli’s digital learning platform to power a blended-learning approach, successfully graduating 51 STEM graduates with the help of nine instructors and two assistants. This year’s program was taught simultaneously in four locations: AIMS Ghana, AIMS Rwanda, AIMS South Africa, and Strathmore University in Kenya. Instruction on Engageli’s platform during the five-week program included a combination of asynchronous learning with live video lectures and class discussion across multiple courses, such as general management, data analytics, and entrepreneurial strategy. Program instructors were based in multiple locations, from Berlin to Canada, working alongside staff at the African university centers. Following the success of this year’s Industry Immersion Africa© program, ESMT and Engageli extended their partnership to ESMT’s Global Online MBA program. Program instructors will use Engageli to design dynamic, interactive classes, and to provide differentiated instruction and personalized support by leveraging real-time engagement data. “Engageli’s highly interactive and engaging digital learning platform was an incredible asset to our Industry Immersion Africa© program, and we’re thrilled to extend our partnership to our Global Online MBA,” said Nick Barniville, Associate Dean for Degree Programmes and EdTech at ESMT Berlin. “Engageli allows us to seamlessly bring students together, across geographies, to share knowledge and skills. In our globalized world, these capabilities are invaluable in providing students with the skills and experience they need for success in business.”
“ESMT Berlin is making an impressive educational impact at a global scale,” said Dan Avida, Co-Founder and CEO of Engageli. “This transformative opportunity is possible for thousands of students because of ESMT’s dedication to implementing innovative technology across its programs. We’re thrilled to partner with ESMT to support collaborative courses and help build connections between students and instructors across borders via our platform.”
About ESMT Berlin
ESMT Berlin is the highest-ranked business school in Germany and Top 10 in Europe. Founded by 25 leading global companies, ESMT offers master’s, MBA, and PhD programs, as well as executive education on its campus in Berlin, in locations around the world, online, and in an online blended format. Focusing on leadership, innovation, and analytics, its diverse faculty publishes outstanding research in top academic journals. Additionally, the international business school provides an interdisciplinary platform for discourse between politics, business, and academia. ESMT is a non-profit private institution of higher education, accredited by AACSB, AMBA, EQUIS, and FIBAA, and is committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion across all its activities and communities. About African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS)
Founded in 2003, the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS) is a pan-African network of Centres of Excellence for post-graduate training in mathematical sciences, research and public engagement in STEM. With centres in South Africa, Senegal, Ghana, Cameroon and Rwanda, AIMS is contributing to Africa’s socio-economic transformation through innovative scientific training, cutting-edge research, and public engagement. With expertly tailored academic and non-academic programs spanning through Centres of Excellence, Research Centres, the AIMS Industry Initiative and gender-responsive Teacher Training, AIMS equally created two critical initiatives: Quantum Leap Africa, which aspires to do leading-edge research in quantum science, and the Next Einstein Forum, which is positioning Africa to become an important player in global science. For more information, visit www.nexteinstein.org . About Engageli
Engageli is advancing the higher education industry globally by improving virtual teaching and learning experiences. Its premiere cloud-based, multimodal digital learning technology creates flexible, inclusive, secure environments optimized for student connections and active learning. Founded in 2020 by Daphne Koller, Co-Founder of Coursera, Dan Avida, and Serge Plotkin, Engageli has raised over $47 million in funding. To learn more, please visit www.engageli.com . Contact:

Engageli Partners with the European School of Management and Technology Berlin to Power the University’s Global Online MBA Program

Engageli offers a video conferencing tool designed as a digital learning platform aimed at higher education.

Engageli

Through this partnership , ESMT will utilize Engageli 's platform for its Global Online MBA program .

Trilogy Education Services is a Continuing Education Program Manager which enables universities to offer skills-based training programs in web development, data analytics and visualization, and UI/UX in part-time and full-time formats. Through university partnerships, students benefit from a dynamic, market-driven curriculum, career services, and access to a network of industry partners. A learning and instructor analytics platform also allows Trilogy and its university partners to continually improve the student learning experience.

Trilogy Education Services

Babbel, operated by Lesson Nine, offers a way to learn a foreign language that combines effective education methods with state-of-the-art technology. Interactive online courses will improve grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation skills. With the integrated speech recognition tool users can test and practice pronunciation directly in the browser. Babbel combines high-quality courses with modern technology. Content is developed specifically for every language and level of difficulty by a professional team of didacts, authors and language teachers. The app is data-driven and constantly learns from input generated by actual use.

Babbel

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T-Systems

Humboldt University

Free University of Berlin

ESMT Berlin is a business school that offers Master’s, MBA, and PhD programs, as well as executive education on its campus and in an online blended format. It is based in Berlin, Germany.

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