Before the Executive MBA (London) at Warwick Business School (WBS), I was working at Accenture as a Creative Strategy Director. As part of the creative leadership unit, I worked closely with global new business teams to establish winning client partnership stories and secure long-term contracts. Prior to this, I worked in advertising for almost two decades – starting out as a copywriter and working my way up to Creative Director. From London to Dubai, and Singapore to Manchester, wherever I was working, my favourite part of the job was always building and mentoring teams.

Why WBS?

In 2021, I came to a crossroads in my career. I’m someone who usually gets a four-year itch – where I feel I’m teaching more than learning. In parallel, I had a very raw business idea, and wondered if doing an MBA could help me build it the right way up. One thing was for sure; I wanted to work for myself. This is why I searched various programmes before deciding on WBS. From rankings to reviews, it seemed the best fit.

Key Highlights

People

As mentioned, I’ve been very fortunate to work abroad with many different cultures. And just like those experiences, I found a similar truth at WBS: the people make the place. We go there to study, yes, but we also go to connect. And the best source of growth I found took place – unknowingly at the time – through conversations, debates and reviews. Most of all through collaboration. These are the moments I cherished most about my time there, because we really came together for a greater good beyond our individual achievements – creating a ‘group success’ culture. Never leaving anyone behind. Someone was always checking in to make sure others were okay with grasping the module content. It was almost family-like.

Electives

One of my electives was Business & Sustainability, for which I had to travel to Vancouver’s Sauder Business School. WBS have a long-standing partnership with them. And I can honestly say that the module content and calibre of speakers were just as mesmerising as the scenery of Vancouver itself. It’s always been one of my favourite cities in the world. I have family out there too who I stayed with, so it gave me a chance to reconnect with them after 18 long years.

Leadership and Operations Management

These two modules in particular revealed one thing; to expect the unexpected.

I always believed in myself as a team leader, as I have been told many times that one of my strongest assets is people skills. But ‘Leadership’ was one module where I arguably learned the most – and, naively on my part, wasn’t expecting to. Unexpectedly, my thinking was truly being pushed on a deeper level, either to identify solutions or reframe how I viewed and approached leadership as an art. It made me realise there are many methods. How mine is just one, and how I must keep evolving, so I can better adapt. And the journey of thought was both stimulating and rewarding.

The other unexpected finding was that I seemed to have a knack for Operations Management (OM). The truth? When I first saw this on the list, I dreaded it the most (along with Finance & Accounting). I was not interested in it and I wanted it out of the way – ASAP. The unexpected truth? I found a big part of my character in OM. Through reading and learning, it shed light on my overall approach to life; discipline, time management and always doing my best to find ways to boost efficiency. So, this was a pleasant, unexpected, surprise.

Career Transition

Without question, the Executive MBA has played a major role in my career and life. For as I type these words, I am in the very midst of a career transition. I resigned from my corporate role at a media company in July 2024, deciding to fully dedicate myself to launching this business in 2025. The nature of this business is also nothing to do with my area of expertise in advertising or media – it actually lies in fintech – an industry I had to learn from scratch in my spare time. Then came the challenge of building a team of 20 to help support me (for free), while going through the many learning curves of legal and finance contracts when establishing partnerships.

On completion of the MBA, I felt armed with new skills, tools and connections that gave me extra confidence to pursue this new career for myself. And I’m convinced these are the reasons why the sentiment around this transition has been less daunting – and more exciting.

Reflecting on my Executive MBA journey

Personally, the following reflects my journey at WBS:

What I expected to find vs. what I actually discovered

I think this was the most beautiful and rewarding part of the journey; having our expectations challenged in ways we didn’t anticipate. And now it’s about carrying these learnings forward to either make the most of our opportunities, or create new ones.