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This year, our Executive MBA programme turned 30-years-old. This means that for 30 years we have been successfully equipped professionals with the business acumen and leadership skills to be at the forefront of society around the globe.
In celebration of this momentous milestone, we invited all alumni of the Executive MBA and Weekday Executive MBA (the programme is no longer offered in this format) to a special 30-year anniversary event.
For the occasion, an equally impressive venue was in order. We celebrated at the Skyloft in the Millbank Tower, boasting a 360-degree view of the Thames and the iconic London skyline. Our Executive MBA programme is renowned for its central location in London and our close proximity to the City, so the chosen venue was only fitting.
The evening was an opportunity to mingle with their fellow classmates, network with other Executive MBA cohorts and spend time with those who were influential during their time at the Business School – from faculty to Programmes team staff and more.
To formally open the evening’s festivities, the new Programme Director of the Executive MBA, Ian McKenzie, shared a few words. He said:
It is my great pleasure to welcome you this evening to this celebration of the Executive MBA. It’s just brilliant to see such a great cross-section of alumni and past participants of the programme. The representation here is brilliant, it runs from 1991 right through to the current programme. The number of alumni of the Executive MBA is almost 1000, and Weekday Executive MBA is around 500. It’s a very, very diverse cohort with over 70 different nationalities. It’s a fantastic group of alumni.
Dean Francisco Veloso, followed Ian’s welcome, to discuss the exponential growth the Business School has experienced in the past 30 years. He said:
When you think about the School 30 years ago, and some of you who started at that time, it was really a prototype of the Business School…Fast-forward 30 years, and if you think about where we are today, the School is in great shape. We have been growing very, very rapidly, in numbers and also in quality. The student and faculty population has been growing, but also in our visibility and recognition.
Continuing with the theme of growth, Leila Guerra, Associate Dean of Programmes, highlighted some of the developments of the Executive MBA programme, especially for alumni. Lifelong learning is important to alumni of the Business School, and she discussed our online capabilities that will allow them to continue to keep learning with us through shorter courses, with access to our areas of expertise including fintech, business analytics and climate change.
She also discussed our improvements in career support for alumni. In the last 18 months, our Careers service has developed its services to support not just our current students, but also alumni in their next career moves.
Leila finished her speech urging the alumni and future alumni in the room to continue to shape the Executive MBA programme:
Your legacy is there for us to keep building and we want to hear how the programme impacted your life. You left your legacy when you told us – can you please change this or can you add a course on climate change, or maybe you should include more connections to College. This is how you are helping us shape the programme, your legacy is living in the programme that is coming next, that is now Ian (McKenzie) to lead on every new innovation we are going to introduce.
Other highlights of the evening included a keynote speech by Dr Charles Donovan on the ‘Digital Disruption of the Global Energy Economy' and a magician who kept everyone entertained as they reminisced over memories old, new and future.
Hear from two of our Executive MBA alumni on their highlights and anecdotes of their Executive MBA experience
"“The highlight of the Executive MBA for me was definitely the friends that I made. It is a really international and diverse group of people, and we are still in touch and bounce ideas off each other. I have great places to go on vacation - I’ve done Peru, South Africa and Dubai, and next on the list is Oman. It’s been great in that respect in terms of international relationships. On the programme we went to China and Japan and it was amazing to apply business thinking to these international places and learn about business culture in these different countries. The staff looked after us so well and the dynamic mix of so many international people with the same agenda which is about growing in business.”"
"“We had a very epic first semester where we had four full modules to complete and exams from February to July. After the exams, the next day we were off to Hong Kong. It felt like we were in a pressure cooker scenario where work was busy, most of us have family life to contend with and on top of that we had exams and the very next day and we were complaining so much. But when we reached Hong Kong, it was great and everybody loosened up. Credit to our (former) Programmer Director George Yip. He had excellent contacts in Hong Kong and we got to connect with very senior leaders. The level of people we met was fantastic, and the quality of the residencies was really the highlight of the programme for me.”"
We look forward to beginning the next chapter of our Executive MBA and continuing to grow the programme’s global reputation. In the most recent Financial Times European business school ranking 2018, our Executive MBA programme ranked 19th in Europe, up one place from the previous year.
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