But intercultural experience took her impressive career from Frankfurt to the wide world: she’s spent the past seven months in São Paulo at LATAM Airlines, the low-cost Brazilian carrier.
“The MBA experience gave me the courage,” says the 2015 graduate of Barcelona’s IESE Business School. She feasted on the cohort’s 60 nationalities. “The diverse and international experience at IESE has been crucial,” Victoria says.
Most schools claim they are multicultural, but where IESE stands out is that it offers students a smorgasbord of international immersion.
MBAs can take exchanges to 30 other universities in Europe, the US and Asia and spend two weeks in New York, Nairobi, Shanghai or São Paulo, according to Franz Heukamp, associate dean for MBA programs.
“Those cities offer something unique,” he says: focuses on either finance (NYC), logistics (Shanghai), emerging markets (São Paulo) and African business (Nairobi). “They influence the world economy.”
An initial week in class lays the foundation to understanding the local business environment; the second is spent working on a project for a local firm, says Victoria. “It was a unique opportunity to learn about doing business in emerging markets.”
In Nairobi, she took on local students in a negotiation exercise, visited a project in the Kibera slums, and completed a “retail safari” on local markets. There were also heated case discussions on corruption and “bride price”, where a man pays his future wife’s family for her hand in marriage. “Africa is full of challenges, but all of them represent an opportunity,” she says.
It is not just the students that value overseas experience but recruiters, too, says Franz. “That’s absolutely what they want…We have lots of companies that come on campus because they see it’s diverse.”
To successfully seize these opportunities, MBAs need to develop a deep understanding of cultural differences, says Nils Eigenbrod, an IESE MBA candidate, who spent his exchange term at Pennsylvania’s Wharton School in the US.
“The most valuable aspect was the combination of an excellent academic environment, especially in the fields of entrepreneurship and finance, and experiencing a different culture,” says Nils, who previously worked as a marketing consultant in Wolfsburg, Germany.
“Moreover, I highly appreciated the opportunity to explore a new country while meeting new, inspiring people.” Such diversity enhances the learning experience, believes Franz, who is also a professor of managerial decision sciences. “There is value in listening to people with diverse perspectives,” he says.
For Victoria, the experiential overseas experiences are among the most valued of her MBA.
“It’s one thing learning in the classroom in Barcelona, but being in a different country with exposure to the culture and business environment was simply unique and a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”
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