Cedric Roussel
Studying my MBA at EBS was an amazing experience, not only because of a top quality programme, but also because it changed the way I see the continuous improvement of my business knowledge. As a consultant, it gave me the fundamentals I needed to grow my expertise and properly advise my customers. After a few years in the field of management information systems, I realised that I needed to broaden my skills on more strategic aspects and an obvious choice to help me in that way was the EBS specialisation in strategic planning. Now that I’m heading a team of fifty consultants I have to tackle the challenge of employees’ motivation, development and performance. Once again EBS courses are helping me in that process. Beyond my initial MBA, EBS has become the perfect tool for a lifelong learning experience in business.
Kim Staeger-Holst
Doing an MBA has always been my dream and in spring of 2002 I started a concrete search for a programme that would fit my needs. At the time I was an expatriate and as I wanted to continue working during my studies I needed a rather flexible programme. From all my research it was clear that there were really few programmes that seriously took flexibility into consideration and Edinburgh Business School therefore became an obvious choice for me.
Shortly after starting my studies I moved back to my home country in Denmark and also changed job. In my new position I had to travel extensively and I always had my EBS material nearby. I have studied in countless airports and hotel rooms around the world.
In 2004, with only two courses to go I was promoted to country manager in France for my company and I had to move again. The flexibility of the programme allowed me to put the studies on hold for 6 months before finally finishing in the June diet of 2005. I went to the graduation ceremony in Edinburgh in November 2005 and it was really a great experience being recognized for all the hard work.
The EBS programme definitely has high standards and I found the quality of the material to be very high. Personally, I enjoyed the Finance course for its very concise way of describing the different subjects and my absolute favourite was the Strategic Planning course, which elegantly sums up almost all the topics of the other courses.
During my studies I moved country and job twice, and changed company once. In addition, I became a father for a second time so it was definitely hard work. I finished in just over two years of effective studying and after a while I found it hard getting used to not studying anymore…
The EBS MBA has taught me both the basics of areas that I knew less well before, like Organisational Behaviour, and allowed me to further my knowledge in areas that I thought I knew all about. Most importantly, the aggregate of the courses, aided by the Strategic Planning module, has given me the tools necessary to properly analyse and formulate strategies. Making sure to keep an eye on the big picture in a work setting often focused on fire-fighting and immediate concerns is extremely worthwhile today. Accordingly, I can safely say that I use the skills and theories learnt from the MBA almost every day and I am still very glad that I joined the programme.
