According to research from the Graduate Management Admission Council, two-thirds of business school candidates said that sustainability, wellbeing and equity and inclusion were important to their academic experience. This chimes with GMAC’s previous studies about the growing importance of social impact among b-school students and reflects a wider shift to such values, with 89% of millennials saying having a sense of purpose is very or somewhat important to their overall job satisfaction and well-being.
To find out how MBAs are helping students shape careers that make a positive societal impact, we spoke to two graduates from the globally renowned program at IMD Business School in Switzerland.
1. Choosing a career focused on personal growth
“I thought that a big job title and a good salary was going to make me happy,” says Carla Venter, who graduated from the IMD MBA in 2021. “But now I think if I can do something fulfilling every day—and with fulfilment comes impact on people—I’m literally happy to take half the salary.”
Carla qualified as a chartered accountant in her native South Africa before moving to London, where she pursued a career in finance. But she soon realized that a single-minded focus on making money wasn’t giving her enough satisfaction.
Carla studied an MBA at IMD Business School, a one-year program ranked as the best in Europe by Bloomberg Businessweek, which has a focus on personal development. For Carla (pictured), that gave her a much clearer picture of the things that really mattered to her in life.
“All of a sudden, I was forced to think about personal growth,” she says. “As in, what do I really want out of life? What are my values? What kind of career will fulfill me?”
By focusing on personal and not just professional growth, MBA programs such as the IMD MBA are helping students better understand the impact they want to make in their career. After that, it’s a case of mapping out a career trajectory that will allow them to do it.
2. Having a direct impact on others' lives
Once you better understand your motivations, it becomes easier to identify a career path that will help you fulfill them. In Carla’s case, her own path only became clear towards the end of her program.
Over time, and through the lens of the program, Carla realised that entrepreneurship would be key to helping her achieve her newly found career ambitions. “I really needed something where I would be working for myself. Where I'm building and making a bigger impact—rather than just working for someone else and making other people richer.”
It led to Carla founding Money with Carla; an educational platform that teaches people how to build wealth through smarter investing. Now, she can see first-hand the direct impact she’s having on thousands of people’s lives. “It brings a new level of fulfillment into your career."
3. Translating complex concepts into actions
It’s one thing to crystallize your career goals—but you also need the skills and knowledge to achieve them. For another IMD MBA graduate, Jasper Schakel, getting a grip on complex business concepts was the start of his journey to entrepreneurship.
“The best part of the MBA for me was the demystification,” explains Jasper (pictured), who has a background in mechanical engineering, and says he enjoyed picking up hard skills during his program. “I thought: ‘oh actually I can make a balance sheet’, ‘oh, this is how we do business development’. For me, that was the biggest takeaway from the program,” he says.
It meant that after graduating, Jasper was better equipped to co-found his water treatment company CIWI (Chemical Innovation for Water Industries). CIWI provides water treatment chemicals directly on-site, contributing to a more efficient and sustainable process.
Meanwhile, Carla says she has been able to teach the concepts she learnt during her MBA to her own customers. "During my course we do financial models and we look at compounding and retirement planning. They’re things that [some] people have never, ever had exposure to.”
4. Applying MBA learnings into real-life
But of course, studying business concepts in the classroom is only one piece of the puzzle. To truly master them, it’s important to apply them in a practical setting. For Jasper, the best example of that came during a class trip to Singapore.
“We had a simulation where we were the board of a company and a couple of eco terrorists had overnight destroyed the water treatment plant meaning that our factory had polluted the water. [IMD] had organized this whole simulation with actors and with journalists who were berating us that we had to fix the problem really soon.”
The idea behind the exercise was to give IMD MBA students a crash course in crisis management. And just like a real-life crisis, students weren’t even told about it in advance. Jasper says it’s a perfect example of the program’s commitment to practical learning—and it stood him in good stead for his future career.
“I really admired the level of effort they made to really give us practical experience and practical examples.”
5. Seeking support and mentorship
An MBA doesn’t finish on the last day of the course. The very best programs also act as a helping hand to students long after they graduate. That might come in the form of an alumni network or additional career support—but some business schools go further.
At IMD, MBA students have the chance to enter the school’s MBA Venture Award. It offers a financial grant of 100,000 CHF (around US$113,100) along with ongoing mentorship from serial entrepreneur Thierry Maupilé and professor of entrepreneurship Jim Pulcrano. Jasper’s startup won the 2023 award, and that support was vital for CIWI’s growth.
“The financial support we received out of the IMD venture award really helped,” he explains. “We also got advice about how to organize the next investment. At this moment, we have a couple of other investment companies that are interested in our solutions. So we're slowly building our company and making it bigger every day.”
Although Jasper and Carla have applied the skills and knowledge they gained in their MBA to their current careers, that doesn’t mean an MBA guaranteed them success. Instead, Jasper says that an MBA is a toolkit that you can use to create a bigger impact in your career.
“The school gives you certain kinds of tools, but you have the responsibility and the ownership to take those tools and make it your own,” he says. “Don't expect that just because you do an MBA, things will happen on their own.”
