Business schools across the world have long admitted the need to attract more female candidates in a bid to shake the stereotype that MBA programmes are testosterone-fuelled.
For women already juggling a family with a career, or those not interested in the traditional route in financial services or consultancy, there has always been a question mark over the need for an MBA qualification.
With the recession continuing to bite, the growth in the number of female applicants to MBA programmes was expected to slow down, but the latest results from the TopMBA applicant survey show that it appears to have had the opposite effect: 41% of respondents were women — the highest figure to date. Motivations for embarking on an MBA also seem to shifting.
Although many still wish to follow the tried and tested route, 29% of female respondents now say they want to use their qualification to help them set up their own business. This is up from 25% last year.
The benefits an MBA can offer candidates seeking to break into senior management or move among sectors are widely documented but — contrary to the cliché — not all entrepreneurs start in garages and not all MBAs are consultants.
QS’s TopMBA Career Guide spoke with three women who have used their MBAs very differently.
Career change
Now a corporate finance analyst for ANZ Bank in Australia, Kate Webster used to work in healthcare recruitment. She used her MBA to make this major career change.
After training as a physiotherapist in the United Kingdom and spending four years working in public hospitals, she knew she wanted more business focus in her career but not which direction to take.
After persuading UK recruitment consultant Reed Personnel to employ her to recruit physiotherapists, she spent nine years with the company in various roles, including opening an office in Canada and moving to Australia to assimilate a newly acquired business.
She had already been advised to back up her management experience with a formal qualification, but says she wasn’t motivated to start her MBA until her work on integrating two businesses gave her a better insight into how business worked and how the board of her
company thought.
Wanting to develop her skills in corporate finance and the finer details of running a business, she enrolled for a part-time course at Melbourne Business School in 2005, and later took part in an exchange programme that took her to Stern School of Business in New York.
You can achieve a career change if you are determined, Webster now reflects, but she says it is important to be realistic when embarking on a MBA — particularly if you have a non-traditional background — because you may have to work harder than candidates with a business background.
‘I was starting from a baseline of zero in many subjects with respect to factual knowledge but never underestimate what you bring to the table,” she says.
Business in a male sector
Australian construction consultant Fiona Dunster almost left her business plan to collect dust in a drawer until a series of events prompted her to throw caution to the wind and make a change.
She wrote her plan just after completing her MBA but because of ‘lack of a ‘real’ need or impetus” she put her vision aside to continue in her role as executive manager for development at Cbus Property, a superannuation fund.
She had joined the company during the first of her three part-time MBA study years, and had found the two complementary. In 2007, when she had been with the company for six years, her chief executive passed away.
Dunster says this had a profound effect on her and, several months later, when she was awarded the State and, ultimately, the National Crystal Vision Award (as selected by the National Association of Women in Construction) for advancing the interests of women, she found her impetus and Fidun Pty Ltd was born.
She acknowledges that many successful and lucrative businesses are launched by innovative people with no formal training, but she would still advise anyone considering the move to embark on an MBA.
‘The networking benefits alone are worth the effort,” she says. ‘The most beneficial thing for me was the learning I gained through my interaction with my MBA peers — this opened my eyes and mind to ideas and experiences I never would have been exposed to otherwise.”
Developing markets
Russian-born Natal ia Bragina has a traditional background in commercial banking, but since she graduated with an MBA her career — which spans private equity, fresh pasta and corporate education — has been anything but conventional.
She says she was prompted to start her MBA by the Russian economic crisis in 1998 because it made her realise she needed a ‘more profound and deep business education”.
She studied at the University of Michigan — now Ross School of Business — and had planned to stay on in the United States, but because of the tough job market she accepted an associate role at a Russian private equity firm that saw her deal in a variety of projects, including launching a high-class Russian winery.
In 2005, she launched a fresh pasta company in Russia — which she says ‘just felt right at the time”. Not that it was an easy sell to the local market.
She explains: ‘The preparation stage took me longer than I expected because of the very strict regulations of the food production industry. Negotiations with the retail chains were tough because shorter shelflife meant certain risks for them.”
Bragina has since sold her share in the business — she set it up with three partners. She is now business development director at a corporate education business, which offers both games-based solutions for companies and consultancy on training.
She says that she could have developed her business skills and experience over time, but her MBA allowed her to achieve more, and more quickly, because of the new insights and the invaluable network of contacts the programme gave her. ‘It’s a great asset for any type of career,” she says of an MBA. — www.topmba.com