By Clare Hyde, MBA2024
The last four months have been a rollercoaster when I look back on them. In the span of that time, I have graduated from London Business School with my MBA, completed an international move back to the United States, and started back at Kraft Heinz in a new role as the North America Business Partner for the Global Agile & Strategic Projects team. Sound like a lot of buzzwords? In simpler terms, I’m an internal consultant who works on Leadership priorities that may vary from figuring out the next place to grow tomatoes and navy beans to evaluating the optimization opportunities of our productivity project pipeline.
My mom asked me just yesterday if I would have been able to get into this role without my MBA. I considered the question. For many reasons, I truly believe I would not be in the position I am today without my LBS MBA.
Firstly, I was in the unique position to be financially sponsored by my company but not to be going back to the same role as in many consultancy programs. My sponsorship was set up so that there was not a specific place waiting for me at the end of my full-time MBA and I would need to dive into the network to find the right fit. Knowing this and despite my professional network being very US-centric, I chose LBS for my MBA and dove into it headfirst. With some luck, I was connected to the Kraft Heinz Agile & Strategic Projects team in The Netherlands. I completed a summer internship there and was interested in committing to the team full-time in Amsterdam. It was at that point that Leadership was exploring expanding the team to have a specific representative in the North America Zone. I was offered the role and I accepted and prepared to move back to Chicago in the coming months. Had I not made the connections to the team for my internship, there is a slim chance they would have placed me in that role without having spent time on the team for the summer. I never would have known about this team if I was at a US business school not to mention if I hadn’t pursued an MBA.
Beyond being in the right place at the right time, which LBS facilitated, I also thought about the knowledge I gained through the MBA. Everyone talks about the network you gain through business school, and I am no exception to that experience as shared above. But for me, it was also truly about elevating my business acumen. Even before my mother’s question, I had noticed since my return that there was a step change in how I view and operate within the organization because of my accounting, marketing, and strategy knowledge learned. Because of Ahmed Tahoun’s Performance Driven Strategy Execution course, I am able to speak at a higher level with our leadership and understand why certain business structure decisions are made. Based on what I learned in Anja Lambrecht’s Channels and Sales Force Management course, I was able to go on an In-Store Walk with one of our Sales Team Members and ask questions about Retail Media and the sales relationship, which made for a very engaging session for both me and the Sales Team Member. From Stefano Turconi’s Luxury Strategy course, I now see many of the trade-offs from the course being discussed for household consumer names and how it plays into the future strategy. I help challenge the status quo to drive forward the way we do business. And because of Aneeta Rattan’s Diversity Science for Leaders course, I am engaging more in employee resource groups within the office and being a better ally and advocate in the workplace. What I learned in the classroom is absolutely applicable outside and I thank these professors and many more for building such practical curriculums for their courses.