Women in Business: Enhancing my leadership skills

By Maelle Garda, MiM 2023

The opportunity to enhance my leadership skills both from an academic and practical point of view was among the many reasons I came to LBS.

That is why, when I arrived here and chose the different clubs I would take part in, I also decided to apply for a leadership position or what we call an “Executive Committee” role within the Women in Business Club.

Being a project manager in the World Ready Women association, I was already committed to the promotion of women and girls in their professional journey in my engineering school prior to LBS, so joining WiB seemed like the right path for me. I really wanted to keep up supporting other women in their journey while having the chance to acquire new skills and meet outstanding people. When I took on the Sponsorship leadership role for the annual WiB flagship conference, I knew I would be able to leverage all the advantages brought by the WiB community to nurture my personal and professional development.

As a graduate master’s student, this role has offered me the to jump into the professional world by closely working with more experienced students, and reaching out to external companies and organizations while creating new relationships. This is essential to increase the scope of the Equall Conference, to make it a major event not only in LBS but also in the whole community of people supporting gender equity in the business. Bringing in sponsors for the conference and then organizing it has been incredibly rewarding as we got to see the very positive results of the work undertaken during the year.

This experience has also been a great way to enhance different skills ranging from communication to management ones in such a short period of time. What I enjoyed the most about my role in the WiB Conference team was discovering and dealing with all the different stakes (logistics, legal issues, marketing publications) of the relationship with our major sponsor Accenture. I could therefore work with all the WiB teams and be an anchor for Accenture within the club to enhance their sponsorship. This task was even more challenging since our senior ExCo has been abroad since the beginning of the year. I now know the “behind-the-scenes” of leading the relationship with a sponsor.

Even though the month preceding the event was quite intense, thanks to the help and support of everyone among the ExCo team members of the Women in Business Club and more especially the Conference team, it was easy to balance the responsibilities given through the club with the academic workload, the recruiting process and other personal commitments.

Finally, I can only advise anyone to take on a leadership position as it will be a more than beneficial experience.

If you would like to know more about my experience, feel free to reach out to me via email at mgarda.mim2023@london.edu or LinkedIn!

For further information regarding Women in Business, please visit our Women at LBS page here.