Meet The HEC Paris MBA Class Of 2024

P&Q: What is the most innovative thing you have introduced into the MBA program in recent years? How has it been a game changer for your program?

Banchereau: “Our focus on purposeful leadership. Students are looking for more and more opportunities to make a difference through purposeful leadership. With that in mind, we recently added a new core course, Purposeful Leadership. We also have a number of core and elective courses that address impact leadership. They include: Diversity and Inclusion Strategy, Ethics and Performance, Globalization and Corporate Social Action, Leading in a Diverse World, Positive Psychology for Managers, Responsible Leadership, and Social Entrepreneurship.

In addition, we successfully launched the Creative Destruction Lab-Paris in 2020, an initiative that puts our MBA students on the front lines of creating or growing a startup. Up until now, it was dedicated to climate change, the HEC Program has attracted some of the most innovative start-ups in the field and it will benefit from the expertise of an impressive pool of experts from all around the world. Moving forward, we have just launched the new European CDL “Space Stream.””

P&Q: What have MBAs told you is the most memorable, signature experience they’ve had in your program? Why did it resonate so much with them?

Banchereau: “Students continually name our Off-Campus Leadership Seminar and the MBA Tournament (MBAT) as two of their favorite traditions at the HEC Paris MBA. Both events are very popular.

During our Off-Campus Leadership Seminar, students spend two days proving – and improving – their team-leadership skills during a series of increasingly difficult field exercises supervised by military-trained professionals. Just as in the real world, the Off-campus Leadership Seminar teaches them to lead in situations where they don’t have all the answers, where they confront obstacles that they’ve never seen before. During the seminar, they stretch their limits and go farther than they ever thought possible, learning how to leverage the strength of their team to accomplish a common goal. After each timed exercise, their mentor provides feedback about their effectiveness at leading the group and their methods of problem solving.

The program develops participants’ confidence to lead in all circumstances and teaches them how to motivate others to work toward a common goal.

The MBAT, renowned as the MBA Olympics, is the largest gathering of MBA students in Europe. Students participate as members of the MBAT’s core team, and take on the responsibility of organizing a three-day, multisport competition for 1,500 participants. Students are entirely responsible for the MBAT, including all of its organizational and operational details.”

P&Q: What have your employers told you are the two biggest strengths of your graduates and how does your programming bolster these differentiators?

Banchereau: “Our 93 percent international student body means that our MBA students graduate with a global mindset, ready to take on the business challenges of today and tomorrow. Not only are our students able to adapt and work well with other cultures given that they have classmates from around 60 different nationalities, but they are also open-minded and looking for new professional adventures. It is why so many of our students make a significant career transformation, whether it be changing function, sector or location or all three with the triple jump!

P&Q: What is the most underrated part of your program that you wish students knew more about? How does that make your graduates more valuable to prospective employers?

Banchereau: “Our location – Though the name of the school is HEC Paris, the campus is located on a 340-acre wooded campus, 10 miles (17km) southwest of Paris, from which the culture, history, and charm of the French capital are easily accessible.

Strategically situated in the Paris-Saclay Innovation Cluster, our location enables our students to draw upon the expertise of the cluster and team up with scientists to bring their technological inventions to market. Our proximity to Paris allows students to easily find an internship in the city and to take advantage of Paris’ location as a travel hub for all of Europe.

Many of our MBA students choose to live on campus, in one of our residence halls, which facilitates with group study and bonding with classmates. We offer individual rooms, and a small number of apartments that are reserved for couples and families.

Our Languages Center offers students the chance to practice their French (as a foreign language) or learn a completely new language. All of this is located in the beautiful surroundings of the French countryside, with acres of woods, lakes and fields to be discovered.”

P&Q: Who is a standout in your faculty or administration – the kind of person whom graduates talk about a decade after they leave? How does he or she personify your school culture and the best of your MBA program?

Banchereau: “Gonçalo Pacheco de Almeida, a professor of Strategy and Policy at HEC Paris, is a great representation of the excellence of our University. In the true spirit of learning and growing he teaches in a way that opens new perspectives for his students. Our facuty move forward the frontiers of knowledge to create new ideas that will shape tomorrow’s world and have impact on our society. Gonçalo is a successful embodiment of this.”

5 REASONS TO CONSIDER HEC PARIS

1) Paris: “Being one of the most densely-populated and ethnically-diverse cities in the world, Paris presents opportunities to gain exposure to people, ideas, and experiences from nearly any and everywhere. Aside from the incredible diversity within Paris itself, the proximity to and ease of traveling within the rest of Europe is something that I couldn’t pass up. Last but certainly not least, the proximity to some of the best restaurants in Europe is a huge plus for a budding foodie like me.”
Idris Bailey (’24)

“As I’m planning to change the industry, it was important to me that the business school was located near Paris, the capital of the beauty industry. This attracts me with science-based R&D activity, non-trivial marketing challenges, and consumer-oriented philosophy. HEC Paris has partnerships with the beauty industry leaders and I hope to get an MBA internship in one of such companies.”
Svetlana Toropova (’24)

2) Outdoor Leadership Event: “The Saint Cyr’s Outdoor Leadership Event is my most memorable MBA tradition. It is a 2-day event where students solve a series of increasingly difficult field exercises under the supervision of a military-trained mentor. I got to stretch my leadership and problem-solving skills and receive valuable feedback from my colleagues on how to lead effectively. I was glad that the school refused to cancel the event despite the pandemic restrictions, as it provides such a unique learning experience no classroom seminar can ever provide.”
Folasade Owoeye (’22), HEC Paris

3) Triple Jump: “I chose HEC Paris for its promise of career transformation. As someone who had worked in a specialized function in a niche industry for a long time, I wanted to embark on a journey that would help me explore a new career path. A lot of MBA participants from previous cohorts were able to successfully make double and triple jumps (changing geography, function, and industry) and this enhanced its appeal in my eyes. HEC Paris also has a unique 3-step career philosophy: “Know yourself, Know the market, Match yourself to the market”. As I spoke to alumni and did my own research, I realized that this was one program that I could really benefit from, given my background. And I am glad I made this choice!”
Arvind Rajan (’22)

4) Entrepreneurship: “After having worked on Wall Street for three years post-graduation, I am looking forward to exploring entrepreneurial paths forward. The incubator HEC Paris at Station F could offer me the opportunity to jumpstart any startup ideas I have. Additionally, the strong alumni network also paves way for mentee-mentor relationships where I could learn from successful alumni.”
Sophie Shen (’24)

5) MBAT: “I am most looking forward to getting involved in the MBAT. The MBAT is an MBA Tournament held at HEC Paris where MBA programs come to HEC to compete in a series of challenges to prove which school is truly ranked #1. Not only will this activity give us the opportunity to network with different schools, but it will also give us the chance to apply our new learnings while organizing the event.”
Elisa Leehan (’24)

ADVICE TO PROSPECTIVE APPLICANTS

“What turned my application journey upside down was changing the game from “What do they want to hear me say in the application?” into “What would I love to tell them about myself?”. It’s so easy to forget that it’s not a robot reading your application, but an actual person just like yourself. If you only met that person for 5 or 10 minutes at the airport, what would you genuinely love them to know? If you can answer that question, you can find your own unique voice within your words (which also makes the application fun for you to write, not only to read.).”
Monica van den Boom (’24)

“HEC requires a number of short essays, more than any other school I applied to. One of them concentrated on creativity, asking “What would do you if you lived a different life than your own?” I dedicated quite a bit of time to crafting an answer which was extremely radical, almost comically so. Think thousands of years in the future, gender bending, parent of dozens of “children”, a newly-invented neurosport, etc. Perhaps this imaginative response set me apart.”
Samuel Deason (’22)

“HEC has become a very international MBA program, and global experience is both important and a real differentiator for candidates entering the program. If you have lived or worked outside your own home country, think about what you learned inter-culturally and how it has influenced you both as a person and a professional. If you haven’t left your own country but have interacted with global teams, clients, service providers or vendors, consider one-to-two prominent examples of how you learned to work with people across different cultures, backgrounds, and languages. How did you adapt your own style of working and outlook in order to achieve mutual success? This can be very powerful as part of your application.”
Brendan Kramp, Fortuna Admissions

MBA Student	Hometown	Undergrad Alma Mater	Last Employer
Idris Bailey	Charlotte, NC	Howard University	U.S. Army
Jan Debets	Groningen, The Netherlands	Leiden University	Business Angels Europe
Kopal Gupta	Delhi, India	Indira Gandhi Delhi Technical University for Women	Goldman Sachs
Seth Hogle	Atlanta, GA	Lee University	IBM
Sofian Kerrou	Lviv, Ukraine	Lviv National Medical University	Dres. Jacobi GBR, Augentageskliniken MVZ
Elisa Leehan	Sterling, VA	James Madison University	KPMG
Michael Moison	New York City, NY	Georgetown University	L’Oréal USA
Huaiyao (Shawn) Qiu	Shenzhen, China	University of Michigan	Bloomberg
Jessica Schuett	Berlin, Germany	Macromedia University of Applied Science	Via
Yihan (Sophie) Shen	Shanghai, China	Tufts University	Barclays Investment Bank
Svetlana Toropova	Saint-Petersburg, Russia	Baikal National University	KPMG
Monica van den Boom	Bad Berleburg, Germany	Bishop’s University	Deutsche Bundesbank