Meet The University College London (UCL) School Of Management MBA Class Of 2025

A Q&A WITH DR. JIM BERRY, DIRECTOR OF THE UCL MBA

P&Q: What are the two most exciting developments at your program in the past year and how will they enrich the MBA experience for current and future MBAs?

BERRY: We’ve recently launched our award-winning UCL MBA Labs. These labs are led by our students and focus on critical areas of development in global business. Our labs – The UCL Sustainability Lab, UCL Analytics Lab and the UCL Digital Hack – provide brilliant opportunities for current students and alumni to connect and collaborate with industry leaders on critical topics that are driving change across the globe.

We are also introducing hybrid learning opportunities into the program. The program was always designed to be flexible, offering a blend of synchronous and asynchronous online delivery with live weekly classes, giving students regular contact time and with academics and their peers, allowing them to participate in a really interactive learning environment and develop their network from wherever they are based around the world. This is supplemented by regular immersion weekends that typically take place in London, focused on topics of interest chosen by our students.

This focus on flexibility for students will take another step forward this year, as we introduce the opportunity for students to take some modules in-person here in London. Leading Global Teams will be the first module to be re-worked into an in-person module for those who wish to take it in London, launching this year, with further modules to follow in due course.

But it will never be compulsory. Students will always have a choice as to whether they want to participate in learning in-person in London, or to continue with our standard flexible online delivery mode.

P&Q: If you were giving a campus tour, what is the first place you’d take an MBA applicant? Why is that so important to the MBA experience?

BERRY: Given we are an online program, our digital campus is the place to start. This is critical because many online programS don’t offer much interactivity. Students in our program are always surprised by the levels of networking and interactivity that we offer as they invariably know others who have studied elsewhere and found online study a somewhat lonely experience.

Our intimate classrooms feature a maximum of 18 students, giving everyone plenty of opportunity to contribute to discussion in the live, weekly classes for each module they study.

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?

BERRY: Our Global Management MBA was built from the ground up in 2019, meaning that unlike other online MBA’s that draw their content from already existing traditional programs, our content and modules are purpose built, agile, and adaptable for modern life. We have already seen modules move and update with the times and markets, for example during the Covid-19 pandemic and the dawn of advanced AI. Flexibility is baked into this program, not just in its delivery but also in its adaptability.

Our labs are certainly very innovative, and our multiple award wins for these are proof in the pudding.

With our continued focus on lifelong learning, we’ve also introduced the ability for alumni to return and take additional modules which are not-for-credit. Our students have found this particularly helpful when they have changed role or encountered a new technology in their organization and want to dive deep into a new subject area that they haven’t studied before.

This both benefits our alumni, who can continue to develop their skills, but also gives current students and alumni the opportunity to continue to extend their network across cohorts, industries and sectors, helping our community to continue to thrive.

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?

BERRY: Making lifelong friends. We mentioned it above, but many of our students take this online program due to the flexibility and interactivity it offers with top quality academics at UCL. But they are surprised by the depth of relationships they develop with their MBA peers, making life-long friends in small and engaging live online classes, and through the in-person immersion weekends.

This is not a common feature of online program, which tend to be quite isolated and somewhat lonely experiences, and so we love to hear how strong the bonds are between our students and alumni.

P&Q: How does the program leverage the larger university’s commitment to diversity in building its MBA program and what dividends does this commitment provide to its students?

BERRY: With this being a flexible online program, students can take this program from anywhere in the world whilst continuing to work. This allows us to tap into a wealth of incredibly talented and diverse students from all corners of the globe.

We also have great diversity in terms of sector, too, which a range of areas represented in our cohort.

The live classes give students the opportunity to discuss the latest in global developments each week, too. For example, during the pandemic we had a number of people involved in pandemic responses, from medical professions, to logistics to vaccine development, each giving their real-time perspectives on what was happening, and helping each other to problem solve, which ultimately benefitted millions across the globe.

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

BERRY: Our program has a core focus on analytics. The world is full of unimaginable amounts of data, and many leaders in organizations don’t fully understand it. They also don’t understand how to talk to their data scientists properly in order to elicit the best information they can from the data available.

This all starts with the first module in the program – The Data Analytics Advantage – led by Dr Anil Doshi. Anil regularly is one of our top performing faculty, with exceptional feedback every time he teaches thanks to his enthusiastic, fun style of teaching. He truly sets the foundation for the rest of the program with this in-depth module that guides students through the basics, into more challenging areas such as building AI models.

He embodies everything we want to be at UCL – kind, caring, passionate – he takes the time to meet with students individually, and provide support no matter how simple or challenging the questions are, during and after his module has been taken.

Another faculty who consistently receives standout feedback is Rikke Duus.

P&Q: How does your B-school incorporate technology into the curriculum and how has it engaged students and faculty on the use or incorporation of such new, emerging technologies, for example like AI?

BERRY: UCL is renowned for its world-leading research, and we are no different in the School of Management. We have academics working at the forefront of technology – in particular AI – including Dr Anil Doshi, Dr Angela Aristidou and Dr Bart Vanneste to name a few.

These same faculty teach in our programs, bringing their cutting-edge work into the classroom, helping students to understand what is changing, how it will affect the world of business, and how they can harness their work to give themselves, and their organizations, a competitive advantage.

For example, Dr Aristidou recently released a paper looking at how large language models, such Chat-GPT, can be used to aid decision making by giving voice to underrepresented stakeholders. This type of research is woven into our curriculum and our extra curricular activities, prompting thought-provoking conversation from students in class about how such tools could benefit them, their organizations and their own stakeholders.

Next Page: Profiles of 9 members of the Class of 2025

© Copyright 2026 Poets & Quants. All rights reserved. This article may not be republished, rewritten or otherwise distributed without written permission. To reprint or license this article or any content from Poets & Quants, please submit your request HERE.