Abigail Irozuru 

“Retired Olympic athlete, who adores fun fitness, passionate about equipping people to live their best”

Hometown: Manchester, United Kingdom

Fun Fact About Yourself: I used to run and jump into a sandpit for a living!

Undergraduate School and Major: UCL Laws 2012; AMBS MBA 2026

Most Recent Employer and Job Title: British Athletics, Athlete

What makes Manchester such a great place to earn an MBA degree?

It’s my hometown. I’m not here for the sunshine, of course, but my family are here and the AMBS’ three big hands-on consultancy projects was the icing on top of the cake!

Aside from your classmates and location, what was the key part of Alliance Manchester’s MBA curriculum and programming that led you to choose this business school and why was it so important to you?

The consultancy projects! I love to get stuck in to things that I do; I’m a woman of action, so these core aspects of the program absolutely represent everything I desire to be and do, particularly the Social Impact Project, which is such a feel-good, give-back opportunity.

What course, club or activity have you enjoyed the most at Alliance Manchester? 

I really enjoyed the fun and games at Brathay! It was a good bonding experience with my peers and an opportunity to know people away from the classroom or lecture halls.

Alliance Manchester is known for its hands-on consultancy projects. Tell us a little bit about a project you worked on? What did you learn that will make you a better professional?

I’m yet to write a blog on this, but I learned a lot about group-work and diverse opinions and cultures. We grew together as we learned to be honest and a ‘critical friend’ to one another when we weren’t pulling our weight or doing our best work, and we learned to be compassionate when one of us maybe needed to take a step back from fatigue or for personal reasons. It was a great push and pull interaction. I also found the project writing lessons and implementation really helpful as a solid framework for future reporting – to be more analytical – look at the numbers, not just the qualitative data, which I’m used to as somebody who enjoys languages and words. I found that I learned how to create graphs and charts on Excel in a way that was easier than I expected through peer-learning. Finally, of course, the interaction with the client was a powerful learning experience – to ensure we focused on the CEO’s question, or the hidden client, and addressed that head-on in presentation, conversations and reports.

Describe your biggest accomplishment in your career so far:

Becoming an Olympic finalist after almost a decade of trying and failing, and being elected to the BOA and UKA Athlete Commissions.

Describe your biggest accomplishment in Alliance Manchester’s MBA program so far:

Completing the Social Impact Project with such positive feedback from all parties involved!