How Warwick Business School Builds Strong And Diverse MBA Networks

When Simon Yang entered the MBA program at Warwick Business School in 2023, he did so with the same goal as many other graduate business students. Yang wanted a career pivot. Specifically, he wanted to jump from the hospitality industry, where he’d spent the previous four or so years, into tech or consulting.

As part of that goal, Yang participated in a tech trek organized by Warwick’s career development office. There, he met Luke Parker, a graduate of the Executive MBA program at Warwick, who started a position at Google in January of 2024. The rest, as they say, was fate, as months after initially meeting at Google’s London office, Yang began a position as a Programmatic Specialist at Google in January.

BUILDING DIVERSE CLASSROOMS WITH DIVERSE BACKGROUNDS

Yang and Parker’s initial meeting is a testament to the ethos of Warwick Business School, which is to build diverse classroom perspectives of individuals with different backgrounds to build networks. Parker grew up in a former steel town in Northern England in a working-class family. At 16, he joined the British Army “as a way out of the area,” Parker says. “I have a history of service in my family,” Parker continues. “My uncle and sister are in the police. My great-grandfather was in the Army in World War II, and I knew that I wanted to join as well. I can’t speak for other nations, but the British Army is probably one of the greatest social mobility organizations there is.”

Parker worked his way up and completed a year of training at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, becoming an officer, before spending a decade working various roles in Search and Explosive Ordinance Disposal, international capacity building, and combat engineering. Spatial data analytics became Parker’s expertise. But, after those ten years in the British Army, Parker wanted to pivot into more of a typical corporate role. He figured an MBA would be the best path toward that goal.

Warwick Business School is one of, if not the most veteran-friendly business schools in the UK, highlighted by the Heropreneurs Program. “I’m not knocking other establishments, but Warwick is the only university in the UK that offers a 100% scholarship for one veteran a year,” Parker points out. Parker won that scholarship and joined the executive MBA cohort in 2022.

Yang grew up in a family that traveled fairly often. As part of that, he spent time experiencing the hospitality industry and found it interesting enough to pursue an early career in it. After some initial training, Yang started at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group’s Munich office as a Rooms Division Management Trainee. He quickly worked his way up to a reservations executive and then a reservations supervisor. But, like Parker, he became ready for a career — and industry — pivot. 

Part of Yang’s ascension at Mandarin Oriental took him to the company’s London office. So when it came time to look at business schools, Yang honed in on UK-based programs. Yang heard of Warwick from some of his peers and saw how well the school did in business school rankings. “I also liked that the classes were distributed quite nicely amongst three trimesters, and it was what I wanted to learn in terms of learnings with courses like financial management and accounting.” Warwick accepted Yang into its full-time MBA program and he enrolled in September of 2023.

BUILDING DIVERSE AND INCLUSIVE COMMUNITIES

Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) is a focus of Warwick Business School. It’s a major point of emphasis when building its MBA classes across programs. The school approaches EDI efforts on two macro levels. First, the school emphasizes the importance of creating an environment where all students, staff, and faculty can be their true selves. Next, the school examines what and how structural inequalities exist at Warwick Business School and how it can deconstruct those structures and systems. The school has student- and staff-led Equality and Diversity Committees, An Athena Swan Steering Group, and a Race Equality Network. The school breaks its EDI themes into groups such as: Wellbeing and Disability, Race and Religion, Caring Responsibilities, LGBTQUA+, and Gender Equality.

Yang says of the “70-something” people in his MBA cohort, there were around 30 nationalities represented. “They all bring different mindsets and experiences,” he says. “It’s definitely one of the best things about the program. People from different cultural backgrounds work differently and think differently. And I think that is what you’re here to do — to learn and grow and step outside of your comfort zone a little bit. 

Parker says his executive MBA program had just under 20 people in the cohort and there were seven different nations represented, representing a diverse set of countries, from Uganda to the U.S. “It was this mixing of ideas and different cultures in this really small cohort that I think added a lot more value than the lessons taught,” Parker says. “And the professors there are fantastic.” Parker says he didn’t know how useful the classroom interactions with his student peers would be until he got into the program, noting his military background, which trains everyone to think and behave in the same way. “You are learning from executives with business experiences from Africa, the U.S., all over Europe, the Middle East, and Asia,” Parker says. “It helped strengthen the concepts we were being taught in the classroom.”

STRONG NETWORKS BUILT

This, of course, helped Parker and Yang build strong networks, which in Yang’s case, led to full-time employment in an industry he wanted to work in at a premier company. Coming from the military, Parker says one of his main priorities was to build his network. “The military is very good at getting things done fast and efficiency because we all think the same,” he says. “But that’s not how the world works. So moving into Warwick, I was really keen on trying to build that broader network.”

Parker mentions meeting Yang as a major benefit and example of what can happen by building that network. “I gave him some coaching advice about Google, and he just started a full-time role,” Parker points out. 

“My biggest tip to future MBA students is don’t be so hung up on the lectures and the results of your assignments,” Parker advises. “Be more interested in the fringe networking events, and around the group work that you’re doing as part of each of your modules. There’s lots of different clubs for whatever you’re interested in. Find time to raise your eyes from the assignments and lectures and look who’s left and right of you and mixe with them in a non-classroom setting, because you never know where a connection might lead to. I didn’t know Simon before I first met him on the visit. He didn’t know me. Put yourself out there. You never know where a connection will lead.”