Duncan Holzhall

EDHEC Business School

“15 words or 15,000, I’ll never have enough time for the full story.”

Hometown: Chicago, IL

Fun fact about yourself: My paternal ancestor, Leonhard Holzhalb, served as the Mayor (Bürgermeister) of Zürich starting in 1609, having worked most of his life as a textile merchant and negotiating several trade deals between Zürich, France, and Italy. Several centuries later, when my great-great-grandfather immigrated to the United States of America, his last name was changed at Ellis Island to Holzhall. Astute observers may recognize that name elsewhere in this article!

Undergraduate School and Degree: Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, B.S.O.F. (Bachelors of Science with an Outside Field) in Voice Performance and Arts Management

Where was the last place you worked before enrolling in business school? I worked at a boutique artist management agency called Étude Arts, where I served as the Contracts and Operations Manager for the firm. Here, I helped manage the contracts, travel, visa logistics, and payments for 25 premier classical musicians in the opera and orchestra industries.

Where did you intern during the summer of 2024? N/A. Since EDHEC is a 10-month intensive MBA program, I entered the curriculum directly from the workforce and will be returning to the workforce immediately afterwards.

Where will you be working after graduation? I will gain employment in strategy/corporate affairs with either a multilateral diplomatic organization (UN System, OECD, NATO, WTO, IOC et al.) or in the burgeoning field of investment migration. As someone who is deeply committed to global mobility and sovereign cooperation, both fields provide the opportunity to make a tangible impact towards these ideals. Business often outpaces government in innovation and efficiency, yet both must work together to make meaningful change, and the EDHEC MBA equips me to bridge this divide, translating best practices between sectors to create lasting impact.

Community Work and Leadership Roles in Business School: During my MBA, I was honored to be elected as one of four Class Representatives by my peers. Acting as a facilitator between the faculty/administration and the cohort has been a tremendously rewarding experience, allowing the class to have a consistent conduit for feedback and coordinating granular logistics on behalf of the faculty.

Additionally, I’m privileged to have been selected for an Academic Exchange with NUCB Business School in Nagoya, Japan alongside my MBA classmate Julissa Gomez. Not only is the educational and cultural exchange an amazing opportunity, but serving as an ambassador for EDHEC abroad is a responsibility I do not take lightly. Not to mention, I’ve participated in several case competitions alongside my colleagues, solving real world business problems for such companies as L’Oréal, Accenture, and Alcatel Submarine Networks.

Which academic or extracurricular achievement are you most proud of during business school?  Reflecting on my time in the MBA, I am most proud of my team’s work for the Sustainable Impact Challenge. Three of my brilliant classmates and I chose to work with Biohm, a British biotechnology firm at the forefront of nature-driven renewable materials synthesis. Looking to implement a fully sustainable business model for new factories on top of fully sustainable materials, we were tasked with creating a modular structure for corporate governance that can adjust to the local community values. Faced with an incredibly abstract topic that required cross-disciplinary synthesis where none of us had expertise, we felt lost. But within this challenge was an opportunity. Free from the curse of knowledge, we charted out a unique approach to an iterative field such as corporate governance. With much research, brainstorming, and dedication, we presented a solution that not only exceeded our client’s expectations but was granted an Innovation Award for the Sustainable Impact Challenge. The dedication to quality, lateral thinking, and willingness to learn from my team made me very proud.

What achievement are you most proud of in your professional career? During the COVID-19 pandemic, my fellow opera students and I had many existential conversations about the future of our art form. Reliant on in-person performances that were suddenly halted, the industry was in free-fall. But this presented an opportunity to rebuild the industry in a more forward-thinking fashion that tackled the issues of aging audiences and adaptability in the face of adversity. I decided to codify these conversations and publish them in a book, Voices of Tomorrow’s Songs, that culminated in a vision statement for the future of the American opera industry according to the young professionals entering the workforce. The most rewarding aspect of this book was not only the process and brilliant insights of my peers, but in seeing the strategic recommendations from the book implemented in real life to benefit the American opera industry (even if we were a few years ahead of the curve!).

Why did you choose this business school? I was weighing many different options for business schools because I wasn’t entirely sure about what I wanted from my MBA, and they all had some of the qualities that appealed to me: international focus and diverse classmates, high level of intellectual challenge, serious commitment to sustainability, and value for money. As I progressed through my applications and interviews, I found EDHEC towards the top of my list for all those attributes. However, the real motivation behind the choice was the individual vibe-check I conducted on the program. Coming from an unorthodox background for an MBA, I was nervous about being ignored for being unconventional. I had an instinctual feeling that I would not get lost at EDHEC and that the faculty would work to enable my success as much as any other student.

Who was your favorite MBA professor? Our Strategy professor Karin Kollenz-Quétard is hands-down one of the best teachers EDHEC has to offer. Her teaching style is a perfect blend of discussion, content, and real-life practice, allowing every learner to absorb the material. During discussions, she actively encouraged us to push back on strategic assertions that we disagreed with to highlight the multiple priorities of strategic alignment. The course content provided several easy-to-remember frameworks that will tremendously help when I return to the workforce and make strategic decisions in my future work. Finally, having the opportunity to put this into practice with a live business case for PropTexx showed us how iterative, difficult, and intellectually stimulating these sorts of business problems can be. Combine this with her undoubtable expertise in the subject area, and Karin is an unstoppable professor.

What was your favorite course as an MBA? Without question, my favorite course thus far has been Managing the Internationalization of the Firm. Taught by Louis Herbert, this class prepared us for uncharted futures of leading our businesses into international markets. We dove deep into the nuances of market entry, the advantages of alliances versus joint ventures, and how to balance the firm’s local and global needs. It resonated with my personal interests in global trade and international cooperation while challenging me to integrate all of my other education (and street smarts) to create coherent arguments and strategies. This class has been crucial to informing my career goals in such an interconnected world.

What is the biggest myth about your school? There is a notion that EDHEC is a prestigious and intensely French institution, and I found this to be true in some ways. The academic rigor and reputation of the school certainly merit the prestige, and the university unquestionably prides itself on its Francophone identity. Still, I found that the diversity of the school overall was pleasantly surprising. I’ve had the opportunity to collaborate with bright minds from across the globe, not just within the MBA program but also within the MSc and BBA programs.

What did you love most about your business school’s town? I cannot lie and say that when it comes to Nice, the name says it all! The weather and the beach are a sublime atmosphere to call home (even for only a short time), and there is no better place to sit and have a chat or quiet moment than the Promenade des Anglais.

What movie or television show (e.g. The Big Short, The Founder, Mad Men, House of Lies) best reflects the realities of business and what did you learn from it? From my professional career and personal life, no movie has better reflected the realities of business than Jerry Maguire. Indeed, it is a film that illustrates how results-driven most people are in the world of business (“Show! Me! The! Money!”). But beyond that, it succinctly demonstrates the long-term benefits that come from operating with a personal mission (“If this [heart] is empty, then this [brain] doesn’t matter”) in your business. To me, Jerry Maguire perfectly encapsulates how valuable personal relationships are to achieving business success (“Help me, help you!”), Whether working in artist management or helping a dear friend prepare for a high-stakes interview, fiercely advocating for the people dearest to me has brought me precious rewards.

What is one way that your business school has integrated AI into your programming? What insights did you gain from using AI? Recently, EDHEC introduced an AI for Business course taught by Ghassan-Paul Yacoub. Unlike other AI-programming in the academic world, this course was focused on the strategic rationale and analysis for AI integration into the business world. During the course, we dove deep into issues of ethics, data security, change management, and case studies surrounding AI implementation, preparing us to lead organizations in the strategic adoption of AI in the near future. One of the biggest insights I derived from using AI was its power as a research tool – if you understand the right questions to ask, you can find the exact data you need without spending hours poring through primary sources in hope of finding the one quote to support your claim.

Which MBA classmate do you most admire? Siddharth Maganty is unquestionably the most perceptive person I have ever met. He has a fantastic ability to see through to the core of any person and evoke the best from them, both as a leader and friend. He brings a remarkable humanity to the MBA courses and activities, where he asks the simplest questions that remind us about the big picture. He is a divergent thinker, and I find in him a voracious curiosity to learn combined with the sharpness to synthesize disparate concepts into wholly unique ideas. The business world needs more leaders like him.

What are the top two items on your professional bucket list? I want to work with someone from every single country (I’m currently at 39), and I hope to positively impact the lives of 500 million people (setting S.M.A.R.T. goals!)

What made Duncan such an invaluable addition to the Class of 2025?

“Duncan is among the top academic performers in his cohort, despite a background in the performing arts, which is not the usual background for successful business studies. Duncan was elected Class Representative by his classmates, and he brings creativity, humor, and a new perspective to this role. What impresses me about Duncan is his general knowledge, he is infinitely curious and open to learning, and as such he has really contributed to the highly diverse MBA community here at EDHEC. Duncan is involved in many extra-curriculars and is always there when we need a helping hand. For someone who comes from Drama and Opera, his ability to dedramatize situations and converse with people from all walks of life with his own personal flare is inspiring.”

Sandra Richez
Director, EDHEC Global MBA

DON’T MISS: MBAS TO WATCH: CLASS OF 2025

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