Rémy El Youssef

Cambridge Judge Business School

“Healthcare leader & tech innovator, passionate about building impactful solutions that improve lives worldwide.”

Hometown: Tripoli, Lebanon

Fun fact about yourself: I am a big fan of baking and eating desserts as I see food as a great way to discover new cultures. I often brought baklava from Lebanon to my MBA cohort.

Undergraduate School and Degree:

ESADE Business School, Master of Science in International Management;

Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne University, Bachelor of Business Administration and Economics

Where was the last place you worked before enrolling in business school? Before the Cambridge MBA, I was working in our family business, a hospital in Lebanon, serving over 1,000 patients per month with a team of 200+ employees.

Where did you intern during the summer of 2024? During Summer of 2024, I was still working in the hospital in Lebanon.

Where will you be working after graduation? I am currently exploring several Healthtech and Fintech ideas to launch a startup. I am passionate about making populations healthier and improving access to financing for consumers and businesses.

Community Work and Leadership Roles in Business School: I am currently running the Tech Xlub or SIG (Special Interest Group) at Cambridge Judge Business School, which has been a really fun experience. What I really enjoy about running the Tech SIG is that we have complete freedom on what the club has to offer. Similar to a founder, you must find a way to understand what your fellow MBAs are looking for, while trying to use your best skills in order to deliver great experiences. Thankfully, I can confidently say that the student-led Tech club at Cambridge Judge has been successful, as it managed to deliver several speaker events during very busy times, including talks with fascinating scaleups such as FetchAI or big tech companies such as Google Cloud.

I am also very proud that myself and the other MBA club leaders, Hrithu Olickel and Angelo Berlingieri, managed to secure three MBA Global Consulting Projects that we then offered to the MBA cohort as potential self-sourced projects to deliver as part of the live-consulting projects required in the second term at Cambridge. These range from launching new B2C Fintech products for millions of users to designing the strategy of a new AI-powered product for a leading hotel management solution.

Which academic or extracurricular achievement are you most proud of during business school? I am very proud of the work I managed to deliver in the first term at Cambridge Judge, considering how demanding the workload and the networking has been across the MBA programme. If I had to pick one achievement, it would be the Cambridge Venture Project presentation, in which our international team of MBAs worked on supporting the launch and monetisation of a tech startup in Cambridge.

I was very fortunate to have a great MBA team that brought complementary and diverse skills to the table and so every problem we tried to solve brought forward very interesting discussions. Our MBA Management Praxis class was also very important for us to set clear goals and expectations for the project. Thankfully, my team was very understanding and flexible, as they didn’t mind me going to additional networking events which were instrumental for my own long-term career goals.

Thank you, Richard Carter, Libey Djath, Irene Zang, Todd Anderson, and Farah Labita for making this Cambridge Venture Project experience unique!

What achievement are you most proud of in your professional career? It was part of my role as Business Manager at Centre Hospitalier El Youssef, Lebanon, to maintain the reputation of the hospital and ensure that the business remained sustainable and resilient. Thus, the biggest achievement I have accomplished in my most recent role is that I have been able to maintain the most services running by reshaping several of our operations and adapting to new situations throughout the operation.

For example, one of our vendors is responsible for the maintenance of medical equipment and the provision of products needed to run our dialysis center. Due to financial difficulties, the vendor was no longer willing to uphold their part of the agreement, which exposed our patients to the risk of not receiving crucial medical treatment. Consequently, I ensured that the contract was enforced by reviewing the terms with the HQ in Europe, and secured alternative products by contacting NGOs, other hospitals, and vendors to minimise the risk of disrupting the continuity of service.

Also, using software solutions, I have modernised and digitalised several of the departments. Indeed, I had noticed that many repetitive tasks were still being performed manually, including sharing feedback to the management team and tracking the patient’s journey using written documents. This digital transformation in the hospital has greatly reduced the time spent by employees on manual tasks and has improved collaboration and work efficiency between stakeholders.

Why did you choose this business school? I chose to study for my MBA at Cambridge Judge Business School because it was the best school for me that combined the areas I wanted to explore which are not solely reliant on business knowledge – entrepreneurship, healthcare, and finance. My great learnings in these areas during my MBA year have been instrumental in preparing me for my future entrepreneurial career goals.

Who was your favorite MBA professor? I loved every class Professor Stefan Scholtes gave, from business analytics to innovating in healthcare services. He has the amazing ability to make complex subjects simple and transmit his passion for his work to the students.

What was your favorite course as an MBA? My favorite MBA course has been Innovating Healthcare Services given by Professor Stefan Scholtes. This class completely changed my perspective on how to bring quality and affordable healthcare to all, as the focus was not on using sophisticated technology. Instead, it involved creating new entities that have a business model focused on health outcomes.

What was your favorite MBA event or tradition at your business school? The MBAs at Cambridge have been very active at celebrating different cultural events – from Thanksgiving to Japan Night, Indonesian cooking, and Diwali. As I am writing this, I am also really looking forward to celebrating the Lunar and Chinese New Year events with fellow classmates. If you are a big foodie like me, you will enjoy your time with the MBAs at Cambridge Judge Business School!

Looking back over your MBA experience, what is the one thing you’d do differently and why? Our first University of Cambridge term is very busy, as you are trying to meet as many people as possible, get involved with the wider Cambridge community while working hard on many MBA subjects and courses, which are very demanding.

The only thing I would do differently is that I would try to take more time to appreciate what I am going through and focus less on minor setbacks along the way. Do not try to have a “perfect experience” – there will be moments when you can’t make it to all the events and that’s fine!

What is the biggest myth about your school? When applying for the Cambridge MBA, I contacted close to 10 alumni to get a sense of the community and the programme experience. All of them had mentioned how tight a community the MBAs are with one another at Cambridge. I can confidently say that they were right. Although everyone boasts impressive backgrounds and achievements, everyone is very humble and always ready to help. The MBA at Cambridge attracts many students that are also curious to learn about other fields, which has exposed me to many subjects that I had never even considered before.

What movie or television show best reflects the realities of business and what did you learn from it? I believe that The Great Gatsby reflects the realities of business well: The ability to persuade and build strong, reliable relationships are the most crucial skills that you can have in the business world, no matter the industry you are in. Also, no matter how much extravagant wealth and materialistic benefits business brings, we cannot omit that our strongest drivers to success are respect of our values and our inherent ability as humans to help those around us.

What is one way that your business school has integrated AI into your programming? What insights did you gain from using AI? In several MBA courses I have had, such as Strategy or Data Science for Managers, we were encouraged to use AI to brainstorm ideas or generate Python code. Many other courses also cover the impact of AI on society and firms. All those factors have allowed me to get a better grasp of how much AI will change the workplace and have allowed me to be more confident in applying these tools in my future career. The Careers Team at Cambridge Judge Business School has also encouraged us to use these AI tools as a training partner, whether it was for an interview, a pitch, or preparing a case study.

Which MBA classmate do you most admire? There are so many classmates that I admire because they have made my Cambridge MBA experience amazing. One of those classmates is Farah Labita, with whom I worked during my Cambridge Venture Project – the live consulting project in the first term here. Her unique experience as a Product Manager for Citi and her subsequent roles in the production of movies and theater plays in Indonesia, has given her a unique perspective on how to approach complex problems. She has not once ceased to amaze me with her ability to find creative solutions while always keeping a positive and humble attitude. Our team had a lot of work within the project on top of deliverables for other courses, but she was always ready to help and support us. One of the reasons I joined the Cambridge MBA was to meet people with unique backgrounds and to challenge my perspective, and she has definitely done that!

Finally, I also admire her ambition to expand the cultural industry beyond Jakarta after the MBA and to a wider part of society. Being surrounded by talented individuals who have big ambitions is a constant reminder of why we should not set limits to ourselves but aim as high as we can.

What are the top two items on your professional bucket list?

1) I want to get involved in entrepreneurial activities as soon as I graduate – this could be in the form of launching a tech startup or via entrepreneurship through acquisition.

2) In the longer term, I will be involved in the startup and tech communities of several countries in Europe and the Middle East, provide solutions that improve the accessibility to quality healthcare and financial services, and of course support the development of Lebanon to bring stability to the country.

What made Rémy El Youssef such an invaluable addition to the Class of 2024/25?

“Rémy has a fascinating background, with his family operating a hospital in northern Lebanon, near the Syrian border. He brought a unique blend of commercial acumen and a deeply mission-driven mindset to the class. Together with his study group, he has developed an innovative startup concept: an app-based service that links a portion of children’s pocket money to health-promoting behaviors, encouraging positive habits early in life. Rémy is a promising future leader in healthcare, poised to make a significant impact in his country.”

Stefan Scholtes
Dennis Gillings Professor of Health Management
Director of the Centre for Health Leadership and Enterprise (CCHLE)

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