Simone Whale

EDHEC Business School

“I’m a relentlessly curious strategic leader with a global perspective.”

Hometown: Austin, Texas

Fun fact about yourself: I have played Ultimate Frisbee for 14 years and was technically a professional athlete at one point. I was paid a whopping $40 per game! My team, Raleigh Radiance, even made it to the finals.

Undergraduate School and Degree: University of Edinburgh; MA Hons History of Art

Where was the last place you worked before enrolling in business school? MedPage Today, a leading clinical news site in the US; Senior Director of Product Marketing & Strategic Operations

Where did you intern during the summer of 2024? I was still employed because EDHEC’s MBA is an expedited, 10-month program that starts with a new class every September.

Where will you be working after graduation? I plan to work in global marketing and innovation within a biopharmaceutical company or a healthcare-specific media agency.

Community Work and Leadership Roles in Business School: My official duties: I have the honor of being a Class Representative and I’ve been helping organize the TEDx event scheduled for May 6th. I’m also a member of the Public Speaking Club. My unofficial duties: I have led the organization of several social events, which has been a fun way for our class to share bits of our respective cultures. Highlights include a Halloween costume contest and a beach party where we all taught each other local dances – sorry, America, our submission was the Cha-Cha Slide.

Which academic or extracurricular achievement are you most proud of during business school? The Sustainability Impact Challenge was a project I’m especially proud of. This project spans from October to February and involves working with an assigned team of 4-5 people to tackle a real business challenge related to sustainability faced by a company. On paper, the challenge is the company’s deliverable, but there’s also the challenge of managing the workload and the client alongside your regular classes. I had the opportunity to work with TechLab, a French association that brings technological innovations to people with disabilities. Our task was to inform their next initiative of creating an Inclusion Score to communicate the accessibility of products through research and proposing a comprehensive go-to-market strategy. This project held personal significance for me, as my father is losing his eyesight. Being able to contribute to an initiative that could potentially help him and others with disabilities was incredibly rewarding.

What achievement are you most proud of in your professional career? My proudest accomplishment was building out a new business segment by integrating our website with our pharma clients’ machine-learning-driven marketing models. This complex project required significant data integration and coordination between external parties and all internal teams. What started as a single pilot in 2019 with the bare minimum of resources, grew into a revenue stream of almost $9MM in 2024.

Why did you choose this business school? EDHEC’s MBA was my top choice because of the diversity. In our cohort, I believe we have 26 different nationalities, ages range from 24 to 45, and the professional background is pulled from a wide variety so I can learn from people with the typical MBA sectors such as consulting, finance, and entrepreneurship, as well as people with backgrounds in artist management, theatre production, and the military.

Who was your favorite MBA professor? It’s tough to limit the choice to one, but I’d have to say Fabian Bernhardt, who taught one of our first courses, Leading People and Organizations. I really enjoyed his particular brand of teaching, which was very interactive via discussions and role-plays, and his almost Vaudevillian style of presenting was very engaging. His course offered tangible frameworks for leading teams backed by academic research and provided space for reflection on my own experiences to learn how I can become a transformational leader. Leadership is something I am passionate about in both my professional and personal life. Since taking Fabian’s course, I’ve had some very meaningful conversations with mentors about some of the ideas he shared.

What was your favorite course as an MBA? I’d have to say Strategy taught by Karin Kollenz-Quetard. The content of her course was immediately applicable to my professional endeavors. In fact, I have already been using the strategies and frameworks she taught us to prepare for interviews! Additionally, the way she taught the course was incredibly engaging. She pushed us individually and collectively to think more critically through various interactive methods such as online business simulations, audience polling, case study discussions, and a live business case where we had the opportunity to present in person to a real-estate proptech start-up called PropTexx.

What was your favorite MBA event or tradition at your business school? My favorite tradition is the international potluck, where everyone brings a dish from their culture to share. We printed flags for all the different countries and every person spoke briefly about their dish before we all dug in. Growing up in Texas to parents from Japan and Britain/France, I didn’t always feel my multi-cultural experiences were understood or appreciated, so it was an absolute joy to see so many different nationalities represented with everyone sharing the food of their own culture and enthusiastically trying everyone else’s dishes.

Looking back over your MBA experience, what is the one thing you’d do differently and why? Unfortunately, I tore my ACL and had surgery three weeks before the program started, so if I had a choice, I would certainly opt out of that experience again! However, regarding what was within my control, I would have made more of an effort to explore the area earlier in the program. At the beginning, it was such a shock to adjust to the schedule and re-learn how to be a student again that I didn’t always find the best work-life balance. I was already living in France when I started the MBA, so I took for granted those early opportunities, unlike many in my cohort from outside Europe, who were much better at seizing time on the weekends to explore. As the program goes on, you become much better at managing the deadlines, but then the pressure of the job hunt increases, so don’t take the beautiful Côte d’Azur for granted!

What is the biggest myth about your school? I’m unfamiliar with the ‘myths’ related to business schools here in France, but I would say don’t assume that because EDHEC’s MBA program is in Nice, with a glorious sea view, it will be a cakewalk! With this condensed program, the classes and assignments come fast and furious, so you have to really manage your time efficiently.

What movie or television show best reflects the realities of business and what did you learn from it? While a bit older, the film Office Space from 1999 is a personal favorite and a great cautionary tale of how NOT to empower your employees. Unfortunately, we still see these traits pop up too often because leaders don’t intentionally focus on how to be a leader and not just a manager.

What is one way that your business school has integrated AI into your programming? What insights did you gain from using AI? We just finished an excellent course called AI in Business, which Dr. Ghassan Paul Yacoub, the academic director of the Global MBA program, taught. We had to leverage many elements from past courses to perform strategic analyses of AI’s transformative potential for businesses across myriad sectors. My biggest takeaway from using AI has been that it is most effective as a supplemental tool but shouldn’t be used to substitute your critical reasoning. But in terms of AI tools the school has integrated, many classes now have an AI assistant trained on the materials uploaded by the professor. This is incredibly helpful when studying because you know you are getting answers related only to content from the course.

Which MBA classmate do you most admire? I most admire my classmate, Nanami Sumiuchi, whom I had the distinct pleasure of calling my teammate in the first semester. She is kind, warm, and always eager to share her Japanese culture. She is brilliant and an exceptionally hard worker. Nanami brings value to everything she does – and as our MBA Club Treasurer, she does a lot! I admire how she approaches every experience and interaction with an open mind but never lacks personal conviction. She doesn’t back down from a challenge or demur when she believes in something and yet manages not to alienate anyone in the process.

What are the top two items on your professional bucket list? My goal, which I hope to achieve this year, is to work in Europe, ideally in France. Secondly, I’d like to give a public speech in my non-native language. I speak French, Italian, and a little bit of Spanish, but I’m still working on getting up to professional level proficiency. Seeing my non-anglophone classmates give some truly outstanding presentations this year has inspired me!

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

“Aside from being a top-performer academically, Simone is one of our elected Class Representatives and she truly excels in this role. She is a skilled and thoughtful listener and brings wisdom beyond her years to build a culture of inclusion, integrity and collaboration in our MBA community. She was also chosen by the business school to represent the MBA on our Board of Governance. This is an honor which allows her to vote on strategic decisions for the entire institution. Her trustworthiness, engagement, maturity and sense of humanity make her a perfect fit for this role. Simone’s multicultural background (US, Japan, France) personifies the global community that is our MBA at EDHEC. Simone is a leader with a vision who wants to make an impact on the world. Her devotion to her career in healthcare, as well as service to the school, the MBA program, and her cohort, make her an exemplary leader.”

Sandra Richez
Director, EDHEC Global MBA

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

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