Joanna Bailet

Alliance Manchester Business School

“I am hard-working, like to have fun, am reliable, and try to be positive.”

Hometown: Seattle, Washington, USA

Fun fact about yourself: My fun fact is I love to knit and knit a temperature blanket this past year!

Undergraduate School and Degree: University of Washington – B.S. in Human Centred Design and Engineering

Where was the last place you worked before enrolling in business school? Senior Program Manager at T-Mobile

Where did you intern during the summer of 2024? World Cocoa Foundation in a remote position

Where will you be working after graduation? I am still looking for a full-time role but I will be with the World Cocoa Foundation working part-time through the summer.

Community Work and Leadership Roles in Business School: Forte Fellow Scholar

2024 Imperial College Climate Investment Challenge Prize Winner

2024 Webhelp Case Competition Finalist

Which academic or extracurricular achievement are you most proud of during business school? It was going to the Imperial College Climate Investment Challenge and winning the Emerging Markets prize was incredible. First, I had an amazing team from whom I learned so much Second, it was an incredible opportunity to speak in front of a knowledgeable set of judges. Finally, it was nice to get rewarded for the months and months of hard work the team put into the concept.

What achievement are you most proud of in your professional career? I would say that one of my proudest moments was one that was more personal to me. I was struggling a lot in my second role and wanted to find a role that better fit my skills and motivated me more to show up and put in 110% to my job. I started to develop my skills as a project manager further, taking on more responsibility outside of my job description to learn how to properly manage projects and implemented these ideas within the team. Because I took initiative and pursued connections on other teams, I was able to move teams into a project manager role and it was one of the best teams I worked with in my career. I learned a lot and I learned that I have the resilience to push myself, teach myself, and adapt.

Why did you choose this business school? When I was looking for a business school, I wanted to be in a program that valued diversity in each cohort, and I wanted a hands-on learning experience. AMBS offered me both of these given that we are a class of over 90 students from 25+ nationalities, and the program offers three live consultancy opportunities. I was also lucky enough to receive a scholarship that helped me feel better about the financial investment of going back for a full-time MBA.

Who was your favorite MBA professor? Ismail Ertürk’s course on Leading and Managing in a Global Environment was outstanding. This course was a big learning curve for me and at the end of the course, I felt like I wanted to go back and learn it all again. I still think about the things I learned in that class because it applies so heavily to current events.

What was your favorite course as an MBA? I would say Financial Accounting because Jenni Rose made the class as interesting as it can be for those who are not finance-minded. Jenni runs a simulation each year that really helped with the “learning-by-doing” aspect of the program.

What was your favorite MBA event or tradition at your business school? Our student council has put on some incredible social events including a salsa dancing lesson. It was the most fun getting to dance with my peers and to see who has the best moves!

Looking back over your MBA experience, what is the one thing you’d do differently and why? I don’t know if there is much I would do differently other than traveling more and potentially networking more in different countries to better understand what businesses look like around the world.

What is the biggest myth about your school? I didn’t hear much about AMBS’s reputation or any myths prior to coming to the school. Maybe that was for the best because I got to make up my mind about the program and the school on my own.

What did you love most about your business school’s town? Manchester is an amazing, young, fun, and vibrant city. I really like that there is such a fun music culture, arts scene, and lots of activities to partake in when you aren’t focused on school. Manchester is also a great city to travel from and near the Peak and Lake districts for great nature walks and hiking opportunities.

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? For me, The Office really captures the everyday issues and challenges of modern business even though it’s been around for a while now. The show highlights how office politics, leadership quirks, and miscommunications impact morale and productivity. It also shows the value of authentic and genuine relationships, and the humor of navigating workplace stress and bureaucracy. From it, I learned that while efficiency is an important factor, the human element in business is equally vital for success and innovation.

What is one way that your business school has integrated AI into your programming? What insights did you gain from using AI? There are currently projects AMBS is initiating to integrate AI into the curriculum and programming. It hasn’t been formally integrated, but some lecturers noted this is a tool at our disposal we should learn and use as a tool. AI has helped our consulting groups and group projects to advance at a quicker pace and improved efficiency in a lot of ways.

Which MBA classmate do you most admire? I have trouble choosing one classmate because there are many people that really inspire me in this class and for different reasons. If I have to choose one peer, Thais Valderrama Muñoz is someone I admire because she always brings positive energy to every group. She is great at leading a team and helping the team make decisions to move forward. She puts herself outside her comfort zone at networking events and pushes to empower the women in our MBA cohort. I admire her tenacity, her passion, and her ability to influence while not needing to be the loudest person in the room.

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

Partake in an entrepreneurial adventure

Get to speak about my work on a panel of some kind

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

“Joanna’s professionalism, warmth, and drive mean that she is a delight to know and she is held in high regard throughout her MBA programme from her peers, clients and the staff team. Testament to this is her second place in the ‘Demonstrating a reflective, positive, can-do attitude’ category of the class-voted MBA Citizenship Awards.

How Joanna has embraced opportunities has been impressive and a source of much admiration. As a Forte Fellow, she represented AMBS during an MBA panel held by the Forte Foundation on the topic of “What It’s Like to be an MBA Student.” She also participated in a Climate Fresk workshop and secured a prized internship at the World Cocoa Foundation. Opportunities like this are a brilliant was to showcase Joanna’s eloquence, relatability and humility.

Joanna’s passion for sustainability shines through and she was part of a team competing in the 2024 Climate Investment Challenge, winning the Emerging Markets Prize worth £7000. The Climate Investment Challenge, hosted by Imperial College Business School, is a global competition for students to create innovative financial solutions for climate change.

Innovation. The Emerging and Developing Markets Prize calls on students to use innovative financial instruments or existing financial tools to address an underserved climate change issue within a specific emerging and developing market. Team ‘Miaro’, which is a Malagasy word translating to “protect” in English, set a mission to maximise the impact of climate investments and channel finance towards regions and communities that need it the most. Their product is a blended micro-insurance, which, unlike traditional insurance, funds local risk reduction projects, reducing insurance costs whilst increasing the financial resilience of local communities in emerging markets. Following weeks of intense preparation, the win was a wonderful achievement for Joanna and the team.”

Naomi Blackwell
MBA Assistant Director

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

© Copyright 2025 Poets & Quants. All rights reserved. This article may not be republished, rewritten or otherwise distributed without written permission. To reprint or license this article or any content from Poets & Quants, please submit your request HERE.