Hala EL SOLH

ESCP Business School

“I am kind, perceptive, and determined to achieve my ambitions through perseverance.”

Hometown: Beirut, Lebanon

Fun fact about yourself: I speak four languages: Arabic, English, French, and Hebrew. I am currently learning Italian. Languages are more than a hobby for me; they are a way to understand cultures from within and build bridges across perspectives.

Undergraduate School and Degree:

Bachelor of Arts in Political Science & International Affairs, Lebanese American University

Bachelor of Arts in History, Université de la Sorbonne – Paris IV

Master of Arts in International Relations, Université de la Sorbonne – Paris IV

Where was the last place you worked before enrolling in business school? Secretary General, Groupe Inter-académique pour le Développement (France)

Where did you intern during the summer of 2025? Not applicable.

Where will you be working after graduation? I am pursuing a role in strategy and business transformation consulting within an international firm in Paris, with a focus on complex, cross-border projects.

Community Work and Leadership Roles in Business School:

Vice President, Women in Leadership Society
As Vice President, I contributed to shaping the society’s strategic direction and external positioning. I supported the board in refining outreach to senior female leaders and provided guidance on speaker engagement and event promotion, particularly across social media channels. By strengthening our messaging and visibility, I helped ensure that each event reinforced the society’s mission of highlighting women in leadership and expanding meaningful connections between students and industry professionals.

Treasurer, ESCP MBA Consultancy Club
As Treasurer, I was responsible for overseeing the club’s budget and ensuring resources were used effectively. At the start of the year, I worked with the team to outline practical priorities, including organizing case preparation sessions for students targeting consulting roles. I also helped identify relevant guest speakers who could share real-world insights into the profession. My goal was to make the club both financially organized and genuinely useful for classmates preparing for consulting recruitment.

Which academic or extracurricular achievement are you most proud of during business school? I am most proud of co-leading a corporate consulting project with Eurogroup Consulting. It was my first hands-on experience in strategy consulting, and I entered the project without prior technical training in the field.

Working in a high-performing team, I quickly learned to structure ambiguous problems, translate qualitative insights into strategic recommendations, and deliver client-ready analyses. By the end of the engagement, I was not only contributing confidently but helping shape our final recommendations. This experience marked a turning point: it proved that adaptability and rigorous thinking can outweigh initial technical gaps.

What achievement are you most proud of in your professional career? I led a multinational project in partnership with the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the French National Higher Police Academy, supported by the European Union, to combat illicit trafficking of cultural goods in the Middle East.

It was my first experience managing a multi-stakeholder international initiative, coordinating government entities, regional experts, and institutional partners while overseeing a substantial budget. The project’s outcomes were recognized publicly and covered in media outlets. Beyond its visibility, its real success lay in strengthening regional cooperation on cultural heritage protection, an issue that intersects identity, economics, and security.

Why did you choose this business school? I chose ESCP because I needed a structured transition into consulting. While my previous role was meaningful, I sought greater intellectual challenge and business acumen.

ESCP’s international DNA, its strong consulting exposure, and its partnership with OpenAI signaled a school willing to combine tradition with innovation. It offered not just technical business foundations, but an ecosystem that accelerates career pivots.

Who was your favorite MBA professor? Professor Fehmi Ben Abdelkar (Principles of Finance).

Coming from a non-finance background, I initially approached the course with apprehension. Professor Ben Abdelkar had the rare ability to make complex financial concepts accessible without diluting their rigor. His structured pedagogy ensured that students from diverse backgrounds could build both competence and confidence—an essential foundation for any leadership role.

What was your favorite course as an MBA? Principles of Critical Purchasing with Professor Luca Visconti.

The course reshaped how I view luxury and consumer behavior. Professor Visconti demonstrated how luxury brands strategically challenge societal norms, while leveraging consumer psychology to create value. It transformed my perspective from that of a consumer to that of a strategist analyzing narrative, positioning, and market influence.

What was your favorite MBA event or tradition at your business school? The small holiday gatherings organized by the MBA administration.

These gestures reflected something deeper about ESCP: the program is not purely transactional. In an intense, one-year MBA, the school made deliberate efforts to cultivate belonging and community. That culture of conviviality strengthened the cohort’s cohesion and made collaboration more authentic.

Looking back over your MBA experience, what is the one thing you’d do differently and why? I would have more faith in my capabilities earlier on in the academic year.

Transitioning from international relations into business, I initially questioned whether I could contribute at the same level as my peers with corporate backgrounds. Over time, I realized that analytical discipline, cross-cultural fluency, and stakeholder management are transferable strengths. Greater early confidence would have allowed me to lean into opportunities even more decisively.

What was the most impactful case study you had in business school and what was the biggest lesson you learned from it? In our International Business Strategy course, my team worked directly with Jobvalley, a German digital platform connecting students and young professionals to flexible employment. Our mandate was to analyze a key competitor, Gojob, a fully digital staffing agency operating in France, the U.S., and Japan, and assess how it secured a €120 million strategic investment from Persol, Japan’s second-largest temporary employment group.

Rather than producing a descriptive competitor overview, we built a strategic assessment of Gojob’s scalable model: its technology-enabled recruitment process, international expansion logic, and value proposition to institutional investors. We identified how operational efficiency, data-driven matching, and cross-border growth potential positioned Gojob not merely as a staffing company, but as a tech-enabled workforce platform attractive to global capital.

The biggest lesson I learned was that investors do not fund performance alone; they fund scalability and defensible positioning. Strategy is not just about outperforming competitors today; it is about articulating a credible path to exponential growth tomorrow.

What did you love most about your business school’s town? Paris has been my home for ten years. Its architecture, intellectual vibrancy, and cultural dynamism constantly challenge and inspire me.

What business leader do you admire most? My boss, Catherine Bréchignac, was the CEO of the CNRS, France’s largest public research organization and one of the most prominent scientific institutions in the world. She was the first woman to be appointed for such a role. She later became the Ambassador for Science, Technology and Innovation, representing France all over the world.

She combined scientific excellence with decisive leadership. She made courageous and sometimes controversial decisions without seeking approval or recognition. I admire her conviction and her ability to lead institutions of global scale with clarity and independence.

What is one way that your business school has integrated AI into your programming? What insights did you gain from using AI? ESCP’s partnership with OpenAI reflected a strategic commitment to technological transformation. We completed a dedicated Generative AI certification and were encouraged to use AI responsibly in coursework.

The key insight I gained is that AI is not a substitute for thinking, it is a force multiplier. The quality of outputs depends entirely on the clarity of the questions posed. Structured thinking remains the differentiator.

Which MBA classmate do you most admire? Rather than one individual, I admire the cohort as a whole.

Each of the 47 students left behind established lives, careers, and families across continents to pursue growth. That collective courage, to reset, adapt, and rebuild in a new environment, reflects a level of resilience and ambition that defines this MBA experience.

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

1. Lead large-scale international transformation projects that create measurable, positive impact.

2. Continue lifelong learning, through further certifications or advanced study, to ensure intellectual growth never plateaus.

What made Hala such an invaluable addition to the Class of 2026?

“What made Hala El Solh invaluable to this year’s graduating class was not simply what she contributed — it was the standard she quietly set for everyone around her. In a cohort drawn from across the world, she stood out not through volume or visibility, but through a persistent, principled commitment to getting things right.

Hala brings a genuinely rare formation to an MBA classroom. Holding dual Canadian and Lebanese citizenship and educated in international relations at Paris Sorbonne, she arrived at ESCP having already navigated complex institutional environments in the public sector — spaces where decisions carry real consequences and where work must be defensible not just to a client or a professor, but to public scrutiny. That experience shaped something in her that no curriculum can teach: an instinct that analysis is only valuable when it is also honest.

I observed this most clearly during the Company Consultancy Project, where her team was engaged by the automotive practice of Eurogroup Consulting, a global firm of thousands of consultants. This was a high-stakes assignment — a real client, a real problem, real expectations. For some students, that context is enough to produce solid, competent work. For Hala, it was a reason to go further.

When the team’s early findings began to take shape, Hala challenged them. Not destructively — but with the specific, probing skepticism of someone who has seen what happens when analysis that looks clean on paper fails when exposed to the world. She pushed to ensure the conclusions were not merely plausible but genuinely grounded. This showed up concretely in the interview phase of the project: where others accepted AI-generated synthesis at face value, Hala questioned it, refined it, and insisted the team interrogate its own outputs before presenting them. Her standard was simple and demanding — the results had to be able to withstand scrutiny.

What I found most telling, as I observed the team across multiple checkpoints and workshops, was how her teammates responded to her. She was not the easiest collaborator — her style is direct and her standards are high. And yet her team relied on her judgment. They brought her the hard calls. They deferred to her read of whether something was ready. That kind of earned authority — especially when it coexists with a demanding style — is a rare thing. It means that people didn’t follow Hala because it was comfortable. They followed her because she was right.

In our individual conversations about her career, I saw the other dimension of her character: a genuine desire to create operational impact, not just analytical insight. She is drawn to the gap between knowing and doing — and frustrated when rigorous thinking stops short of actionable solutions. That restlessness is, I believe, what will define her professional life.

Hala El Solh made this cohort sharper. Not by being the loudest voice, but by being the one that asked whether the work was truly good enough — and then stayed until it was.”

Amaury de Buchet
Affiliate Professor of Entrepreneurship and Innovation
Head of the Corporate Consultancy Projects for the MBA
ESCP Business School

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