Meet The EMBA Class Of Entrepreneurs: Executives Today, Founders Tomorrow 

Oh, to be a fly on the wall during one of Franc Bogovic’s and Moustafa El-Baqqaly’s conversations. 

Bogovic, a Belgian impact investor, and El-Baqqaly, a London-based capital-markets banker, cite their discussions while studying on the Oxford Executive MBA as being the inspiration to found Aquitara, an impact fund with the goal of undoing the damage of Agent Orange on Vietnamese land still affected by the herbicide some 60 years after it was sprayed during the Vietnam War. 

“Aquitara exists because of the EMBA,” the co-founders note. It was during their EMBA-situated interactions that the pair began to realise that their skill sets “were two halves of the same fund”. 

Aquitara is the product of a meeting of brilliant minds. But that’s not uncommon at Oxford Saïd, especially not on the EMBA. 

“Incredible people come from all over the world and from all different backgrounds to embark on the Oxford EMBA,” says Helen Saward, programme director for the Oxford Executive MBA. 

“For some it is a complete career reset (American Lieutenant General Tom Bostick took the course) or it can be an opportunity to develop in their professional setting. For many it is the beginning or continuation of an entrepreneurial journey leveraging rigorous academic content, the Oxford entrepreneurial ecosystem and their incredible cohort,” she adds. 

IF YOU CAN’T STAND UP, STAND OUT 

Saward could just as easily have been describing Ailbhe Keane. A graduate of Ireland’s National College of Art and Design, Keane launched Izzy Wheels, an award-winning brand of colourful, removable wheel covers for wheelchairs the week after finishing design school, where the business began as her final-year project. Her co-founder is her younger sister Izzy, who was born with spina bifida and has used a wheelchair all her life; the venture’s mission is to transform wheelchairs from purely medical devices into expressions of personality and style. Or, as the sisters’ motto has it: “If you can’t stand up, stand out!” 

The results speak for themselves: products sold in more than 60 countries, collaborations with over 100 artists, and partnerships with global brands including Disney, Marvel, Pixar, Star Wars, Barbie and Hello Kitty. But scaling an international brand on creative instinct alone has its limits. “Izzy Wheels grew very quickly, and I found myself leading a global business with a background in design but no formal business education,” Keane says. Enter the Trinity Executive MBA. 

At Trinity Business School, Keane brought real challenges from Izzy Wheels straight into the classroom. “The EMBA helped me move from thinking primarily as a creative founder to thinking more strategically as a CEO,” she says, citing greater confidence “when negotiating with large international companies and making decisions about partnerships, pricing and growth.” 

A LAUNCHPAD, NOT JUST A RESET 

The EMBA entrepreneur is increasingly common. A programme traditionally billed as a ‘complete career reset’, as Oxford Saïd’s Saward puts it, is typically an 18-month-long journey to develop the skills, know-how and networks of senior leaders, but is equally impactful as a launchpad for startup ventures. 

Jyoti Pandey spent 27 years in technology, most of them at Oracle in Silicon Valley, where she rose from an entry-level role to Director of Product Management. She joined the Kellogg School of Management Executive MBA assuming her next step would be a larger corporate leadership role. “I certainly didn’t enroll thinking I would leave Oracle and start a company in India,” she says. “That came later.” 

‘Later’ arrived via Professor Mohanbir Sawhney’s Tech Venture India course, which “pushed me to explore the idea more seriously”, Pandey explains. Her idea was to develop ready-to-use software to help India’s government departments monitor daily operations, from city waste collection under the Clean India Mission to development works across district administrations. Pandey left Oracle, moved from California to India, and founded UrbanIQ Systems. 

“I don’t think I would have had the confidence to do that before my EMBA,” she reflects. “I came out of Kellogg feeling that I knew enough to start, and whatever I didn’t know, I could figure out.” 

The appeal of the full-time MBA to aspiring and early-stage entrepreneurs has always been apparent. It’s a programme that targets a younger demographic with less experience under their belt, in pursuit of an array of foundational skills to succeed in a variety of careers. 

As for the EMBA, the curriculum has evolved alongside a broader trend that’s seen ever-rising levels of entrepreneurship. In late 2025, LinkedIn reported a 69% increase in users adding ‘Founder’ to their profile. 

AN 18-MONTH INCUBATOR 

The ESSEC Weekend & Hybrid EMBA offers participants, “entrepreneurship courses covering scaling, lean startup and design thinking to foster an entrepreneurial mindset among participants,” the ESSEC Academic Director, Steven Seggie notes. 

But Seggie points out that the programme is not solely focused on creating entrepreneurs. “Our goal is to provide 18 months for our participants to incubate their careers and focus intensely on developing their future selves. If that means becoming an entrepreneur, we have succeeded,” he says. 

Seggie’s assessment certainly holds true in the context of Sally Lora. The ESSEC alumna, who runs her own AI strategy consulting practice, ‘Human Intelligence’, as well as launching ‘Big Bang Food’, a market intelligence platform for the European free-from food sector, is unequivocal when outlining the role the ESSEC Weekend MBA played in her start-up career. 

“The EMBA was the catalyst…Within the first months, I founded Big Bang Food…and formalised Human Intelligence as an independent AI strategy practice,” Lora says. 

Whether inspiring a business idea through facilitating meaningful connections between would-be co-founders, or accelerating an aspiring entrepreneur’s decision to take the leap with their big idea, the modern EMBA has become a springboard for those yet to found their start-up. 

LESSONS FOR SEASONED FOUNDERS 

Martin Bittner, founder of Redouble AI, had numerous years of experience as a full-time founder-CEO by the time he enrolled on the MBA for Executives at The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. 

Bittner refers to the on-the-job learning that comes with running your own business as “drinking from the firehose”. Yet prior to enrolling at Wharton, he recognised that “there was a lot more to learn to become a better founder and leader.” 

Of the lofty lessons learned and technical skills honed, Bittner makes a point of noting a sometimes-overlooked, but ultimately essential skill that his time at Wharton provided. “Completing a rigorous and time-intensive executive program on top of being a full-time founder is an intense experience,  but it also sharpens your time management and prioritization skills!” 

A similar recognition of the need for greater training in the face of a new challenge, also led serial entrepreneur Pietro Putetto to the SDA Bocconi Executive MBA. 

“I had always managed my company in a very entrepreneurial way, making decisions quickly across a wide range of operational and management topics. Adapting to a more formal corporate structure, with defined processes, governance, and reporting lines, required a significant shift in mindset and working style,” he says. Enter the EMBA. 

Among other things, Putetto highlights the access to resources and expert faculty as a major boon for him and his fellow EMBA participants. 

Dr Heidi Hiitiö, meanwhile, may boast the EMBA cohort’s least typical CV. “Most people don’t expect a veterinarian to talk about corporate strategy, organizational leadership and financial modelling,” she says. Hiitiö runs two businesses – WANNI Consulting, a strategy and leadership advisory, and Pinehill Goblin, which combines veterinary science with economic modelling to help dairy producers improve herd health and profitability. She and came to the Aalto Executive MBA to be challenged. 

“Running your own business is an incredible learning experience, but it can also become an echo chamber. I wanted to challenge my thinking, strengthen my strategic capabilities and learn alongside experienced leaders from industries very different from my own.” 

The programme, she says, reinforced the systems thinking that now sits at the centre of both ventures, an approach best summed up by her own philosophy: “I don’t just want to treat problems. I want to build healthier systems that prevent them.” 

VENTURES BORN IN THE CLASSROOM 

For Rodrigo Borges, the Creative Destruction Lab at Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto, played a major role in his decision to found his venture. 

“CDL put me in contact with many amazing entrepreneurs, with their mindsets and energy. It was an inspiration that also gave me the confidence to start Nrolled,” he says. 

Borges co-founded Nrolled, a workforce operating system for hospitality and events, alongside co-founders he met on the EMBA. Much like Oxford Saïd’s Franc Bogovic and Moustafa El-Baqqaly, Borges’ interactions during the programme proved to be deeply influential: 

“In the end, being in a room with great professionals can make a lot of difference for one’s vision.” 

Alice Liu’s venture was, quite literally, born in the classroom. After a banking career that included spearheading China Minsheng Bank’s first overseas branch outside mainland China, Liu enrolled on the NUS Executive MBA Chinese programme, and there spotted a significant opportunity to modernise payments. She co-founded dtcpay, a Singapore-headquartered platform that enables businesses and individuals to make and receive payments in both fiat currencies and stablecoins, with her NUS classmate Band Zhao, and has led the company as CEO since 2020. 

Granted a Major Payment Institution licence by the Monetary Authority of Singapore in 2022, and now building out its European capabilities following an Electronic Money Institution licence in Luxembourg, dtcpay stands as further testament to the power of the EMBA cohort. “Most importantly, the programme connected me with people who shared the ambition to build something meaningful,” Liu says. 

From just the handful of examples highlighted above, it’s hard not to see the value of the EMBA to both prospective and existing entrepreneurs. Between the networking possibilities, the ever-expanding offering of entrepreneurship-focused content, and array of resources (from faculty, to initiatives, to incubators) available to aspiring founders, it’s no wonder that each has been able to harness the program to further their start-up-related dreams. 

THE CONFIDENCE TO GO FOR IT 

Ask Ade Balogun what the Imperial Business School EMBA gave her, and the answer isn’t a framewor,– it’s self-belief. Balogun enrolled after fifteen years in strategy roles at the likes of EY, Nationwide and RBS, simply wanting “the skills that’ll help me get into the C-Suite.” Instead, she left founding Zourra Wellness Limited, a science-backed wellness company built exclusively for women over 40 navigating perimenopause, menopause and beyond.  

“I was never entrepreneurial and I didn’t think I had it in me,” she admits, “but the EMBA has given me the skills and confidence to go for it.” 

Victoria Wells would recognise the feeling. At a Carolina Women in Business event at UNC Kenan-Flagler, an alumna described the EMBA as “the greatest gift I’ve ever given myself”; approaching graduation, Wells says, “I find that I agree wholeheartedly.” Wells took the Weekend Executive MBA together with her husband, AJ and are the pair behind Stay Wells, a furnished rental company serving families visiting university towns, with more than ten locations around Auburn University and the University of Florida. 

Two English majors by training, the couple enrolled to master “the math that went into the scale we wanted to achieve”, and got far more than arithmetic. Professor Ted Zoller “challenged nearly every assumption in our business and helped us rebuild Stay Wells around a much more focused, mission driven model,” Wells says.  

“Because of the EMBA and the mentorship we received, we had the confidence to buy our largest property yet”, a $2 million, six-townhouse building in Gainesville, Florida. “The EMBA has reminded me that I am capable of doing difficult things and of building something meaningful.” 

Dr. Michael Pfenning tells a similar story from Mannheim Business School’s ESSEC & Mannheim EMBA. The SAP veteran had “always wanted to found my own company; I was just waiting for the right time.” The programme’s Entrepreneurship Module, and the contacts it opened to incubators and the start-up scene provided the nudge: “It showed me now is the time and yes, you can do it.” His AI-powered digital thread software venture, Elevating Patterns, has since closed a pre-seed round and signed its first pilot customer. 

For Diego Clavero, twenty years in the kitchen cabinets industry had built deep commercial expertise, but it took the INCAE Executive MBA to convince him he could run the whole show. “The confidence it gives you is very undervalued,” says the founder of THE KITCHEN, a Costa Rica-based company now delivering more than 800 kitchens a year and continuing to grow. “It helped me move from being a commercial manager to founding and leading my own business.” 

CHANGING COURSE MID-PROGRAMME 

Some founders arrive at the EMBA with one plan and leave with another. Eric Houdet enrolled on the INSEAD Global EMBA while preparing a management buy-out of a fast-growing scale-up. The programme had other ideas. “It gave me the confidence to change course. Rather than going through with the buy-out, I chose to build my own company instead, and that conviction is the single biggest thing I took from INSEAD,” he says. That company, EkologgIA, builds sovereign AI infrastructure for document governance, and its Doc Engine has been selected among the French government’s Top 100 AI solutions. 

Tars Van der Vaerent is a founder, freelance business analyst and, remarkably, a member of an internationally touring circus collective. he put his idea to the test inside the Vlerick Business School EMBA, building the full business plan for RAPP, an app that helps students study for their driving theory exam, as his knowledge-in-action project. “When the validation came back positive, the decision was straightforward,” he says. By graduation, RAPP had launched; internationalisation to the Netherlands and France is now on the roadmap. 

Few ventures in this class carry the urgency of Philipp Gschöpf’s. His start-up, Phinorm, provides an “HD upgrade” for radars, dramatically increasing the signal-to-noise ratio of radar data so that decades-old air defence systems can cope with the drone age. The mission is personal: “Part of my family lives in Kyiv… There is simply nothing else that’s as important as solving this right now.”  

The University of Chicago Booth School of Business Sokolov EMBA proved decisive: “I would not have had the guts to become an entrepreneur without Chicago Booth,” Gschöpf says, crediting a network that helped him assemble “an all-star founder team” and gave him “the right doors to knock on.” 

FROM FOUNDER TO CEO 

For others still, the EMBA marked the shift from building a business to leading one. Edouard Ferrari founded Allumee, which designs aerial light shows using hundreds – sometimes thousands – of drones, in 2020. “I enrolled on the Executive MBA because I was moving from building a company as an entrepreneur to scaling it as a CEO,” he says of his time at emlyon business school, which helped him “professionalise the way we build Allumee.” 

And David Barroso, co-founder and COO of Maven Pet, an AI-powered pet health platform, came to the Porto Business School EMBA as a second-time founder seeking altitude. “As a founder, it is easy to become absorbed by the urgency of running a business; the EMBA created space to think more strategically about growth, people, and value creation,” he says. 

Click the profiles below on to learn more about each founder’s story, and why the ‘E’ in EMBA increasingly stands for entrepreneurs. 

MEET THE EMBA CLASS OF ENTREPRENEURS 

EMBA Student	Business School	Venture
Ade Balogun	Imperial Business School	Zourra Wellness Limited
David Barroso	Porto Business School	Maven Pet
Martin Bittner	The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania	Redouble AI
Franc Bogovic & Moustafa El-Baqqaly	Saïd Business School, University of Oxford	Aquitara Impact Fund I
Rodrigo Borges	Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto	Nrolled
Diego Clavero	INCAE Business School	THE KITCHEN
Edouard Ferrari	emlyon business school	Allumee
Philipp Gschöpf	University of Chicago, Booth School of Business	Phinorm
Dr Heidi Hiitiö	Aalto University Executive Education	WANNI Consulting & Pinehill Goblin
Eric Houdet	INSEAD	EkologgIA
Ailbhe Keane	Trinity Business School	Izzy Wheels
Alice Liu	NUS Business School	dtcpay
Sally Lora	ESSEC Business School	Big Bang Food & Human Intelligence
Jyoti Pandey	Kellogg School of Management	UrbanIQ Systems
Dr. Michael Pfenning	Mannheim Business School	Elevating Patterns GmbH
Pietro Putetto	SDA Bocconi School of Management	Politecna Europa Srl
Tars Van der Vaerent	Vlerick Business School	RAPP
Victoria Wells	UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School	Stay Wells

NEXT PAGE: Ade Balogun, Imperial Business School 

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