What is your purpose, and how does it show up in the way you lead? For Peter, an operations transformation advisor at PwC Advisory, that question became the starting point of his Executive MBA journey and ultimately reshaped how he chooses which work to take on.
Alongside work, sport, family and study are the cornerstones of my life. Managing them in combination with evolving insights from the EMBA has been a true pleasure. It helped me to grow both professionally and personally. What makes me truly happy is the theoretical input and stimulation the MBA gives me. At work, you are mainly focused on delivering something that leads to a predetermined goal. I find an MBA so enriching that it makes your working life – and even your personal life – more enjoyable, more interesting and more fulfilling. That cross-pollination is what makes life richer for me.
For me, intellectual stimulation and leadership development were the main reasons for starting an MBA. The coaching and the space for personal reflection in the Executive MBA Leading with Purpose ultimately determined my choice for the MBA at Vrije Universiteit. Throughout the programme, you are constantly reflecting, both with each other and with your coach. We started to reflect on our purpose and where our career needs to go. I find that this is woven into the programme in a very natural way.
What makes this programme so well suited to finding your purpose is the diversity of participants. There are people who, like me, work in consultancy, but also people from healthcare, social entrepreneurship, hospitality or NGOs. On top of that, people's backgrounds are also hugely diverse. I am in a cohort with people from Kenya, Venezuela and India for example. Those different perspectives really help you move forward.
The MBA starts with the question: "Who are you as a person, as a leader?" And how does that play out in the way you organise your team, which investment money you do or do not accept, how you view purposeful entrepreneurship? In the leadership track, that becomes a kind of canvas that you keep filling in as you go.
During the MBA I continued to shape my purpose in closing the gap in professional lives of people who not necessarily tick all the conventional boxes. If I can make a difference here, it gives me great fulfilment I have built a framework that lets me test whether my work, advisory roles and activities fit within my purpose or not. And if they do not, I am now far less inclined to take them on than I used to be.
If you, like me, want to further develop your professional side in a direction that suits you even better, then Vrije Universiteit is the place to do an MBA.
