Sloan Fellowship alumni profiles

The Sloan Fellowship enables ambitious senior managers, business people and entrepreneurs to accelerate their careers, change career direction or start their own businesses. Read what our alumni have to say…

Sian Thornthwaite, Sloan Fellow 2006
Managing Director, Tpi Ltd

"Prior to undertaking the Sloan Fellowship, I had been typecast and known for a very specialist area of transport planning. I decided to take the programme as a means of breaking away from this typecasting and broadening my opportunities in a way that would allow me to incorporate my varied professional and voluntary experience more effectively.

Since graduating, I have taken on a Managing Director role with a small engineering consultancy. I find that I draw on my experiences from Sloan on a day to day basis in varying ways. This role could definitely be used as a Sloan case study, as I doubt there are any of the core courses from which I have not had to draw on at some time over the past eight months.

The calibre of the lecturing is excellent – and the diversity of opportunities from electives to clubs means that a year does not feel like enough. The Sloan year provides the foundations to enable you to make changes, and gives you a network of people going forward that can help. Whatever the question – somewhere a Sloan is likely to have the answer!  The School and the programme encompass a real 'can do attitude', which does carry forward – if fellow students can do things – why don't you?"

Hugh Wood, Sloan Fellow 2006
Chief Marketing Officer, Pizza Hut UK

"I came to the Sloan Fellowship for some time out to reflect on my career and to stretch myself intellectually.  I have always enjoyed studying and my thinking was that if I was going to do a general management programme, the Sloan Fellowship at London Business School was simply the best programme available in Europe for experienced managers.

On completing the programme, the most immediate benefit I have experienced is that I am far more self-confident and savvier in terms of career management. My strategic thinking is much sharper, I have a broader perspective of business and I am more open to different opportunities.

I am now in a new role as Chief Marketing Officer for Pizza Hut UK.  In terms of my level of responsibility, it is quite a big jump up from where I was previously. It is a retail business that has had a very challenging couple of years, and it is very much my responsibility to turn it around.

The Sloan year was one of the most, if not the most, enjoyable years of my life, certainly intellectually. It is very rare that you meet a group of such stimulating, highly experienced professionals from a broad range of industries and make a new circle of friends further on in your career.  The amount you can learn from your classmates is an experience in itself."

Radhika Chadwick, Sloan Fellow 2005
Director, EDS

"I had wanted to study a post-graduate programme for some years, but an MBA just didn't seem right. After much soul-searching, I found the Sloan Fellowship... and it instantly clicked. The programme offered me the chance to learn from highly accomplished faculty and fellow students, and to give my academic muscles the stretch that they needed.

My experiences on the Sloan Fellowship were very positive. I did it at the right time personally and professionally, so I had a lot to gain from it and I feel that it was quite a transformational programme.

The Sloan experience is really about helping you to unearth your own aspirations. Prior to Sloan, I was on a certain trajectory with my career that would have taken me to a certain destination, but I wasn't quite sure that was the right destination. I felt as though before I got too far into my career, I needed to shake things up a bit to see if the pieces fell into the same place. What I wanted to shake up was my personal ambition and to test myself on what I really wanted. After the programme, I moved from a functional role in business strategy to a general management role.

The Sloan Fellowship will be a challenge in more ways than you imagine. I would recommend this programme to anyone who believes in constantly re-evaluating their past (however successful!) in order to transform their future."

Malgorzata Grzyb, Sloan Fellow 2005
Commercial Manager, London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games (LOCOG)

"I found the Sloan Fellowship challenging and stimulating, both in terms of the academic rigour that it presents and also in terms of personal development. I wanted to change the direction of my career, but was unclear as to what that new direction should be and wanted to use Sloan as an opportunity to explore other options. The programme is so broad in content and with so many diverse people in the class; it opened up new areas and topics that I had never been exposed to previously.

The part of the programme that undoubtedly contributed most to my success post-Sloan was my individual project. I chose to write my project for the London 2012 Olympic bid team. I made this decision a few months before London was announced as the host city for the 2012 Games, so it was a high-risk strategy. But I knew that if the Games were awarded to London, I wanted to work with the team and be part of the project.

Fortunately, the risk paid off. Thanks to my project work, I had a significant advantage during the rigorous recruitment process as I had gained considerable knowledge and practical insights than probably most other applicants did. Close to 800 people applied for my position, so I certainly give a lot of credit to my Sloan project.

I am now working as a Commercial Manager at LOCOG. My work is closely related to my project; so right from day one I knew what the key issues were and what needed to be tackled. The fact that I had previously been able to talk directly to the bid team and to the other stakeholders of the Games, really gave me an in-depth knowledge of all the commercial aspects.

I am definitely changed post-Sloan. I am a more all-round business person and have developed a greater breadth of knowledge across areas that I had previously had limited exposure to. Through London Business School, I have had contact with so many people from different industries, nationalities and cultures and at different stages of their career, which has had a lasting effect on how I approach new business challenges today. I now find myself asking questions and exploring areas that I wouldn't have thought to explore before."

Olivia Dickson, Sloan Fellow 2005
Olivia holds a portfolio of roles, including two commercial Non-Executive Directorships and two public appointments to Board Committees

"The Sloan programme enabled me to put my experience as a Managing Director with JP Morgan and a Senior Adviser to the Financial Services Authority into a much broader context. The demands of the programme, both social and academic, provoked a deeper self-awareness. I came to understand the personal characteristics which drive me forward and those which hold me back. As a result, I was able to evaluate the many new career options which opened up for me more effectively. I left the London Business School with a renewed sense of ambition, confidence and determination. Finally, I felt equipped to make significant changes in my life. I was ready to set some new and challenging career goals and to take the first step in a new direction. Shortly after completing the programme I was appointed as a Non-Executive Director to the Board of Aon Limited."

Alain Vertès, Sloan Fellow 2004
Global Alliance Director, F. Hoffmann-La Roche

"Imagining and discovering are the functions that my scientific doctorate prepared me to perform, and I have carried these out with great enthusiasm over the past 12 years, starting from the research bench and continuing on to the business realms of strategic alliances. Joining the Sloan Fellowship was nevertheless a critical decision for my career. To combine business and research skills is, in my view, necessary to enable me to act at the strategic heart of the pharmaceutical, health care and biotech arena. My goal is to maximise the impact of discoveries from the discrete, sometimes isolated environment of a research laboratory, and bring them to the market place. Moreover, this project received very good support from my supervisors and mentors at Pfizer.

I wanted a challenging, international experience in a prestigious European business school. The exclusive environment of the Sloan Fellowship answered all my criteria. Not only was I taught by the best professors London Business School has to offer, but I was also exposed to world class speakers, such as Ian Harvey, former CEO BTG plc and Sir Martin Sorrell, CEO, WPP Group plc, representing a large variety of industries. Furthermore, the class members as a group provide an impressive wealth of personal and professional experiences that truly contribute to making the Sloan Fellowship a genuine transforming platform. I am truly amazed by my fellow students and LBS alumni: everyone has unique insights to share.

I feel the Sloan Fellowship journey has quickly taken me to higher grounds, on both a professional and on a personal level. The balance achieved by the overall design of the programme is a key attribute of the Sloan experience. What's more, the academic learning is reinforced by an international assignment to gain hands-on experience of business and macroeconomic issues. A project in a strategy government institute in Australia and the opportunity to interact in Argentina with the central bank, among others, established sound foundations for me to address new challenges in finance, economics, organisation behaviour and strategy. By design, I complemented this practical experience through focusing my MSc thesis on finance, one of the main strengths of the School, and biotechnology for the private equity industry (including seed funding).

I have found the Sloan Fellowship to be an invaluable fast-paced vector to challenge and stretch my abilities towards more ambitious life and professional choices.

The transition back to the industrial world is a unique period where the gap between the theoretical knowledge acquired at London Business School and practical business issues can be closed. For me, this implementation phase has been facilitated by the strong interest that my direct collaborators and supervisors expressed in my academic sabbatical year activities. To this end, the lines of thought that I reported in my thesis constituted a natural link. Likewise, through the involvement in global teams to review and optimise business processes, the ability to connect one's operational experience and, for example, learnings in organisation behaviour, governance, leadership, finance, or strategy, is not only an exciting challenge, but also a great opportunity to share expertise to the benefit of my colleagues and employer. I feel that my application in the workplace of the multifaceted skills and knowledge that I acquired during the Sloan Fellowship can influence both my colleagues and myself to achieve greater contributions."

Hirotoshi Tamura, Sloan Fellow 2004
Senior Manager for Corporate Planning, Mizuho Financial Group Inc.

"Before attending London Business School, most of my 15-year business career had been concerned with the financial derivatives business. My experience and knowledge had been concentrated in the field of finance and I had a strong desire to acquire a more balanced range of skills and to become a successful manager for a large company.  I was fortunate to have the opportunity to join the Sloan Fellowship as a company sponsored student.

The Sloan experience was beyond my expectations. It boosted my core competences, made my learning curve steeper and recharged my batteries. After Sloan, I was assigned to a challenging new position to produce strategic options for the parent company of one of the largest financial conglomerates in Japan. Now I find fulfilment in contributing to important corporate-level decisions by making the best use of the new set of tools the Sloan Fellowship has given me and I am more confident on unfamiliar terrain."

Richard Hytner, Sloan Fellow 2003
Deputy Chairman, Saatchi & Saatchi Worldwide

"In my view, an MBA is something you get, whereas the Sloan Fellowship is something you do. It is an active pursuit, one that endures beyond the year in which you do it. Its promise is one of transformation. It certainly delivered for me: pre-Sloan, mine was a largely UK orientation; post-Sloan I have continued to deepen my international immersion. Pre-Sloan, I made lots of audacious decisions – mostly in my head; post-Sloan, I am considerably bolder in my actions.  Pre-Sloan, my success was defined by others.  Now it is defined only by me.

Even at 43, Sloan, it seems, helped me to grow up. Possibly for the first time in my life, I learned how to learn; and, far more often, with Dominic Houlder's elective on transformation and Robert Frost's poem still ringing loudly in my ears, I find myself choosing 'the road less travelled by'."