New Director of Cambridge MBA: Focus on critical thinking and challenging your beliefs

“Our brains are hardwired for stories,” Juliana Kozak Rogo told the new cohort of Cambridge MBA students, stressing the importance of “building a coherent story in persuading others and explaining phenomena.”

The passing of the Director’s torch at the Cambridge MBA, the largest degree programme at Cambridge Judge Business School, is always a moment for the Business School to reflect, and 2024 was no exception as Juliana became Director, following the 5-year term of Michael Kitson, Associate Professor in International Macroeconomics.

The MBA class of 2024 includes 244 students representing 49 nationalities. The average age is 29 with 6 years’ work experience, and women comprise 47% of the new class.

Students should focus on building skills for tougher times ahead

“Critical thinking is essential,” said Juliana, Management Practice Associate Professor at Cambridge Judge, at a 16 September orientation session. “It’s not just about crunching the numbers; it’s about challenging your beliefs, being the prosecutor and judge of your own stories”, and building a “firm foundation of skills for when the waves become more turbulent.”

A native of Brazil who previously worked as an economic analyst at the Central Bank of Brazil, Juliana arrived at Cambridge Judge in 2020 after teaching business in Canada and the US. She previously was Director of the Business School’s MPhil in Management programme, and is a member of the Economics and Policy subject group at Cambridge Judge.

“My vision for the MBA programme is that the students really be the lifeblood of this Business School,” she says. “I hope they can engage with and energise with the content and the environment in a meaningful way and take with them valuable lessons and experiences that would allow them to be thoughtful leaders – to ask the right questions, to create new knowledge and engage communities globally in innovative, inclusive, collaborative and sustainable ways.”

The past 5 years have catapulted sustainability to the fore

Reflecting on his 5-year term as Director, Michael says Cambridge MBA students now have increasingly “greater concern about global issues such as climate change and inequality”, and crucial topics such as sustainability are now more fully reflected in the curriculum.

“We’re educating transformational leaders to make the world a better place,” he says.

Michael praises teamwork throughout the Business School in responding to challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic that began shortly after he became Director in 2019, succeeding Jane Davies, Management Practice Professor in Operations Management.

Embracing technology and wider University community to make more room for discussion

“We successfully navigated these challenges, partly through new uses of technology” in developing online and hybrid learning materials during the pandemic, says Michael. “We’ve used some of the lessons we learned to now embed certain material online, out of the classroom, to make more room for discussion and debate in the classroom.

“The University of Cambridge makes progress by having discussion and debate and disagreement, and we help create leaders who understand the value of diverse ideas.”

Michael added that the Cambridge MBA programme is now increasingly engaged with the colleges that are an important part of the University, as each MBA student is also a member of a College where they meet other students from many disciplines. “It’s important that students understand the views of others, and at the colleges they meet people different from themselves in terms of both their area of studies and their interests”.

Taking a long-term view while utilising the alumni network

In his introductory remarks to the Cambridge MBA orientation session, Professor Gishan Dissanaike, Interim Dean of Cambridge Judge, urged students to take a long-term view by gaining knowledge and skills in a variety of areas that may be needed not immediately but for a job taken later in one’s career.

And he emphasised the lifelong importance of the University of Cambridge alumni network, joking that, like the ‘Hotel California’ immortalised in the iconic song by the Eagles, students at the University “can check out but you can never leave”.