Overview
Cambridge Judge Business School is developing the next generation of women leaders.
We do this by attracting a diverse community through our educational programmes. We research the cultures, institutions and organisations that enable more women to become successful leaders. We believe in encouraging and supporting business women to achieve their best potential.
Each MBA class comprises around 200 experienced professionals from a broad range of cultural and professional backgrounds.
- gain the business education required to excel in a wide range of careers
- join a thriving and ambitious network of students and alumni
- be part of the women in business student group – work with peers to drive the gender balance agenda in business
- become involved in the Wo+Men’s Leadership Centre, supporting their research, conferences and outreach activities
- develop personally in an educational setting which supports diversity, equality and inclusivity.
The Cambridge MBA
I was kind of thinking like, “Okay, where do I want to take my career?”
I was starting to hit that ceiling and ability to keep growing.
I needed to move on and do something a little bit different.
I decided to pursue an MBA now because I am going through a transition to switch industries.
I thought it was a really good environment to kind of thrive and think of ideas for the future as well.
Through exposure to people from diverse backgrounds, I’m looking forward to expanding my world view and challenging my previously held beliefs and opinions.
I want to have a chance to be challenged and also be inspired by people around the world.
The career barriers for women
I think as a woman, it’s really important to consider what stopping your career part way through and going back to school might mean for the rest of your career and your education.
I think one of the barriers which holds women back from potentially applying is obviously family. But if you can almost put that at the back of your mind and realise how worthy you are of this education and how valuable you could be to helping others.
A community of female leaders
I’m one of the leads for the Women’s Leadership SIG, which has been a really great experience. With my colleagues we’ve been able to organise some really great events and create a support network.
Coming here I expected a diverse cohort and that’s exactly what I’ve met here.
I think it’s a city where people trade knowledge. People are not afraid to what they really truly feel and people are very inclusive.
And I really love that about the programme. All the women here I’ve met are willing to take on leadership roles and jumping onto opportunities to do something.
Choose your career path
For me the Cambridge MBA is a year of reflection to think through what I have already achieved and what’s still ahead of me.
There are definitely still barriers and I can see that. And I think that there’s still a lot more work that needs to be done there.
Now is the time to actually choose your career and create your own path.
The friendship that we built here I’m sure that we’ll all support each other along the way. The ladies I’ve met here are just the best cheerleaders.
Interested?
Meet and chat to our Cambridge community
Meet us and join our regular virtual open days or careers webinars. Meet MBA Admissions teams, hear a taster lecture from faculty or meet MBA students and alumni and hear about their Cambridge experience and career outcomes.
The Wo+Men's Leadership Centre
Part of the Business School, the Wo+Men’s Leadership Centre mission is to be a hub for global thought leadership, making the necessary changes to foster a gender balanced workforce. Join us at the annual conference or one of the events to mark International Women’s Day and meet and network with the Cambridge community.
The Forté Foundation Fellows Scholarship
Fifty per cent of fees is awarded to 4 five outstanding female students per year, in partnership with the Forté Foundation.
News and insights
Programme news
Forté Fellowship female scholars celebrate starting MBA year
Discover the Forté Fellowship recipients of the MBA Class of 2024, celebrating gender diversity with 47% female representation in this year's cohort.
We bring together two MBA alumnae to share insights on careers, their learning journey, empowerment in the workplace, diversity, being Black in Cambridge and so much more.
Student and alumni news
How can mentorship help women advance their careers?
We speak to 3 of our MBA graduates about mentoring in business and how women, and men, can support each other in their careers and personal development.
Meet our women
So I started in politics, in US politics. I worked on campaigns and in the US senate. I was a scheduling director. I pivoted to real estate for a few years, but ended up working in tech and doing tech operations. What attracted me to getting an MBA, what really drove me to make this jump across the pond was I really needed the credibility.
I wanted to be able to make my own decisions and to have my own impact on an office, on a company, or on an organisation. I really wanted the experience to go back and learn and remember what it was like to have the joy of learning again.
I had studied at Cambridge when I was in high school over a summer. It was an incredible experience that I knew I always wanted to replicate, and I wasn’t really interested in a two-year programme, but really wanted to end up in a place like Cambridge and having this full Cambridge experience.
My favourite thing about this programme and working on the CVP and the GCP has been the study groups. There’s something really brilliant about the way that the program’s team built the study groups. Now, I had incredible groups and an incredible experience because they build such diverse groups. Your diverse based on culture, your diverse based on former profession, experience, age, stage of life.
It’s an incredible opportunity to interact with people with different backgrounds and different experiences and to come together and work as a group and problem-solve as a group, and coming to a point where you feel like you’ve learned not only through the classes, but you learn a lot about yourself as well. It has been the absolute defining experience. I think for me and for what Judge uniquely brings it, is the idea of these study groups and you work with different groups each term, but you get enough time with each group to really get to know people and just share in their lives, and that’s been incredible.
Tailoring the choices across the programme is really one of the keys to understanding what brings you joy. I’ve been very fortunate to be able to be in this position to find, I think exactly the right fit of what brings me joy, what I really enjoy doing, and where I think I can provide value to a company in the future. I don’t know if everyone who attends an MBA could possibly say that their entire cohort is a really incredible group of people, but there’s something extremely special about the way that Admissions chooses the type of cohort and the type of people that they want to have both in the class and then represent them in the future. I think that it’s unique in the way that we have really all come together and support each other. So I think the cohort is really what makes Cambridge Judge special.
Prior to the MBA, I was working in the media industry in Nigeria. I started off my career as a TV producer. After a couple of years in the media industry, I decided that I wanted to go into a more startup environment where I could make more of an impact.
Prior to the MBA, I had had a little bit of an itch to take a break from my career. I felt like there were some gaps in my thinking that I could definitely plug. I had been in one industry for a while, so I was looking for an opportunity where I could accelerate that learning and diversify my thinking. So I wanted to invest in myself to be able to kind of elevate my thinking as well as elevate my network.
My choice for Cambridge came from looking for a programme that would allow me to explore two specific industries that I was kind of interested in. One was tech, and the other was healthcare. Because I didn’t necessarily know a lot about this space, I wanted an MBA experience to also give me that opportunity to look into healthcare. I was also interested in tech because being in Nigeria, the tech ecosystem is really booming and a lot of startups, and there’s a lot of opportunities to leverage tech, to fill in a lot of gaps in the ecosystem in Africa.
In terms of picking opportunities that would help me meet some of the goals that I had pre MBA, there were so many opportunities, not just AT Cambridge Judge Business School, but in the larger university overall. I decided to go with the healthcare concentration, and there were so many opportunities that came with that. One thing that I really wanted out of this experience was to be able to work in a completely different environment, in a completely different space. From the start of the programme, I think one thing that I found that is unique is that everyone consciously wants to get to know each other. Well, that’s not something that you find in the real world where people invest the time to get to know you, et cetera. The Cambridge ecosystem, I think that everybody is super experimental. Everyone is curious. That amazing bubble of the pursuit of knowledge, the pursuit of innovation is something that I think is unique to Cambridge.
I was working for the family business with the external shareholders, developing the strategy for a real estate development business unit. I wanted to do an MBA ever since I was in my undergrad years. But I realised that in order for me to go to a master’s degree and to get the best of it, I needed to work in the industry first. I wanted to come to the UK because I’ve studied in the US before and I wanted a different experience. And also because the UK offers a one-year programme.
When I realised how the programme was, a very handsome programme with the Cambridge Venture Project and the GCP, the Global Project, I wanted to have very handsome experience. And I realised that this programme has two consulting projects and also the opportunity to do an internship. Yeah, there was no any better place for me.
I can tell you 3 aspects about my year. It has been intense, it has been challenging, and it has been amazing. It has been intense because the workload along with the social events, along with career events, along with my own interest, along with everything that this city offers, it has been challenging because of all of these reasons, but also because I want to escalate up in my career.
And it has been amazing because of the people that I’ve met here. I learnt a lot about myself from that term as well, because I worked on things that I thought I was never going to work on, like risk management. And then the GCP came and it was something about the industry that I liked and opened my eyes in terms of ESG. And my project was for Formula 1. And it was amazing to think about an industry and especially that part of sports, Formula 1.
And overall, this programme offers a lot of ESG consciousness. Honestly, if we want to become future leaders, global leaders, we have to have that in mind. And this programme has done really well on expanding on that and putting the different aspects for us to be the real leaders that we want to be.
I just decided to go back to Mexico and to work within the industry to learn one aspect that I’m still missing to later on start my own business, which has always been the idea, the idea that I came for. My biggest surprise has been my personal development.
Just to be among or just to be part of these great leaders and amazing people has just made me work more on myself and work more towards the best version of myself. That’s been the biggest surprise for me.
Prior to MBA, I have seven years of working experience. I started out in a local VC in China, in Beijing, and I quickly moved on to a cloud computing startup. So I specialise in corporate strategy, global expansion and business operation. And later on, seven years, and you sort of reached this point where I want acceleration and I’ve been working in startup for so long, I want something more than… How should I put it? Doing a single function in one organisation. And also during that I realised I really want to join consulting because I like working on different projects, perhaps for different companies and different industry, because working for one company sometimes could be limited. So yeah, I’m like, “Oh, MBA seems to be a great opportunity.” The highlight of this programme, I would say it’s the people for sure, get to know such great people in such short amount of time.
I don’t think you can do this anywhere else. And the friendship, and the knowledge you gain from your different culture perspective, it just amazing. So I would say, that would be the biggest highlight of the whole programme. So even for me, it’s a good personal growth experience. Learn how to work with people from different background, cultural custom and the way they talk, that they communicate. And I think this programme really give you the opportunity to do that. We’ve been given so many choices and opportunities to have hands-on experience of different industries. It’s more about explore what’s possible, what’s out there and what you really… At least it helped me to figure out what I want to do next and allow you to try different things, not just passively receiving other people’s experience, but you can explore it in a practical way. I think that’s more important because job is a job and you’re going to work for the rest of your life, but then this programme is something, it’s once in a lifetime.
Oh my god, Cambridge is like unreal bubble for me because I’m a city girl. I grown up in the big cities my whole life and working in the big city, and coming to Cambridge is totally different. And it’s a special connection between Cambridge and China. I think most of Chinese knows, Xu Zhimo, a famous poet, wrote a poem about it, and that was my favourite poem since I was little. But I didn’t know it meant Cambridge because Chinese version says, “Kāngqiáo” But I didn’t know, “Kāngqiáo” means Cambridge. Well, so I guess, something was meant to be. We did work on a sustainability topic during our GCP. Yeah, we were looking into… Yeah, we did GCP with IBM. It’s real consulting and analytical works there, and IBM is a big brand. It’s exactly what I want to do after MBA. So I feel like, oh, I would like to gain some local working experience and get a taste of how this tech consulting looks like, and working with IBM, it’s a perfect opportunity.
I’ll say if you always want to achieve something big in your life, and now is the time, and don’t get stopped by other people’s expectation and social pressures. And just do it, if that’s what you wanted to do. What about an year which allow you to learn new skills, to get perspective from different people, from different country, like outside of your circle and the community that you’re familiar with. Consider things like MBA where you can consolidate, regroup, and rethink of your priorities. And really self-explore, I would say, it’s a great opportunity to do that.
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