August 15 Awards Ceremony - London

On Tuesday 2nd August, students, staff and guests gathered for the August 2015 intake awards ceremony at The Brewery in Moorgate. Following the usual format, the evening began with a drinks reception, which was then followed by the main ceremony. Gary Ball (Deputy Director General) presented the awards to candidates, while speeches were given by our alum Chris Dreyfus-Gibson (September 1998 – New York) who is a Consultant, Justice and Home Affairs for PA Consulting Group; De'Kaleigha Wells (MBA Programme Participant), Brittany Schmucker (MA Programme Participant), and Kristin Butzke (PGC Programme Participant). The speakers put some humour into their speeches as they entertained the audience, sharing their experiences of their year and a little wisdom learned along the way. Alum Chris Dreyfus-Gibson shared with the audience his experience of academic and professional development (through his work as Visiting Professor at London Metropolitan University), and emphasised his continued believe in the importance of experiential learning. We look forward to liaising further with Chris on the academic programme in the near future.

Following the ceremony, dinner was served in the Queen Charlotte room where the celebrations continued, and towards the end of the meal there was a slideshow of the August 2015 intake's year. Students reminisced and wrestled with their mixed emotions as they contemplated the next step in their lives. Check out this amazing video from the completion ceremony!

See the full award list and view photos by photographer Marcelo Deguchi.

March 15 MBA Awards Ceremony - Bangkok

On Saturday, 9 July 2016, 11 students were recognized at the Conrad Hotel, Bangkok, marking the end of the MBA Field Research in the Asia Pacific Region.

All received the Mountbatten Institute Certificate as well as the International Business Practice Certificate from the College of Management, University of Phayao for their academic work toward the MBA qualification from St. Mary's University. The attendees were welcomed by Dr Jeff Simcox, MBA Programme Director of the Asia/Pacific Region. An address followed from Captain Kajit Habanananda, Director of Management, University of Phayao and Chairman, Orient Thai Airlines Co., Ltd.

The address by the MBA class representative was made by Jessica Leong. The Guest Speaker was Dr Bert van Walbeek, Managing Director of The Winning Edge. Mr van Walbeek has been a Hotelier for 45 years, a Marketer of Tourism for 35 years, Master of Disaster for 25 years and a motivating lecturer for 15 years. He provided a very creative presentation on career advice for graduates and encouraged them to continue the global perspective provided by their Mountbatten Experience. Dr Ronald Kovach, Mountbatten Provost, also addressed the students and presented them with their completion certificates and awards to the winners.

See the full awards list, photos and video album.

A Day In The Life Briana Dougherty Chester London, March 2003 Briana Dougherty Chester (London, March 2003), a graduate of University of San Diego recently relocated back to LA from London where she worked in music PR for 10+ years. At present, she's consulting for a digital marketing company handling all the social and digital strategy for acts such as The Rolling Stones and AC/DC. Briana credits her Mountbatten placement with The Financial Times' marketing team in London as setting her on her current career path. "Someone in the team connected me with a contact at MTV and I was off and running so to speak", she says. Briana explains, "Since Mountbatten, I've lived in London working in the music industry. Most recently, I was Head of Press for Atlantic Records UK. After 6 years with the company, I went on maternity leave and that's when we decided to make the move back to the US. My consulting work is very rewarding. Great to see how passionately the various fanbases interact with the artists via their social networking platforms. Also, interesting to see what kind of content they engage with most. The job is really to keep the fans up to date with the artists so finding the write tone is incredibly important." Read the full article.

Entrepreneurial Alumni Mark Segal New York, January 2004 Mark lives in Melbourne, Australia, where he currently consults to an ASX Top 50 company on e-commerce strategy. During his career, Mark successfully founded and launched Shopolla.com, which became Australia's largest online department store for brand name shoes, clothing and accessories. The site integrated directly with Zappos.com to make their entire catalogue available (500K+ SKUs) for the first time ever outside of North America. He has also advised numerous ASX 200 and Fortune 500 companies as well as Start-ups and SMEs. Mark's latest business project is Weberfy.com, an intuitive website publishing platform that allows anyone to easily create professional blogs, pages, stores, and galleries without touching a line of code. The completely inclusive, all-in-one service provides content management, hosting, domains, social integrations, e-commerce, and 24-hour customer support. He is the Founder and CEO. Mark is thrilled to offer Mountbatten Alumni 100% off the first year's subscription (normally valued at $144AUD / $108USD / £72GBP). Find out how to get it and read full article.

Universities/Recruitment

Firstly, as some of you are already aware, we have started a programme of webinar Q&A sessions in both London and New York time zones, to facilitate a wider spread of information when recruiting new candidates to the programmes. We have had an alum present on the sessions we have run so far, and have found this really helpful. You don't need to be present, just have access to a laptop/tablet/iPhone at the scheduled time - there's one in London on 22nd September at 6pm UK time. We also have a full schedule of university careers fairs and presentation visits in both the U.S. and UK.

Check the schedule for the London programme, if you are an alum of any of those US Universities - we are attending career fairs on the dates shown and will be in the area during that time it would be great to have you join us. Alternatively, if you are from another University but in the area we would love to have you join us too, please contact Jo. Also, check the schedule for the New York programme and contact Vicki if you would like to assist in any way. As an alum of both the programme and your university, your input is proving extremely helpful when speaking to potential candidates.

Another aspect is that it would be very helpful to have a testimonial from graduates of any the universities on the list. Please click here to complete.

Jobs

For those New York Programme alumni returning to London, or just passing through London on Thursday 29th September, Robert Walters is holding their bi-annual Mountbatten Registration Evening at Robert Walters Head Office in London between 5.30 and 8.30pm.​ Do come along to discuss potential job opportunities over drinks and canapés.

In addition, we have a fresh job opening for a contract HR Analyst/Business Manager at Credit Suisse in London; plus 2 different roles, a CRM Executive and a Marketing Executive - Affiliates & Partnerships for online genealogy company Findmypast, also based in London.

For details of the above posts and more, please go to our alumni website.