Spanish born, Silvia Ranz has developed a career in Human Resources management at companies such as Hewlett Packard, PricewaterhouseCoopers and IBM. She currently works as the Governance of Corporate Technology at the Santander Group, responsible for the coordination and control of her unit’s global activities, to ensure strategic alignment with the banking group. She came to the Executive MBA to speed up her professional development. “I had experienced a period of horizontal growth,” she says. “I decided that an EMBA would give me the tools to increase my expertise.” Silvia was attracted to Oxford as it offered her the chance to do a cutting edge EMBA at a prestigious university with ancient foundations.
“I was very interested in studying somewhere that offered not just an EMBA but a wider education – including a full exploration of corporate social responsibility and the role we have to play in it.” Silvia is finding the course relevant to the work she does at the Santander group. “Yet the course is very demanding and I work for such a big organisation that the real impact that the programme is having on my professional life, and the direction of my company, will be easier to quantify after I’ve graduated. But I’m sure it is going to be profound.”
The programme’s organisation in weekly modules and its rigorous class structure is something that Silvia really appreciates. “It’s incredibly demanding, which is exactly what I want. Beyond the syllabus itself, my colleagues are inspiring people whom I find myself learning from every day. I spend full weeks debating difficult and interesting issues with people from very different backgrounds – it’s such a global programme. Where else but Saïd Business School could you be inspired by: the person dealing with information systems of a major particles accelerator; a talented development manager of a biotech company; a senior prime minister's advisor, leading the restructuring of a national banking system; numerous highly successful entrepreneurs; and a senior general of the US military?”
Silvia hopes for new horizons in the next couple of years. “I’m already taking confident steps towards bigger challenges.” She would urge prospective students not to procrastinate. “There will never seem the perfect time to do an EMBA, life always gets in the way,” she says. “But for me, the benefits were tangible within the first week, as a professional catalyst and at a personal level. The Executive MBA has given me a unique opportunity to expand my network of beliefs in areas beyond my current professional environment.”