Since her childhood in Tamil Nadu in India, Roopa Unnikrishnan has been shooting for the moon. By the time she finished high school, she had already represented India in rifle shooting, and after school, she went on to win both a Commonwealth Games gold medal and the Arjuna Award, India’s highest sporting prize.

Roopa’s prowess at the rifle range is matched by her academic abilities. In 1996, after completing her first degree at the University of Madras, she was chosen as India’s one hundredth Rhodes Scholar and came to Balliol College, Oxford, to study economic history. She excelled both on and off the sporting field, earning an Oxford Blue for captaining the University women’s shooting squad, as well as completing her MPhil.

Roopa’s original plan was to continue on this trajectory and to become an academic. However, while she was at Balliol, conversations with fellow students encouraged her to take the concept of working in business more seriously. “Talking to fellow students I respected opened up my mind about business,” she says, “and made me see that there were other routes to having a decent livelihood and doing something significant with your life”.

So when a fellow Rhodes Scholar recommended the one-year MBA programme at Oxford University’s Saïd Business School, Roopa decided to make the change from history to business. The transition was not always an easy one. “The pace was different, and the amount of reading was immense,” Roopa recalls.

However, the long hours spent studying in the Radcliffe Infirmary, where the School was then based, paid off. On graduating, Roopa quickly got a job with the newly established New York consultancy firm, Katzenbach Partners. She stayed with Katzenbach for seven years, during which time the company grew from six to 180 employees. She worked with Fortune 100 and Fortune 500 companies across a range of sectors, from pharmaceuticals to airlines, and became a recognised authority on outsourcing.

“Consulting,” Roopa reflects, “is in some ways a half-way house between academia and business”. In 2006, she determined to complete her transition into business, moving first to Citigroup where she was employed as director and senior vice president of the strategic planning group for enhancement services, and a year later to Pfizer, the leading US pharmaceutical company, where she currently serves as director for the executive leadership team on technology strategy issues.

Ten years on, Roopa still finds her MBA experience valuable. “The programme gave me a grounding in real frameworks,” she says. “When you get into work, you don’t have the opportunity to do that. It’s really useful.” In addition, she finds that the combination of an MBA, the Oxford brand name, and the Rhodes scholarship is a powerful one that opens many doors.

Motherhood has meant that Roopa has finally put away her rifle, but is she still shooting for the moon professionally? “When I was younger I had a burning need to be a CEO”, she says. “I come from a culture which is very meritocratic and driven by ‘badges’. Along the way, I’ve tried to separate out the titles from the roles. I’ve realised that the things I enjoy most are helping people to solve problems and reducing conflict. I can no longer say, ‘I want to be CEO or CIO,’ but I’ve reached a point where I’m confident about what I enjoy and what I’m good at.”