For many medical school graduates, doing an MBA is an opportunity to add business acumen to your healthcare knowledge. We spoke to a recent graduate of Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University (RSM) to learn how an MBA is leading to exciting new opportunities in the world of healthcare.
Try to imagine a typical MBA student.
You’re probably imagining someone that came from consulting or finance, or perhaps tech. However, although many MBA students do come from these types of industries, it’s not uncommon to find students from a medical background going on to study an MBA. The path from medicine to MBA is actually a well-trodden one.
Just take Pearl Vyas, who holds a medical degree from the Medical University of the Americas and an MSc in Global Health Innovation from McMaster University in Canada. After studying her MSc she felt she had a well-rounded knowledge of healthcare, but wanted to understand how it applies within the context of a larger organization.
“Understanding the dynamics of business takes you to the next level,” she tells MBAGRADSCHOOLS. “If you do not understand that full picture, understand your stakeholders, understand the organization’s objectives – what portfolio objectives could be in a MedTech space, for example – if you don’t know all of those things then it’s difficult to make the next step in your career.” (01:06)
In order to make that next step, she started looking for an MBA that would give her the business knowledge and global expertise she needed. As it turned out, the Executive MBA program at Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University (RSM) in the Netherlands fitted the bill.
“I was recommended to do an MBA by friends at the program who were very successful thereafter. So I had started doing the executive MBA and Philips supported me in doing so, and yeah I was able to open tons of doors for myself and ended up doing a job that I absolutely love,” explains Pearl. (00:36)
It wasn’t so much that Pearl wanted to do an MBA in order to pivot to a new industry. She was aware that her passion lay in healthcare – so it was about expanding her world of possibilities within the healthcare industry. An MBA was key to opening up those possibilities.
“What I could do in healthcare…there’s a variety of different roles,” she says. “I could have been in clinical practice, for example, really pursuing a speciality and being 100% focused on patient care in a hospital or clinical setting. But there are other roles in healthcare, and I found that by doing an MBA those roles opened up to me.” (01:38)
More than anything, Pearl wanted to expand her circle of impact from a regional to a global scale. An Executive MBA not only opened her eyes to new possibilities within the world of healthcare but gave her the tools she needed to go out and grasp them.
“Whether I go for marketing [or] innovation within business themselves, by doing an MBA I now have those roles to my disposal. I can work within them, I can use the knowledge gained in my medical degree and just move forward where you’re not looking at medicine in an isolated regional scope, but you’re looking at medicine in a global scope, solving real-world challenges.” (02:03)
That desire to tackle global healthcare challenges made Pearl a perfect fit for the EMBA program at RSM. Their mission is centered around being a force for positive change – through both the actions of the university and its students.
“When I was choosing my education and making a further step in the business world, it was only natural that I would go to Rotterdam School of Management as they have this mission of the force for positive change, which I felt completely at home, because yeah I mean that matches with what I do here every day,” she states. (02:44)
Yet, her suitability for the RSM EMBA extended beyond the school’s mission. As part of the program, students have the opportunity to travel to international study destinations to learn about business in different global contexts. Again, this was perfectly aligned with Pearl’s desire to make a wider impact on the world.
“An MBA is not only learning in the classroom, it’s about traveling and experiencing business in different contexts and learning from those that you did not expect. I, for example, went to Cape Town in my first year of my EMBA where I could see business in a completely different context, but also how emerging businesses are growing and thriving,” she explains. (03:02)
“In my second year, I went to LA and saw business in a completely different light and especially around the topic that I was particularly interested in,” she adds. (03:22)
Ultimately, it was that combination of positive change and global study that meant the RSM EMBA was the perfect fit for Pearl. It gave her not only the skills she needed to thrive in business, but the global context to tackle global healthcare challenges. The doors that it opened led her to a job she loves for an employer that supports her every step of the way.
Now if you try to imagine an MBA success story, it probably looks a lot like Pearl’s.
If you’re interested in learning more about the MBA programs at RSM, feel free to reach out to one of their MBA ambassadors.
