Kathleen Edmondson
Nationality: Canadian
Programme: Full-time MBA, 2016
Pre-MBA: Account Manager, Citizen Relations, Toronto, Canada
Post-MBA: Strategic Project Director, Group SJR, London, UK
Current industry: Marketing/PR
Transitions made: Location, Function
Prior to joining the Cass Full-time MBA, I worked as an Account Manager at Citizen Relations, an international public relations agency in Toronto, Canada. I chose Cass not only because it’s a top school in the UK, but also because I was attracted to the intensive, one-year programme.
When I enrolled, my goal was to remain in the media and marketing field in which I already worked, but to arm myself with the academic training to match my work experience. My education background was arts-focused, so I felt a business degree would serve me well throughout my career.
Returning to the academic environment after being in the workplace for several years can seem daunting. However, in the first few orientation days at Cass, when you discover how intense the programme is going to be, you quickly learn to bond with your cohort, how to support one another and to identify the strengths that will benefit you and the group.
For the International Consultancy Week, we went to Reykjavik, Iceland, and my team worked with RoRo, a company that creates sleep companions for infants. The two founders of the company were looking to expand their business into the US market and wanted a marketing strategy that would enable them to achieve that goal.
The project was an eye-opening experience that gave us the opportunity to see at first hand some of the challenges faced by businesses in emerging markets. It was incredibly rewarding to provide a growing organisation with solutions that would directly impact them and hopefully bring them to the next stage of their business growth.
For my Business Mastery Project (BMP), I worked with Gentlemen’s Tonic, a luxury men’s grooming and beauty brand located in Mayfair. Over the course of six to seven months, I worked closely with their head of operations to understand their business and the challenges they were facing, and to ultimately provide them with an in-depth marketing strategy that would hopefully increase their market share and revenue.
This project allowed me to apply a number of topics and theories from the MBA programme and, coupled with my experience in the media field, it felt like a perfect fit. I was not only able to benefit the company, but also to apply and refine all the knowledge and experience that I had acquired to date.
The Careers and Professional Development team was incredibly helpful throughout my Cass experience. I used the team on various occasions, including CV review and feedback as well as interview preparation. They set me up with Gentlemen’s Tonic and arranged interviews with various companies for a job post-MBA.
I am now a Strategic Project Director at Group SJR, a content marketing agency that is part of the WPP family. Looking back, it’s clear that the strategy themes and topics woven throughout the MBA programme have had a major impact on my professional life, as strategic thinking is now fundamental to the decisions I make on a daily basis.