Imperial Business School and Corndel have launched a new strategic partnership that brings together the academic excellence of a world-leading business school and the expertise of the country’s leading professional apprenticeship provider. The partnership will result in the creation of several world-class, high-impact training courses. In England these can be fully funded through the Government’s Apprenticeship Levy.

The first course launched under the partnership is the Imperial and Corndel Executive Development Programme, which equips participants with the practical leadership skills required to motivate teams, inspire change and improve business performance.

Participants will develop and evolve their leadership skills in the context of digitally transformed organisations. Topics include understanding sources of digital value, implementing digital transformation, and navigating regulatory and cyber security challenges.

The blended technology-enabled programme includes group seminars, masterclasses and continuous, personalised one-on-one coaching.

Going live in October 2021, the 12-month programme is designed for professionals who have at least five years of management experience and are looking to progress into senior management roles. Applicants will be assessed on their ability to undertake the course rather than any previous A-level or degree-based qualification they may have.

Upon programme completion, participants will receive an apprenticeship, Chartered Management Institute qualification and Imperial College Business School Executive Education Associate Alumni status.

David Brown, Imperial Executive Education’s Director said:

“Imperial Business School is delighted to partner with Corndel in this major initiative in executive education. At Imperial, we are committed to increasing access to leading edge thinking for businesses and organisations. We want to help individuals translate learning into practice and make a difference at speed. This initiative is in response to huge demand from companies and organisations seeking to increase their capabilities in management, leadership and technology. And in this case using the terrific opportunity afforded by the Apprenticeship Levy.”

James Kelly, Corndel’s Co-Founder said:

“Corndel are delighted to be partnering with Imperial Business School to continue to redefine the traditional apprenticeship and take forward our vision of brilliant lifelong learning for all. This partnership breaks down the silo between academic excellence and vocational training. It will give a new generation of managers both the management theory and the practical workplace skills required for today’s workplace”

The Imperial and Corndel Executive Development Programme will be open to applications from October 2021. If you are interested in helping your employees build stronger leadership skills to drive performance within your organisation, please get in touch here.

I am a data science consultant in one of the Big 4 consulting firms. This means that I use data, maths and technology to solve business problems. After working for a few years, I realised that data science is too vast a topic to continue learning from the internet at the level I was working at. Therefore I made the decision to pursue a formal Master’s part-time to establish a strong understanding of the fundamentals of business analytics.

In September 2020, I joined Imperial Business School’s MSc Business Analytics (online, part-time) programme. It has been an exciting journey so far, and I am already using a lot of what I am studying already at work.

On a recent project at work, I was building a supplier allocation system for one of my clients. They are a manufacturing client who wanted to source different parts for their business, and for each part, there were multiple bids from different suppliers. The goal was to reduce overall costs involved with logistics and sourcing. In addition, there were many business constraints, and they wanted a tool where they could add or remove conditions and get the optimal supplier allocation in each scenario.

The project started with creating databases and queries for handling bids from suppliers. Concepts that I had learned from MSc Business Analytics (online, part-time) module 'Fundamentals of Database Technologies' like normal forms, database maintenance and ORM's, were helpful to use during this process. Next, I used the 'Network Analytics’ module concepts to understand the supply chain network and the flow. Finally, the supplier allocation system was implemented using integer programming in Python, which I learned from the 'Optimisation and Decision Models' module.

The problem was complex, and the concepts that I had learned on the programme helped break down the problem into manageable parts and implement them one step at a time. Thanks to my experience working with Python from the 'Data Structures and Algorithms' module, I was able to converse with the backend and frontend teams who integrated the data science part into an application.

The experience of implementing what I have been learning on MSc Business Analytics (online, part-time) has helped me to understand the concepts better and look at the programme content from implementation and business use, rather than a purely academic perspective. It has also opened my eyes to the complexity of real-world problems and made me appreciate the depth of teaching material.

What do you think of when you think of leadership? And what does leadership entail in the current context of crisis and uncertainty?

Traditionally, leadership is broadly understood as a set of skills – a matrix of technical and certain psychological or emotional competencies geared to managing people and resources in order to optimise outcomes.

Technical or hard skills have always been very much on the radar of all aspiring leaders, and rightly so. Managing any organisation successfully is contingent on truly understanding its different mechanisms; the interplay of finance, accounting, human resource management, marketing, sales, supply management – all of the diverse cogs that turn together and that drive day-to-day operations and continuity.

More recently though, there’s a growing focus on the so-called soft skills; the more human competencies and attributes that also form an essential part of the leadership toolkit. Leadership experts and researchers have highlighted the importance of things like compassion, communication skills, active listening or empathy in motivating, aligning and optimising human performance in the workplace.

McKinsey and others have published articles and studies that reveal that “compassionate leaders” outperform others and are more successful in fostering team spirit, engagement and loyalty. And in times of crisis, such as the present pandemic, this type of leadership becomes even more critical.

So what are these soft skills? And more importantly, how do you develop them?

First off, a lot depends on your mindset. The renowned US psychologist, Carol Dweck, has dedicated her career to shedding light on our mindsets and how personality and motivation tie to success. Broadly speaking, Dweck organises leaders into two mindsets: fixed and growth.

People with a growth mindset believe that they (and others) can develop, evolve and adapt to new circumstances or contexts over time. Conversely, the fixed mindset sees human behaviour as somehow set and immutable. We are who we are, and we don’t change.

Key to developing your soft skills as a leader is first to adopt a growth mindset; to embrace the possibility of change and growth. And that means reframing failure or challenge as opportunity; acknowledging and embracing imperfection; and leveraging what Dweck calls the “power of yet” – in other words, understanding that knowledge and skills are attainable over time and with effort.

Having a growth mindset means you are open to change in the way you think, learn and develop new skills – including the soft skills that compassionate leaders will need to deploy to steer their teams and organisations out of this crisis and towards the next normal.

Imperial’s Lisa Umenyiora, Executive Director of Careers, has run studies and surveys over the course of the pandemic looking at the kinds of qualities or soft skills that are increasingly on-demand and on the radar of organisations looking to rebuild and fortify their position as we enter the post-Covid landscape.

Here are just some of them.

1. Communication

Good communication is key not only to the flow transfer or important information within a team, but also to the shared understanding of culture, values and purpose of the organisation. Leaders who are effective communicators are better able to motivate, mobilise and align people and resources, especially in uncertain and complex environments. Think about how you communicate with your team, and focus on what matters – the meaning of your messages – and on how to keep things clear and simple. Think too about the way you use your body language, and how you decide when to be quiet and to proactively listen.

2. Active listening

Listening effectively means you capture vital information at the right time from the right person. But that’s not all. Leaders who actively listen also signal to their team members that they care, value and appreciate them as individuals; and that their input, opinion and expertise matter. And this is critical to building strong interpersonal relations and engagement which are critical to weathering difficult times.

3. Candour

In “normal” times, trust matters. But in times of crisis and uncertainty, trust is absolutely vital. Effective leaders understand that building trust is a two-way process and that it hinges on transparency, candour and vulnerability. Being honest, authentic and open even – perhaps especially – when you don’t have all the answers, demonstrates that you are a leader who can be trusted; that you have the human warmth as well as the competence to rally your team around a shared purpose and act in the interest of all.

4. Empathy

Empathy is the capacity to imagine and to understand another person’s perspective, experience and feelings. It’s the ability to “put yourself in the shoes” of someone else and see things from their point of view. Not only does empathy help leaders to build stronger, supportive relationships with employees – enabling them to succeed and excel – it also helps to understand the causes of performance issues or poor outcomes.

Empathy, like the other qualities mentioned here, is a skill that can be learnt, practised and developed. Taking time to think about why an employee or colleague makes a certain proposal or suggestion before critiquing or accepting it helps unlock a deeper understanding of motivation and perspective. So too will thinking about the impact or effect of your own words and actions – and remembering to care about what that impact might be.

The Covid-19 pandemic brought about a reckoning in terms of the way we work. But there is also an imperative to re-think and reevaluate the way that we lead. And it seems likely that even as this crisis fades, a new model of effective leadership built on empathy, candour, transparency, compassion and a willingness to listen will not just endure, but will actually determine who thrives in the new normal. (And who doesn’t.)

Stepping up to the challenge of leadership requires a shift in mindset and a continuous broadening of specific critical skills – at the best of times. Unfortunately, as we start to emerge slowly into something approximating a post-Covid economy, leadership just got all the more complex.  

Being effective as a leader in the new normal is contingent more than ever on getting your workplace relationships right. It’s about understanding their role in influencing, empowering, aligning and mobilising your single most important resource: your people. The pandemic revealed even more of the nature of the indomitable human spirit. Resilience, adaptability, perseverance, the sheer capacity for creativity and self-reinvention are the finest qualities that human beings possess.  

But in its wake, leaders also need to be aware and sensitive to its fallout – the seismic shifts in the way we work, the blurring of boundaries between home and professional life and the ongoing uncertainty that teams and colleagues continue to grapple with every day. Embracing new ways of working, building or rebuilding the future and navigating the challenges ahead also mean embracing new – perhaps more human – ways of leading. These include prioritising relationships, fomenting trust and psychological safety, and empowering other people to deliver their best.  

Leaders can use several core principles to ensure their people are engaged, self-motivated and disposed to give their discretionary effort to deliver exceptional results at this time when they are needed more than ever.  

Here are three. 

1. Balance relationships with tasks.  

Covid-19 has delivered many lessons.  

For leaders, perhaps one of the most important is the need to prioritise their relationships with the people in their teams. During the pandemic, those leaders whose teams performed well and showed the most resilience were the leaders who focused on maintaining and nurturing their relationships first before moving on to the many pressing tasks facing the team.  

They found that genuine human interaction – however seemingly small or insignificant – had a catalysing effect, boosting people’s wellbeing and sense of engagement when times were tough and profoundly uncertain. And this is an insight that can and should endure beyond the pandemic. Simply put, when we put relationships first, performance and execution improve.  

Try this for yourself. In your next team meeting or one-to-one, ask your people how they are. Please find out more about their challenges and how well they are coping. There’s no need to have advice or all the answers to hand – the simple act of listening will give you deeper insight and understanding of your team members while simultaneously ensuring that they feel heard, valued, and respected.  

And that’s good for morale, for team engagement, and for your business.  

2. Build psychological contracts, trust and safety 

Good relationships are undergirded by trust. Where there is trust, there is also space for communication, for information sharing, for learning and growing, and for the kind of innovation and creativity to occur that are the fabric of any successful team and organisation.  

Trust results from purposeful contractual psychological interchanges and your capacity as a leader to create a sense of safety. That means modelling transparency, authenticity, openness and even your own vulnerability, where appropriate. 

Make it a clear objective to think about your team’s working agreement. Think about how you set expectations and understand how you all get the best from each other. And try to ensure that your team members feel empowered to fail – to ideate, experiment, make mistakes and learn from them. Then, as a leader, it’s down to you to find the ways to make your people feel safe enough to give their best and discretionary effort.   

Why not find the right way to ask your team members the following kinds of questions: 

• How can we be even more effective while working remotely? 
• How do I get the best from you? 
• How should I communicate effectively with you? 
• What support do you need from me? 

3. Make the expansion from managing to leading 

Ask most people, and they will tell you the same thing: most of us prefer to feel inspired, stretched, trusted and appreciated than managed, controlled, or simply told what to do when it comes down to it. Giving other people enough autonomy is the key to empowering them to learn, grow, and develop new skills and aptitudes – to have agency, make their own decisions, and contribute more to the team’s success.  

This is one of the essential precepts of effective leadership, and it marks the distinction between a manager and a leader of people. It is a shift in mindset – the transition from thinking about yourself as the principal player who makes everything happen to a leader who can multiply your impact through others.  

Leadership is about giving other people the context, the culture and the environment to shine and bring their best selves to their work. And that means being courageous about building the bench strength around you for the whole team – and the broader organisation to succeed. 

This might feel scary. You might wonder what might happen to your role as a leader if you focus on empowering others – what if they leapfrog you within the organisation? But in reality, what happens is quite different. As the tide rises, all ships rise with it.  

In 2020, Covid-19 was the driving force behind a shift that played out in businesses, institutions, organisations and communities all over the globe.

Almost overnight, lockdowns and stay-at-home measures saw almost all human activity move online. And that included education.

For schools and universities everywhere, the shift to virtual and online learning posited a conundrum: how to deliver quality education without recourse to classrooms and campuses? And for learners the situation was also far from ideal. In the last 12 to 18 months, executives and organisations looking to upskill or reskill during this period of acute need have faced a dilemma: postpone or pursue their programmes online. Pushback has, inevitably, been strong. For many, higher education – executive education in particular – is all about face-to-face; it’s about the social and psychological interplay, the human contact and the networking that not only enriches the learning experience, but hugely accelerates the critical transition from concept to practice to skill.

Yet despite their reservations, executives and business leaders have continued to take programmes online and in virtual formats during the pandemic. And as we start to emerge into the post-Covid economy, we’re discovering a number of key – and sometimes surprising—benefits that accrue to e-learning.

We’re beginning to see advantages to online learning that not only offset the loss of face-to-face contact, but proactively deliver new and unexpected efficiencies – gains in time management, in focus and in quality that are driving learning forward exponentially.

As we move on into 2021 and continue to document these benefits, one thing seems certain. The shift in education, the changes accelerated by the Covid-19 pandemic look set to stay.

And here’s why. 

Six (surprising) benefits to online learning:

1. Flexibility: online learning gives participants the anytime, anywhere opportunity to address development needs while balancing other work-life commitments. Programmes and courses can be taken at the time and place that adapt best to personal needs and priorities, and at a tempo that is marked by the individual. Learners can accelerate through concepts or go back and revisit them as and when they need. This flexibility in delivery and agility in learning are unique to online.

2. No commuting: a huge benefit both for home and overseas participants. Learning is as simple as setting up a computer and logging on. And for learners, that translates into massive gains in terms of time management and quality of life. The hour, day or even week spent travelling to campus can be put to better use elsewhere – in preparing for interactive class time with faculty and peers for instance. It goes without saying that less travel is also better for the planet.

3. Focused learning: because learners can use their offline time building knowledge, reading, reflecting and preparing materials ahead of virtual class time, when they do meet with faculty and peers for interactive sessions, learning tends to be more dynamic and focused. We call this the flipped classroom approach. The preparatory legwork happens in the learner’s own time, so that the practising with new ideas, concepts and skills is simply more efficient than in the traditional classroom. In fact, some studies have found that online participants learn and retain up to five or six times more knowledge than those in traditional settings.

4. Learning (and doing) in real time: online programmes are flexible enough for participants to continue working as they learn. That means that new knowledge, new ideas and new approaches can be simultaneously applied and road tested in the workplace. This creates a virtuous cycle of applied learning, with outcomes and impact  from the real-world setting feeding back into the learning experience itself.

5. Experts Zoom (and don’t fly) in: for business schools and universities one of the great advantages of online formats is that experts, thought leaders or case study heroes can be brought in as guest speakers without the time and financial outlay of flying them in from around the world to a particular location or campus. This has opened up more possibilities to enrich learning at scale. It’s also better for the planet.

6. Diversity: again, without the need to travel or to take time away from the office, learning at top universities and business schools is more accessible to more learners. Taking an online programme at Imperial becomes a more viable option for a participant in Latin America, say, or South East Asia. Simply put, with greater ease come greater reach and greater diversity in the classroom.

Even before Covid-19, education was being reshaped globally by digital disruption with billions spent in edtech innovations such as AI or mixed-reality learning in the last two or three years.

As we come out of the pandemic, tech-enhanced learning – online, virtual, synchronous and asynchronous – is delivering a breadth of benefits that look set to keep on changing the game for the foreseeable future. Online is here to stay.

Most of us have a brand we like. It might be a clothing firm, a manufacturer of computers or a maker of fine perfume and cosmetics. Whatever it is, your brand of choice will combine certain distinctive qualities, expertise, accomplishments and attributes. You go back to this brand again and again because it consistently meets or exceeds your expectations. It has the ability to inspire and surprise you. It is a brand you can trust.  

Human beings also have their own brand or personal image. A cursory Google search can usually reveal plenty about you – whether you want it to or not. Your LinkedIn or Facebook profile, posts, tweets and comments all form a comprehensive social snapshot – your own personal brand image – presented to the world, enabling other people to forge those all-important first impressions about who you are and what you stand for. 

And it matters – more perhaps than you might think.  Because having a strong personal brand is absolutely critical to your ability to influence, be it within an organisation, an industry or society at large. So the question is: are you happy to allow Brand You to evolve without your agency; or is it wiser to take some kind of control over your image? 

Personal branding has become a hot topic with the advent of social media and instantly available information. Increasingly, shrewd executives are enacting thoughtful measures to proactively craft and shape their own personal brand, in order to extend the reach of their influence and leadership within their organisation and beyond.  

There are many techniques and tactics that you can use to help define and optimise your personal brand. Here are some. 

1. Understand you 

What do you value? What motivates you and what do you seek to accomplish? What defines your brand identity and meanings? To strengthen your personal brand, you need to truly understand yourself, and that means making time for a little introspection and reflection. The goal is to identify the key personal elements that you can leverage to elicit positive responses in others, and that allow you to build an authentic personal brand that engenders trust and loyalty. And remember that even the strongest corporate brands can change and evolve over time, so try not to be too rigid or restrictive in your analysis, and do look ahead and around you. Self-reflection is an ongoing and iterative process – it can include feedback from trusted colleagues, friends and family.  

2. Shape your narrative 

We all come from a journey, and we all have a story to tell. Dedicate the time and work on your communication skills, and craft a narrative that encapsulates your expertise and your vision in a way that will resonate with your audience(s) – be they colleagues, team members, external stakeholders or the C-suite. Your narrative should do multiple jobs. It has to be a kind of elevator pitch for you and your values, capabilities and experiences; at the same time, it has to convey a vision for the future – your future, your company’s or industry’s future – that speaks to key stakeholders in a way that is both emotionally and cognitively engaging. And it has to be clear, understandable and relevant. Why not look again at your LinkedIn profile or curriculum and develop a narrative that you feel best reflects the best of you? And try to think proactively about the rational and emotional responses you would like to elicit in others. Remember, you can and should adapt your narrative to different audiences with different needs and expectations. 

3. Be consistent 

Among the values people appreciate in leaders are authenticity, integrity and transparency. If you have done the work of self-analysis and crafted a narrative that truly reflects who you are, stick to it. And remember that your physical demeanour, your body language, the way you speak to others, even the clothes you wear all form a part of your personal brand. Great brands are built by delivering a consistent message across all touchpoints. What are your key touchpoints and how can you ensure they are all creating a cohesive and consistent experience? Be mindful that even small discrepancies or inconsistencies can detract from the image you want to build and share, and lead to brand dilution. Also, in today’s world where the boundaries between home and working life are increasingly blurred, be prepared for your actual lifestyle and your brand to be the same thing. Because of this, your personal brand should be much more than the sum of your professional accomplishments or job titles.  

4. Be inspired

If there is someone whose personal brand inspires you, take note of what they do and how they do it. What is the secret to their success? And how can you adapt this and make it applicable to you without compromising your authenticity? Former First Lady, Michelle Obama is hugely adept at utilising more informal media or platforms to extend her reach – and simultaneously convey the message that she is authentic and accessible. She has used Snapchat to speak to younger people, appeared on chat shows and let her hair down, singing and dancing in front of the camera while still in the White House. Think about what your brand icon stands for, does or says and search for the takeaways for yourself.  

5. Stand for something

Define that thing that you would like to be remembered for and make it your North Star. Whether it’s a concrete outcome or actions, a personal approach or modus operandi, whether it’s a statement or a set of instantly recognisable values, decide what you want your legacy to be, and strive towards making it a reality. 

There is no one size fits all in building your personal brand. And as we said earlier, your own brand will evolve and change over the course of time. But being conscious of the benefits of carefully crafting your personal brand and image will help you gain the recognition and respect in your field to advance in your career and life. 

In the past few months, I have advised candidates on their application and the interview process. The experience often reminds me of when I was an anxious applicant. I feel that a few things would be super beneficial for prospective students to know before they start applying.

Read the  ‘Admissions’ section of the website thoroughly

The MSc Management programme's admissions section has very detailed and useful information regarding application progress every step of the way. I remember over a year ago I was reading Imperial's website carefully and that helped to answer almost all my generic questions regarding entry requirements and the process.

Doing so gave me a clear direction and plan of how I should proceed and how to organise my material and made me aware of what I might miss and where I might need help. I can't stress enough that you should go through the admissions pages before reaching out to staff and students of the programme.

Dig out insider information

When applicants come to me with questions which are already answered on the website, they will likely get very similar answers because I often refer to the website when typing in my responses. To create meaningful interactions with people in the Business School, I strongly suggest that applicants ask questions that can only be answered by 'insiders'.

For example, which modules are interesting, which clubs are fun and active and what services Careers provide. Such first-hand information assists you in demonstrating genuine interest in the School in your personal statement. Additionally, it helps you to further understand if the School fits your academic or career goals.

Set up a positive mindset

Applying for a prestigious institute like Imperial Business School is daunting and stressful. It is crucial to have a healthy mindset so that you can benefit from the application process no matter what the final result is. When I was applying for a Master's, I found the process itself to be rewarding.

Figuring out which programme to study and how best to present myself to the Admissions team offered me a valuable opportunity to reflect on my personal and professional life, which I should have done a long time ago.

In hindsight, reaching out to Student Ambassadors also helps candidates to build meaningful relationships with the alumni early on, which is beneficial to future studying and job hunting.

Back in 2019, the Bank of England made a prediction. The future for financial services, it said, would be built to a very great extent around machine learning. And this stands to reason.

We are living in an era where artificial intelligence is increasingly integrated into every aspect of life. Across industries, the transformative potential of these technologies is becoming abundantly clear – from the significant savings in costs, time and human error to leveraging data for insights to drive decision-making and competitive edge, when it comes to AI, the sky it seems is the limit. For banking alone, a 2020 McKinsey report suggests that AI technologies could amount to a whopping $1 trillion of additional annual value globally.

What then is holding some financial services players back from fully exploiting the promise of machine? Why are so many firms still struggling to implement machine learning models at scale?

Partly there’s fear; fear of the new, of change, of the unknown. This era, dubbed The Fourth Industrial Revolution, is characterised by extraordinary technology-driven transformations; so-called cyber-physical systems that are reshaping the way we live and work. And an unstoppable digitisation of everything from onboarding to compliance and fraud detection, to loans and investments.

Beyond fear, there’s a lack of clarity about how to use AI – where to deploy it, and where not to; and how to build the right strategies to integrate and fully leverage it across the organisation.

Many firms today still grapple with inflexible core technology systems – outmoded or under-invested systems that fail to function as a single, centralised data backbone. Data assets are often fragmented across business and technology silos, while legacy operating models make collaboration between these teams difficult if not impossible.

Meanwhile the pace of change continues to quicken unabated. The Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated many of the big trends in digital engagement and digitisation globally - so much so that for financial executives the choice has become very simple: understand AI or risk being left behind.

Here are a few things that you need to know if you want get ahead of the curve, compete successfully and thrive in the new normal.

1. AI should be the foundation for new value propositions and distinctive customer experiences.

Remember, AI technologies can help your firm:

• Lower costs through the efficiencies created by optimal resource allocation, automation of time-heavy processes and reduced error rates.
• Increase revenues by enabling the personalisation of services offered to customers.
• Boost innovation and identify new opportunities by processing huge amounts of data for critical information and game-changing insights.

2. AI helps you cut through the noise, and make better decisions

In financial services, the pain is real. Sifting noisy and complex data sets with endless potential scenarios is not only very hard for human beings, but it also comes with a huge risk of making mistakes – and expensive ones. Machine learning algorithms can perform these tasks at a fraction of the time. They can distinguish between significant patterns and anomalous ones in nano-seconds. And they can be used to help analysts distil hundreds of potential indicators for future investment returns into a few robust measures. This is a technology that can synthesise massive amounts of data and make fresh insights – so you can make well-informed decisions.

3. AI can help personalise your customer services

There is a growing appetite among customers for the personalisation of services and products that extends to financial services. A 2019 survey by Accenture found that one in two banking customers were open to things like personal conversations and targeted product marketing. AI-powered data sifting and social listening can provide a wealth of data and insights about customer preferences, needs, interests and pain points – insights that can be deployed to drive engagement, improve the customer experience and increase retention while reducing costly turnover rates.

4. AI can help you find new customers

Lead generation is both labour and time-intensive. But AI can take the pain out of the process by parsing multiple factors – individual characteristics, profitability, costs, potential for growth – to create an ideal customer profile. It can also be used to find the ideal customer in external data sources and identify the best tactics for approaching individuals. And it can do all this fast.

5. AI brings its own challenges too

AI is a whizz at seeing patterns and extracting them for decision-making. But when those patterns connect to historic data points that in turn tie to bias, the risk of customer dissatisfaction and bad publicity are all too real. Recent headlines have trumpeted around the world about poor mortgage lending to minorities and credit loans to women – all generated by “black box” AI applications. A solid rule of thumb is this: algorithms are only as good as the data they use.

The future for financial services is inexorably tied to the future of technology.

To fully exploit the promise of machine learning, executives need to be knowledgeable about AI, and that means understanding the (huge) benefits it represents, while being able to navigate the risks. Ignoring its promise means being left behind and rendered obsolete. Astute firms are making the investment in building a rock-solid foundation in AI and machine learning, exploring the future of innovation in financial services and developing practical techniques that can be implemented today.  

Programmes like the Imperial Business School online AI & Machine Learning in Financial Services are here to educate leaders about these AI applications in their industry and are vitally important for leaders in understanding the realm of the possible – and the potential risks that exist along the way.

My heart skips a beat. I have been accepted to my top programme of choice, MSc Management at Imperial Business School. But how did I get there? Well it was quite the long journey.

The beginning

A few years ago, I finished my Bachelor’s degree. Having finished my studies in the UK and fallen in love with London, I was faced with a dilemma. Either start a Master’s degree straight away or work for a bit before doing a Master’s degree afterwards. I accepted a job with a technology company with the idea in mind of working there one to two years and then going back to full time study. 

The decision

A little more than a year later, I had just gotten promoted, but I still yearned to learn more and get a Master’s. I decided to look into different Master’s programmes in December to be on time to apply to any Master’s programme I might want. After looking into different Master’s programmes, MSc Management caught my eye, due to modules like Innovation Management and Marketing Decisions, and the unique opportunities the programme offers, such as exchanges in foreign countries and a great network.

To make sure I was making the right decision, I reached out to different people who have studied at Imperial Business School, in particular the programme that I was interested in. All I got were stellar reviews, with people telling me how much they enjoyed their time at Imperial and the learnings they got there. 

I watched some videos of students who did the programme and made my final decision. MSc Management was my top choice, a programme that will help me reach new heights, whether in startups, multinational companies or even my own business one day.

The hard work begins

While working a full-time job, I needed to do the full process of applying to Imperial, starting with getting my transcripts translated then sending them back to my school. I also needed to write cover letters, explaining why I wanted to join the MSc Management programme and Imperial London. Although intensive, the application process is straightforward and after completing my interview, all that was left for me was to wait. 

Three weeks after completing my interview for the programme, I got THE email; I’d been accepted to Imperial! I felt excited and relieved, knowing that the next year would be spent meeting tremendous people and learning new skills that will last me a lifetime!

Why not do it too?

If you’re reading this blog, you’re probably thinking of applying, you’re starting to apply or you have already applied. If you’re in the same situation as I was, it might be difficult to write cover letters, do video interviews, contact your previous professors for reference letters and work full-time on the side, but with motivation, you can do it all and get the Master’s programme of your dreams! 

In my experience, it is best to set aside time to do your research before choosing a Master’s programme and a school — you’ll be investing a whole year here, so make sure it is what you want. 

Start this search early on so you then have time to apply for your chosen programme without any stress. Speak to current or former students, we’ll always be available to help you out! 

Also, practice before your interview — make sure you have read the programme thoroughly and you know why you are applying and what excites you about the programme. 

Most importantly, remember that through the late nights writing cover letters, you can and will do it! Good luck to you on your journey to Imperial.