Helia Burgunder
C-LEVEL EXECUTIVE AND BOARD MEMBER
Coffee Chat
Dear Helia, since you completed the EMBA at the iimt, your career has unfolded in multiple directions. It is very impressive to see female leaders and our alumna being rewarded for their hard work and perseverance. It makes us really proud to know that you have chosen us to be part of your journey! We would like to ask you some questions and some advice that you would like to share with the next generations.
Why an EMBA at the iimt? I chose the EMBA at the iimt due to a multitude of factors. First, it offered the best combination of academia and market, professors with an excellent academic background who were also former executives. Their extensive field experience complemented the theory with practical aspects. Second, the richness of the programme and the innovation topics linked to ICT appealed to me. Throughout those three intensive years, we were inspired, challenged and gained profound knowledge through 30 diversified disciplines. The exchanges with participants from different backgrounds were fantastic, and the fact that we would stay off-site during the whole duration of the modules created a strong network. We have maintained close contact within the alumni network since then. It was an incredible journey, from a human, development and business perspective! How did the EMBA contribute to your success? The EMBA was a major milestone in my professional success. It broadened my horizons from a technical perspective to a business perspective, providing me the necessary insights to build an impactful career thereafter. I believe you have a small anecdote to tell us from those EMBA times?
[laughs] Yes, one that I’m very proud of. Those three years were very intensive, I was still working full-time, in parallel to my EMBA. And as if it was not enough, I got pregnant to my first two boys during that period: I even breast-fed my eldest in class! I always say that my son was definitely the youngest EMBA student, at only four months old! I keep those moments close to my heart, with lots of gratitude to Prof. Dr. Teufel and all the iimt staff, who did everything that they could to make it possible beyond my expectations. I’m forever grateful. You have now three boys and never stopped working. How do you balance work and life responsibilities? In short, with lots of drive, lots of organisation, and lots of passion. What was the biggest sacrifice that you had to make in advancing your career? I took every career decision fully aware of the consequences, and those decisions were not sacrifices: they were choices… choosing to have a family and a career, choosing to change countries for my career and moving the family along. I started over three times in different countries and decided to discover other industries after a long and successful career in telecoms and ICT. Looking back today, I should have done it much earlier, and it’s not over yet. As a female leader, given the sector’s gender gap, have you had to invest in any extra steps or efforts to get to the same place as your male colleagues? Yes, let’s not lie to ourselves, it has been harder for women to get to leadership positions. When you have companies serving the whole population with consumer goods, yet with only 14% females in senior leadership positions, this is symptomatic of the difficulty in building a career. The most significant barrier to achieve gender parity is the unconscious biases that we all – men and women – still have in our minds, which condition our daily actions as leaders. In general, women still have to prove that they are capable of doing the job before they ever get it, whereas men are given a chance because they have “potential”. Women are tagged as “too ambitious” with a negative twist, whereas men are tagged as “career-oriented”. We need to raise awareness of these discrepancies and biases, because we have many women with the right competencies and capabilities who are ready to take the next step and excel as leaders and professionals. You recently came back to the iimt, this time as a guest lecturer… Indeed, I had the honour and privilege of holding a master class on the topic of the “Smart City”, as well as a Strategic Management lecture for the MBA and CAS students on “The Power of Disruption”. It’s a pleasure being on the other side and contributing with my relevant expertise and experience gathered over these years. Thank you for having me back! What is the biggest lesson that you have learned throughout your career? Take risks and don’t fear the unexpected. Don’t get side-tracked by the unknown or circumstances, but rather focus on reaching your objectives. Leave self-doubt behind, and transform your particularities into strengths. Above all: stay true to yourself. Don’t compromise your values. What advice do you want to leave to the next generation of leaders? Don’t wait until you are seen. Make yourself visible. Don’t wait until you get recognition. Acknowledge your value and move on. Don’t wait until it’s the right moment. Dare and take the risk now.
Michel Neuhaus
COO eicher+pauli
What does ongoing education have to do with success? And how can success be measured? Being successful means aspiring to and achieving one’s own goals. Already during my studies to become an electrical engineer, I was striving towards my goal of completing an EMBA at the iimt. A few years later, I have been successful in that regard. But that’s not all. The higher education also helped me to achieve professional success by reaching my goals in the business world. Thanks to the iimt’s flexible programme, which allowed me to maintain a good family, work and leisure balance, I was able to build on my specific strengths, but also to overcome certain weaknesses. Thanks to the EMBA many doors opened within a short period of time. As a member of the executive board of a regional energy supplier and while in the middle of my studies at the iimt, I was given the opportunity to become a managing director of a subsidiary of a successful engineering company. Right from the beginning, I was able to put a lot of what I had learned at the iimt into practice. After only a few months, I was nominated COO of the group of the same engineering company. As an engineer I am now responsible for the finances of all our companies throughout Switzerland and actively participating in the group management. In this diversified environment, I regularly draw on the knowledge I have gained at the iimt. In addition to the very competent professors, I would particularly like to emphasise the network and the exchange among peer students. Thanks to the ingenious principle of having a different class constellation in almost every module, the participants can learn from each other and drastically expand their network. A healthy mix between practice and theory in the interactive courses conveys the learning content in an exciting and gripping way. Looking back, I experienced a thrilling and instructive time at the iimt with overwhelming encounters. Many thanks to everyone I met and got to know on a deeper level during this time. I would like to thank the iimt here explicitly for this opportunity and the career boost I received.
Hajar El Haddaoui
HEAD OF SHOP & RETAIL CHANNELS, REGION WEST, SWISSCOM
The courses were led by excellent professors with extensive academic and practical knowledge. Moreover, contact with both teaching staff and administration was always a positive experience. The CAS program has without a doubt added value to my marketability and has been a great experience. It has been a very interesting and fruitful journey! I have found the program being dynamic, shaping and empowering in terms of improving skills necessary to face and rise to the market’s challenges. Professors are selected for the rigor and relevance of their research, as well as their ability to inspire in the classroom and to synthesise impactful learning from diverse student perspectives. The program has provided tremendous value to me and was an excellent platform to continue building my career. What did you particularly love about the studies at the iimt? Classes are very well thought through, and professors put huge efforts into making their sessions stimulating for students. What made the iimt stand out from the similar institutions? I was impressed how up to date were the articles and cases that professors used. Most importantly I was impressed by the insightful views shared by my colleagues during class discussions. Why should someone who is looking to continue their education consider the iimt? Improve your strengths. Don’t neglect your weaknesses, but don’t over-invest in them either. Your value lies in your unique strength. Find them and focus on them. Also, invest in your relationships. Keep your network alive. Take the chance to experiment in a safe environment at the iimt What exceeded your expectations at the iimt? Flexibility! It matched my and my family’s expectations perfectly.
Grégory Leproux
Senior Manager, Solution Engineering, at Salesforce, leading Salesforce’s pre-sales organisation in Switzerland
The studies at the iimt helped me get a broader understating of what it takes to manage a large company, the inter-dependency between different departments and understand the various frameworks that have been used to govern enterprises. It provided me with tools and skills that I could directly use in my job. The leadership and management course at the iimt gave me a good understanding of the concepts that are in use in most companies. This foundation was extremely helpful to allow me to analyse and embrace the evolution of new methodologies (lean enterprise, open leadership, etc.)
Compared to some other MBA programs available in the market, the iimt has a strong focus on leadership and management courses for technology companies. The use cases we had tightly related to the problems we faced and sometimes, if needed, we would also draw parallels with others industries to get the full picture (e.g. in Marketing).Studies at the iimt provided us with a great balance between theory and practical use. It was fun to interact with the team around the various challenges we had to solve together. It is great for people coming from technology companies. There was a family feeling as we spent 3 years together.If you want to get clarity of what is needed to manage and develop an enterprise then You should consider the iimt. The practical examples and the curation of the latest developments in leadership and management makes it really interesting. It is an accelerator to your own research on management. I was impressed how a three-year program really gave me the opportunity to apply and practice what I learned and to make it stick, which is much better than some other short-term programmes.
If you are considering joining the iimt make sure you define your long-term objectives and see how the iimt will help you achieve your goals, then you can get the best of the different modules. Finally, I’d like to thank the iimt’s staff for their flexibility, for listening to our feedback and for continuing developing the program.