INSEAD: An MBA Alumni Profile

It’s been more than ten years since Julie Meyer graduated with her MBA from INSEAD, but she’s still reaping the benefits of the network she made in the business school classroom.

Meyer’s not afraid to say she always thought business school students took themselves too seriously – that was, until she attended an open day at INSEAD Business School in Fontainebleau, France.

“I met many students and was surprised by how much I liked them,” she says. “I thought, ‘if this is business school, count me in’.”

More than ten years later and Meyer, now chief executive of Ariadne Capital – her own London-based investment firm – looks back on her year in Fontainebleau as ‘an oasis in her career’.

“I really stepped back and thought and dreamed harder and further in the future than I would have if I had not gone to INSEAD.”

Meyer’s achievements begin with the founding of Ariadne Capital, but as her impressive biography reveals, she is also founder of Entrepreneur Country, co-founder of First Tuesday, a dragon on BBC's Online Dragons’ Den in the UK, and a weekly columnist for London's City AM. That’s in addition to her awards as Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year, World Economic Forum Global Leader of Tomorrow, and a place in the Wall Street Journal's Top 30 Most Influential Women in Europe.

And then there is her personal project: the development of an association for teenage girls “to help them find their unique contribution to the world and create a virtuous circle of investment in women.”

Being a woman in the MBA classroom didn’t pose too much of a challenge for Meyer.

“I was able to benchmark myself against my peer group, which had positive and negative aspects, but what it meant was that I really understood my strengths afterwards,” she says. “As a result, I started to play to my strengths in the years after INSEAD, and that led to rapid achievement in my career.”

Meyer, who is “American by birth and European in spirit”, talks of her MBA degree as a gold star; one that has made her very attractive to employers and other business people alike.

“It [the MBA] was a major reason I had so many [employment] options after INSEAD as to what I could do and where,” she says.

Today, her passion for the business and financial world, and her dedication to the field of entrepreneurship, sees her juggling a variety of roles, from entrepreneur to investor, industry commentator to mentor.

“I enormously value the skills that I picked up,” Meyer says of her MBA. “I learnt corporate finance at INSEAD, and believe that you can't really run a business unless you understand the basics of that. I became more confident, learned how to present more effectively, learned what my strengths were, and deepened my instinct.”

It’s an instinct she would encourage others to follow.

“I would encourage others to pursue an MBA. I feel a one year MBA at a top school... is a great investment to make in one's self at age 29 or so.

“I'm sure I would have had an interesting career and life, as whatever life throws at me I make lemonade, but it is certain that I wouldn't have achieved what I have to date if I had not gone to INSEAD.”

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