Alumni Journeys

The quantitative subjects I studied before and during my LSE MSc programme have been the backbone of what I do today (data analytics and data science). One of my favourite subjects, Econometrics, helped me form a deep understanding of the core methodology called Conjoint analysis when I started my first job with a market research and decision behaviour consultancy in London. It gave me a unique competitive edge and helped to establish me quickly as one of the technical experts within the team.

When I moved onto my second job in analytics, the Statistics and Econometrics foundation allowed me to take initiatives and venture further into the Advanced Analytics and Machine Learning space. I am now creating, leading and shaping the Data Science practice within my firm, together with our young, ambitious and extremely intelligent data scientists. This has been a really exciting journey, even more so when I see how I get to transform what I learned in the classrooms to something that can be more easily digested, communicated and understood by the industry.

I am an entrepreneur of 33 years of age who, with a business partner, bought out and took over an EdTech software company of 19 people specialised in digital assessment. I am currently the managing director and sales director of THEIA.

I started my career in investments in London. As an investment analyst in a hedge fund, I covered tech stocks before transitioning into M&A advisory services to financial institutions. After several years in finance, I launched K6 Investments with my business partner; a European Equity investment vehicle  based out of London. It is during this experience that we both decided to push our entrepreneurship further and take over a company. Since December 2020, I have been running THEIA.

The THEIA platform is a SaaS solution specialising in digital education. With over 250,000 users and over 80 million exams completed over the past 15 years, THEIA is an innovative, reliable, and proven platform to meet the most complex online exam needs. E-learning and Data Analytics modules enrich THEIA's functionalities and make the platform a complete, easy-to-use, and customisable solution that helps you achieve your human resources goals.

Today, its assessment module is the leader in Europe and is the main driver of its development. We intervene at all levels, in initial or continuing training (corporate), in all disciplines. THEIA is directly present in 5 countries, and 30 countries through its clients.

Studying in the GMiM programme at LSE was transformational. In a very fast two years, I met an incredible group of people in the GMiM and other programmes at LSE, worked on fascinating projects around the world (that included a consulting trip to Kenya), and refined and developed many skills and relationships that have significantly contributed to my career as an entrepreneur. From using my dissertation as the backbone of research for a business I wanted to create to working in impact VC and living in the thriving entrepreneurial ecosystem that is London, I can’t think of a more exciting opportunity for anyone interested in creating their own path to success.

Since leaving LSE, I stayed in close touch with many incredible people that I met during my time in London. I created a first of its kind investment model that enabled direct investment into music artists and was incredibly fortunate and honored to be named with the LSE Generate Entrepreneur of the Year. Most recently, I co-founded a company called RootNote that is building a SaaS platform to help digital creators use data to build better businesses. Whether you’re on a path to change entrepreneurial culture within a large organisation or build your own, I can truly say that my experience at LSE has been a life changing part of my journey.

LSE has such a strong reputation for turning out qualified professionals and placing them in the world’s leading companies, that it was a no-brainer to accept when I was offered a place in the Department of Management’s first-ever MSc Marketing cohort. That, and I was itching for a change of scene from my native New York—London was, and still is, a very appealing alternative. (Although my home will always be in NYC; the way to my heart is through a Murray’s bagel).

Currently, I’m the Head of Community Partnerships at Depop, leading a team that defines strategy for working with our most high-profile users around the world. I’m also tasked with bringing Depop to existing fashion brands to incorporate into their overall business strategy, along with starting up our trend reporting work and helping out with PR efforts. A full plate, but a gratifying one.

In a nutshell, Depop is a fashion resale mobile app focused on empowering young creatives by, among other things, lowering the barrier of entry to allow Gen Z entrepreneurs to build their own businesses. The app functions like a social media platform, so it’s intuitive for the mobile generation to navigate. Users can sell items from their own wardrobe or brand new pieces; we help them reach potential partners and customers from within our 13M+ strong community in 147 countries worldwide.

We work with designers, stylists, vintage resellers, musicians, and other young people who are setting trends instead of just reacting to them. It’s especially appealing for our buyers and sellers who are not terribly interested in the status quo of the traditional fashion establishment and are brimming with inspiration, but seeking out a place to jump start it all. My team specifically works with some names people know—celebrities and social media personalities—along with people we think are going to be big. We help nurture their talent and show them how they can get started creating their own fashion empire.

After completing my bachelor’s in business and a master's degree in International Relations and Economics, I joined a boutique Canadian consulting firm specialising in infrastructure and transportation strategy. While I had the opportunity to work on a number of interesting projects, I decided to make a bit of a career change and transitioned into working across various roles in management, oversight, and partnerships with the United Nations in Copenhagen, in New York, and eventually on a work-from-home basis. This flexibility allowed me to cross a few things off the ‘to-do’ list and I eventually found myself in London, joining LSE's MSc HRO programme.  

The HRO programme helped me better ground my work in the science and practice of organisational behaviour and gave me salient examples and reference points that inform my thinking and my approach to solving organisational problems. Most importantly, courses like Organisational Theory, The Dark Side of the Organisation, and Decisions Biases and Nudges, to name a few, gave me a more rounded and nuanced understanding on how people interact with their workplace and social environments and a set of theories and vocabularies that I could tap into when working across a range of assignments in human resources, change management, strategy, business process redesign, system implementation or social policy.  

One of my fondest memories from the Department of Management came toward the end of the second term when the class got together for an end-of-term social at Bounce in Farringdon. It was a fun evening of silly ping-pong and beer that was a great way to mark the end of our class’s time together. More importantly, it really helped me to connect with some of the classmates and professors that I hadn’t yet gotten to know better and very much left me wishing that the year could go on just a little longer.

I originally came to LSE in 2016 to pursue my Bachelors in the field of Management. During my Undergraduate degree, I had the privilege of leading the LSE Consultancy Society, as well as co-founding a boutique consulting firm specialised in strategic innovation and multidimensional organisational change for luxury brands. In 2020, I decided to return to LSE to further explore the interlink between business strategy and emerging technologies by pursuing the Master’s in Management of Information Systems and Digital Innovation (MSc MISDI). The environment and community that I have found during my two-year part-time degree exceeded my expectations. I was impressed by the quality and diversity of the people on the programme, as well as the depth of conversations one could have with them. It were those inspiring discussions that have enormously contributed to my learning experience, helping to foster the concepts taught in lectures and seminars. The highlight of the programme for me was the teaching approach taken by professors. Unlike comparable programmes which are mostly focused on knowledge creation, MISDI is much more about questioning that knowledge and understanding the causes and consequences of digital innovation on a sociotechnical level. This provides students filters to assess and understand phenomena in completely new ways - a skill that has become very handy in my consulting work, in both technical and non-technical environments.

After four rewarding years in strategy consulting and experiencing venture and brand building first-hand, I felt ready for the next major step in my career. During the second year of my degree, I met Bardia Bijani, a fellow MSc MISDI student. We soon realised that our visions and values very much align, became close friends and ultimately decided to build something meaningful together. Shaped by value-driven, long-term thinking, we founded the FuzeQube Group, a venture portfolio that builds and invests in ventures and brands that put meaningful innovation at their core. Our goal was to develop an ecosystem that enables innovation on scale through the strategic use of complementary resources and the collaboration of driven individuals. Seeing the power of human cooperation as a core element of our business, we regard our ventures not just as a way to drive innovation in multiple sectors, but as vehicles to enable outstanding but often overlooked talent to swiftly progress into leadership positions. We deeply believe that interlinking applied education and entrepreneurial empowerment can play a key role in fostering young people’s potential, as well as bridging socioeconomic divides. With this in mind, we already have five high impact ventures in the works under the umbrella of FuzeQube. Over the next few months, we will focus on further strengthening the ecosystem behind our brands, whilst consulting major brands on digital strategy and finding industry fit for Web3 initiatives. The proofs of concept that will follow will put us in a position to actively raise capital for our ventures by the end of the year. I like to see this collaboration as another indicator for the strong LSE community and would not have been possible without both of us being part of MISDI.

My entrepreneurial journey started at the Department of Management. The first time I had a chance to pitch my business idea was at a start-up competition organised by London School of Economics. Dr Jörn Rothe from the Department was one of my very first supporters back then. I was also incredibly fortunate to work on a number of consultancy projects at LSE Consulting and as part of a student-led consulting group. There was plenty to learn throughout the year and I met so many inspiring people during my studies. It really was a life-changing experience.

I am now the Managing Director of First Step Consulting, an organisation I founded about five years ago to help young people break the all-too-familiar ‘no experience — no job’ cycle. We train ambitious university students and recent graduates to work with us on management consulting projects as volunteer consultants. They serve real clients under our guidance, gain first-hand work experience and acquire transferable skills. This opportunity has proven to enhance the employment prospects of our volunteers. All our projects are designed to fit around the time constraints of a full-time student. In essence, the projects we run serve as a means to upskill young people.

I would say all the lessons I’ve learned during my programme at LSE were crucial to how ila originated (an award-winning social enterprise that uses human-centered design to empower gender-based violence survivors) and where it is today. After handing in our final dissertations, my co-founder and I packed our bags and headed to Mumbai, India, where we piloted our skills-training program for gender-based violence survivors in partnership with UN Women, WeWork and Unilever. Since then, we’ve won the LSE Generate funding competition and I’ve been invited to speak at UN Women’s International Women’s Day Conference at its Asia Pacific Headquarters in Bangkok.

On the first day of orientation I met my classmate Julie Sane-Pezet and we bonded over our shared interest in eliminating gender-based violence. Little did we know that would be the beginning of ila. Since that moment, we took in all LSE had to offer to make ila the best it could be. We applied theories on social innovation from our programme to set a strong foundation for ila, we bounced ideas off of our diverse group of classmates and we engaged heavily with LSE Generate – the entrepreneurial hub for students and alumni.

I’ve had a lot of prospective students reach out to me since leaving LSE and I tell them that the MSc Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship programme is great for anyone who is thinking of starting their own social enterprise. In reality, I think any student can make the most of LSE if they want to – all of the resources are there right at your fingertips.