Sarah took the leap – from Belgium to LA

Speaking from her apartment in Santa Monica, Sarah Braet says she had a very clear idea of what she wanted to achieve before she started her Executive MBA at Vlerick.

As a highly qualified professional in the pharmaceutical industry, she had her sights set on a business development role. At the time, she was living in Belgium, and she felt she lacked the business insight to make the leap.

She says: “I have a very technical background with a Masters in Drug Development and Advanced Masters in Industrial Pharmacy.

“My aspiration was to move towards business development – but my technical niche was difficult to get out of. You are so focused on the technical aspects that you don’t always know how to translate your work to show the big picture. I wanted to have more understanding of how decisions are made – and how you can help influence your organisation to head in the right direction.”

Sarah applied for an Executive MBA at Vlerick because she thought it would give her the ability to engage with and persuade senior managers.

Diverse, international experience

 She says: “My company, Takeda, has always been very supportive in terms of my personal development. I get so many opportunities to leap there. If you know what you want to achieve, anything is possible.

“At Vlerick, I quickly found myself in a diverse, international group of people who challenged me and who have become friends and an important network.”

Of the many new skills Sarah learned at Vlerick, change management and negotiation were particularly eye-opening.

A focus on people

For her Knowledge In Action project, Sarah led a project around diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) in one of Takeda’s manufacturing plants.

She says that DEI was already very good at the facility – but she helped to put structures in place to standardise best practice, and worked with leadership and management to help implement and track them.

She says: “Change management is critical in my new role. Digital capabilities are evolving quickly at Takeda, and if you don’t prepare a site for these changes, people can feel that they’re losing control, rather than feeling empowered by digitisation.”

Because implementing change is both bottom-up and top-down, Sarah found her  sharpened negotiation and active listening skills helpful too.

She adds: “If you’re in contact with people high up in the organisation and persuading them, it’s useful to understand how to conduct these conversations. If you can negotiate for yourself and for your project, you earn more respect and increase your authority.”

From the heart of Europe to LA

Then the truly big leap came for Sarah. She found an exciting opportunity within her company in Los Angeles, USA. It allowed her to move from her more technical role to managing digital transformation roll outs.

She says: “Everything I learned at Vlerick about the people aspect of change management is critical.

“You need to position change in a positive way so that people feel empowered. More than 50% of change is about people. To integrate digital changes and make them part of business as usual, you need users, super users and mechanisms to ensure continuity. I learned how to achieve this at Vlerick.

“The Executive MBA helped me to break out of a technical specialism, to think internationally and use my entrepreneurial spirit even more. It allowed me to create the opportunities and network I needed to be able to take that leap.

“I left Vlerick with the skillset and the flexibility to take the leap. And a broad support network of classmates – and of Vlerick alumni around the world – that I can tap into at any time.

“And now I’m here in LA with an exciting new role, at an exciting new site, full of wonderful people – which is thanks to both Vlerick and my employer, Takeda.”