Alexandra Burla (SKEMA 2020) - “My time at SKEMA: a huge influence on my professional and personal lives, now and in the future”

I remember a piece of advice my father gave me when I was very young: “Learn everything you can, even it seems pointless in the moment; it will always be useful one day.” My father always has his feet on the ground and a lot of advice like that. My mother is the person who gives me strength, who always manages to convince me that everything is possible, that no doors are closed, that I have what it takes to achieve my wildest dreams. Unsurprisingly, with this education my personality is now tinged with curiosity, motivation and ambition.

I’d always liked school. For me it was an opportunity to learn, to satisfy my curiosity. I also saw it as an opportunity to find my path, to find a job that I love, to carve a place for myself in the world.

I was born in Romania, so the first days of third grade in France were a bit difficult for me. On my first day of school, ironically, the only sentence I knew was “Je ne sais pas parler français” (I don’t know how to speak French). Because of the language barrier, I had to develop “survival strategies”. These consisted mainly in doing everything like my classmates when the teacher asked us something, answering all questions I was asked with “oui”, and revising the entire day’s schoolwork with my mother in the evenings when I got home, so I could follow along the next day. This experience could have put me off school and made me hate the environment that demanded so much effort from me... But the more I learned, the happier I was to go back there.

By high school, I was doing very well at school. I just had a lot of trouble deciding what I wanted to study afterwards, so which specialisation to choose for the French baccalaureate. In the end I chose the Economy and Social Sciences stream. But once I had my baccalaureate, since I didn’t know what to do next, I made the most general choice possible: a preparatory class, which prepares students for taking competitive entrance exams.  The subjects usually follow on from what you studied in high school, but go into more depth. In practice, the exercises are very advanced, the competition is tough, classmates aren’t always very kind, and the teachers aren’t always the most encouraging. Going from my suburban high school, where I had ended up at the top of my class through very regular efforts on my part, to a Parisian preparatory school where no matter how hard I worked I could barely follow could have there again turned me off studies completely. But I came up with another “survival strategy”, and I only realised it once prep school was over. In this difficult environment, in boarding school, a small group of people very quickly formed and became friends. This helped me through those two years; they encouraged and supported me all the way through that “tunnel”.

At the end of the tunnel, I joined SKEMA Business School. SKEMA chose me and I chose SKEMA. It didn’t just give me the academic knowledge I learned in class, it also developed my personality, my skills, and changed how I see the world. I met exceptional people there who mean a great deal to me. From the time I attended my admission interview to join the school, I imagined my graduation ceremony when my parents would see me receiving my Master’s degree, a first in my family, and then us all throwing our caps in the air. Unfortunately, given the current COVID context, I didn’t get the chance to experience that ceremony this year, but I still have my Master’s in Strategic Marketing and Business Development, a source of extreme pride for me, and I was able to celebrate that with my family. This degree might have my name on it, but in reality it belongs to my entire family and all the people who supported me, not just at SKEMA but also at each step that led me there. I thank all those people from the bottom of my heart.

This degree marks the end of one chapter, but the start of many others. My time at SKEMA will always have an important influence on my professional and personal life, even beyond the degree.

The SKEMA/Microsoft partnership got me interested in Microsoft, in IT, and that is where I eventually found my path. In Microsoft I found a company that was everything I wanted from an employer: the growth mindset, the diversity and inclusion, the support between team members, the opportunities, the trust and autonomy I am given are just a small part of what motivates me each day. And as for my personal life, SKEMA is where I met the person who now shares my life and who will most certainly share it for a long time to come. I also made friends on both the Nice and Suzhou campuses. Those people will still be there for all the chapters I will be writing now that I have my degree…

The SKEMA experience

When I was preparing for the entrance exams, SKEMA impressed me because it was the only school that asked us to think about our future in a very high level of detail through the projective CV exercise. I remember that this was a difficult exercise for me at first.

I felt like it didn’t make sense, because I would never do exactly what I was attempting to predict. But in the end I decided to go along with it and imagine myself in the future when writing the CV. I even included hobbies that I planned to develop in the future. The exercise gets you thinking about your future, looking in detail at positions vacant in the sector that interests you, and really start to look at how the ideal you have in mind compares with the reality of the job market. For a student on the verge of leaving the prep school “tunnel”, I find this exercise extremely pertinent. It also allows you to imagine yourself more concretely as a student at the school, by finding out about the student associations, for example.

It was from that moment that I really took an interest in the JE (junior enterprise), SKEMA Conseil. An association I actually joined during my first year at SKEMA. I started in an HR officer position, then was elected president of SKEMA Conseil Nice. That’s when my experience of the school was completely transformed. Of course, at SKEMA the classes and professors are very interesting, they push you to professionalize yourself. But experience in a junior enterprise considerably speeds up the process. I got the chance to work closely with several people in the school’s governance team, with the presidents of Lille and Paris, and with the presidents of the other French and even European junior enterprises. And of course, for the first time in my life I was confronted with clients, with revenue to generate, a budget to manage, a team to lead, and all that at the age of 22. This experience was so gripping to me that after my gap year I founded SKEMA Conseil Suzhou with a local team. This created lifelong bonds with the people who shared in this adventure and it was excellent preparation for the professional world. I would do it all again without a moment’s hesitation.

But of course, business school is rarely free. Financing my studies was a real issue for me and I don’t think I’m the only one. It’s an issue that remains taboo today and few people talk about it.

First, you have to find money to pay the tuition fees. Banks are the best bet for this. Despite my parents’ modest financial situation and my lack of guarantor, I managed to get a student loan from a bank that partners with SKEMA. I was able to show my bank how motivated I was to succeed in my studies and that helped me to obtain the loan.

Then step 2 was finding the money to support myself while studying. I was far from my family. My parents lived in Paris and I decided to study on the Nice campus to become more independent. To pay for this, I had several student jobs: picking orders for the click & collect service of a big supermarket after class, giving maths lessons to secondary school students on weekends, and ushering at OGC Nice football matches. It was a lot to fit in, especially with my involvement in SKEMA Conseil, but if I managed it that means it’s doable! Besides the financial aspect, I learned to juggle different projects and activities, to organise myself efficiently and plan as much as possible. All useful skills for the road ahead!

In short, SKEMA is much more than a school; it’s a journey. Each of us gets to decide what our journey will be: by choosing a campus, getting involved in the associations that interest us, becoming more independent, facing challenges, meeting people, discovering places... Everyone’s journey is unique. The experience at school is just the beginning; SKEMA continues after graduation, too.

Like Jean-Philippe Courtois (SKEMA 1983), Executive Vice President and President of Microsoft Global Sales, Marketing and Operations and Chairman of SKEMA’s Board of Directors, in his opening statement at the graduation ceremony, I will end this interview with a quote by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry:

"As for the future, your task is not to foresee it, but to enable it."

Contact: Alexandra Burla, Commercial Executive Retail at Microsoft