SKEMA Business School students studying their final year at Berkeley meet San Francisco-based alumni

On 4 May, students on the Academic Diploma in entrepreneurship, technology and start-up management programme (SKEMA X Berkeley Global X Sutardja Center for Entrepreneurship & Technology) met alumni working in Silicon Valley for an end-of-year event and dinner. They were accompanied by Nicolas Servel, programme director, and Madeleine Martins, director of alumni and fundraising.
 

In May, the first intake of academic diploma in entrepreneurship students met SKEMA alumni working in Silicon Valley. At the event, itself an excellent networking opportunity, Madeleine Martins stressed the importance of the transition from student life to working life, updated attendees on the latest changes at SKEMA and underlined all the work that the SKEMA Alumni & Sponsorship team does on behalf of graduates.

In his presentation, Nicolas Servel highlighted the importance of this sort of meeting in bringing together both the student community and the SKEMA alumni community, which numbers around 150 people in the San Francisco Bay Area.

“It was great to meet the new graduates.I can’t wait to see everything they will achieve in San Francisco.This kind of event is a real opportunity for graduates to cement solid partnerships,” said Etienne Maugain (SKEMA 2012), senior product manager at Momentive, a NASDAQ-listed company which uses artificial intelligence and people-centric software solutions to help managers make important decisions.

An outstanding programme

Nicolas Servel also underlined the exceptional quality of this academic diploma, which was developed as a result of a high-level partnership between SKEMA Business School, Berkeley Global and the Sutardja Center for Entrepreneurship & Technology (SCET). “Thanks to theBerkeley SCET, the students have the opportunity to work on projects to create start-ups with engineers, doctors, developers, etc. The programme is set in Silicon Valley, itself a centre of excellence.This is a major strong point of this academic diploma, which lasts a year in California and can therefore qualify students for an OPT authorising them to work in the USA for a year,” he explained.

Varied career paths
 

Students who have completed this programme will be ideally placed to launch their own companies or work for start-ups in the USA in a variety of roles in the product, customer, strategy or operations spheres. They can also apply for positions with incubators, investors or structures that support entrepreneurs.