Across industries and career paths, great business leaders share a common attribute: an entrepreneurial mindset. An MSEL from Babson is the cornerstone of a successful career in business management.
Learn to innovate, inspire, and lead in this full-time, 9-month program for recent college graduates.
When Alexandra Hadschieff Birk MSEL’19, left her job at KPMG in Vienna to pursue graduate study in the United States, she was looking for more than a degree—she was searching for a program that blended entrepreneurial thinking with global business strategy. She found that in Babson’s Master of Science in Management in Entrepreneurial Leadership (MSEL) program.
Alexandra was accepted into four finance masters programs, and Babson. “(Babson) invited me to come look at the campus and talk to some of the professors. … I kind of just fell in love,” she says.
Alexandra liked the Boston location, the engaging faculty, and the small feel of the program. “I felt like I would get close to the people there, and get a really individual experience,” she says.
But perhaps the focus on entrepreneurial leadership is what clinched it—this was the right fit for her.
Alexandra had some experience in creating a business. In Austria, she and her father had founded a beauty startup. And while her path was headed more in the corporate direction, she wanted to keep nurturing that side of herself.
While core business skills like finance and accounting built on her undergrad foundation, Alexandra says the entrepreneurship courses gave her practical tools for launching startups and managing product development. “The class that I still to this day think I learned the most in is more like on the whole entrepreneurship, how do you actually do a startup from start to finish?” she says.
“Right out of Babson I was in a smaller consulting firm for the first two years. There, I was on a project for almost a year bringing a new product to market,” says Alexandra. “And for that I used a lot of the design thinking tools I learned (at Babson.)”
Alexandra also said she had courses that encouraged building self-awareness and negotiation skills, helping her understand her work style and stress responses.
The program’s emphasis on working in diverse, non-hierarchical teams taught her adaptability and collaboration skills essential in consulting and cross-cultural environments.
“I think it broadened my horizons a lot. It made me think differently. It made me think entrepreneurially, even in the corporate world,” says Alexandra, who today is a manager and business consultant for EY.
The feeling of belonging Alexandra had that first visit to campus only grew with time as she built a network of friends, professors, and colleagues.
She jokes that professors claimed hers was the “closest cohort in the MSEL program to date.”
“You're automatically part of this network,” says Alexandra, adding that in her experience, the people at Babson really take their time to connect and stay in touch. “Once you're a Babson student, you'll always be part of Babson.”
That sentiment has rung true for her since graduation. Alexandra recalls calling a few of her professors to get advice on her career path since leaving campus, and she would not hesitate to reach out if she needed guidance in the future.
"I know even after so many years I could reach out to some of these professors and be like, ‘Hey, can you help me think through this?’ Or connect me to some more people? And I know they would,” she says.
Beyond the classroom, Alexandra immersed herself in campus life as a class representative and TEDx Babson organizer. Meeting regularly with program directors and faculty members to represent her cohort’s perspective, she appreciated Babson’s genuine openness to student feedback.
“They really cared about what we had to say,” she says. “That’s something I hadn’t experienced before—it felt like our voices mattered.”
Her TEDx experience, while not a lead role, gave her the chance to collaborate across teams and contribute to Babson’s vibrant community.
Alexandra often took opportunities to engage in events outside of the classroom, and tapped into the resources available to graduate students, like the Graduate Center for Career Development (Grad CCD).
One of the first in her cohort to get a job offer, she notes that she took a proactive approach and collaborated closely, one-on-one, with Babson's career services team, taking in their advice and strategies. As an international student, she said she especially appreciated how to approach the U.S. job market and network with potential employers.
“If you're looking to really get a hands-on education and not just theoretical; if you're looking for a kind of personalized experience where you can really shape what you learn; and if you want to learn how to work closely with different types of people, this is the program,” says Alexandra.
Babson College’s Master of Science in Management in Entrepreneurial Leadership (MSEL) will provide you with critical tools for evaluating opportunities, balancing competing demands, and making effective decisions. You will emerge as a highly skilled collaborator, problem solver, and organizational leader.
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