MBA degrees may be dominated by men, but this has been no real problem for Jeanne Bianco, an executive MBA student at Cambridge’s Judge business school.
As managing director in the UK of National Tube Stockholders, a steel tube specialist based in the North Yorkshire market town of Thirsk, and the second generation of her family to run the company which was set up by her father and uncle in the 1970s, she is used to operating in a man’s world.
But she is the first family member to study for an MBA and she admits: “I don’t know anyone who has one.” Her logic for study is impeccable. “I found myself doing the job, having worked my way through all the departments, and yet I really didn’t know any of the technical [business] side,” she says. “When you’re in a small company, you’re doing it your way and you have no sounding board. My experience is very detailed in what I do, but very limited.”