• Business Week 2022 secures more speakers than in 2021.
• MMD cohort gains valuable insights and inspiration from Sephora, Cartier, Grab, and more industry experts.
• The organizing committee has the added advantage of learning new event-planning skills.

With four days of conferences and three networking dinners with senior executives from tech, luxury, consulting, and more, Business Week 2022 was an invaluable opportunity for the ESSEC MSc in Marketing Management and Digital (MMD) cohort to gain insights about their dream industries.

It is a chance for them to hear from people who have gone before them, to get their burning questions answered, to rub shoulders with the who’s who from top global companies, and for the student organizing committee, an opportunity to put their MMD program skills to the test by running a large-scale event.

Staying True to the Mission of Business Week 2022

No doubt, for students with little experience in running events, putting together a week-long conference is no mean feat. But the 2022 organizing committee, comprising Alexia Maurin, Anna Krcmarova, Camille Dambre, Jingyi Zhang, and Yuanchu Luo, gamely rose to the challenge.

“I saw Business Week as an open and intimate platform for students to network and explore suitable career paths,” Jingyi shares, adding that the meaningfulness of the project is what made her eager to be part of the process.

“I think it is important to do something for the school and improve the student life,” Camille chimes in. “I also felt it would be a personal achievement to manage and run something for such a large audience.”

Their motivations powered them through the planning process, allowing them to secure 16 speakers—two more than the previous year—with representatives from GoJek, Grab, TikTok, Food Panda, Sephora, Longchamp, Cartier, Christian Dior, and more.

Encouragement and Inspiration Abound

True to Business Week’s goal of inspiring students for the future, the organizing committee’s well-curated list of speakers delivered.

For example, hearing the speakers—each hailing from different industries—intimately share the e-commerce trends and digital strategies used during the pandemic gave students a holistic perspective of how their classroom lessons would translate in other sectors.

But more important than these aha moments were the messages of encouragement the speakers sent.

Reflecting on her favorite moments, Camille shares that she was most inspired by the CRM Manager at Sephora, Chutatip Isarangul’s dynamic personality and words of wisdom about courage and embracing change in the workplace, as well as the Marketing & Communication Director at Cartier, Imane L’s authenticity and candidness speaking about her personal career journey.

“They were really citizens of the world,” Jingyi recalls of the speakers, adding: “I realized that what matters most is if I dare to make a change and chase my dreams.”

Life Lessons and Soft Skills Gained

Camille and Jingyi concur that for the organizing committee, watching the impact of these speakers on their peers was reward enough.

But Will Chang, Manager at ESSEC Career Services, notes that the gains go far beyond emotional satisfaction—the committee also picked up planning, teamwork, and communication lessons and an experience that will speak volumes on their resumes.

After all, as any seasoned event organizer can tell you, solid planning is not enough for an event to be successful—one must also expect the unexpected and be quick to adapt.

And so the organizing committee did, as they worked to confirm a power-packed list of speakers and grappled with last-minute cancellations while carefully managing the expectations of their peers.

Having mentored the pioneering batch of Business Week organizing committee students, Chang notes that what made the 2022 team stand out was indeed their “never-say-die” attitude.

“I was really impressed that even with such little time, the students could produce such amazing work—kudos to them for finding out that when you don’t give up, good things can happen,” he declares.

So, where do Camille, Jingyi, and their peers go from here? Well, connections have been made, and for some, interviews are being lined up—making it difficult for the full benefits of Business Week to be quantified in the short run.

Yet perhaps, if it is as Will wisely quips, that “success can come in many forms,” then we can be confident with these lessons learned and friendships forged, the 2022 MMD batch has indeed found success.

Check out MMD Business Week 2021 and how the organizers turned the pandemic into an opportunity to connect.