Rome, Oct. 27, 2022. Rome Business School welcomes 1,218 students with Welcome Week October 2022, seven on-campus days of meetings and workshops with staff, faculty, mentors and top managers from many partner companies including Coca-Cola HBC Italia, Ferrovie dello Stato, HMD Global, Mastercard.
In this new year RBS counts with more than 47 progamms including Master’s degrees, MBAs, Executive courses, 22 Program Directors and a faculty of 257 members, 27 percent of whom are international. Rome Business School, this year for new students expands its offer by proposing 7 new Master’s degrees, with a more innovative online methodology, 15 specific elective courses, introduces company shadowing in the headquarters of the most important companies in Italy, Practice Labs with numerous multinational partners to allow students to put into practice the notions learned in the classroom, two new Bootcamps in Silicon Valley and Paris, adding to those in Barcelona, Rome and Tuscany, brings to 616 partner companies and 87 Corporate Advisory Board members, including CEOs and top management from world-leading companies including Amazon, EY, Adidas, Sky and Bulgari.
First to speak was Daniele Maver, former CEO of Jaguar Land Rover, who conveyed some of the key lessons of his career: “Be creative and bold, you don’t have to do what everyone else is doing to have a place in the market,” he said, explaining the company’s approach in the face of a saturated market in 2016. Stating that what was achieved was, yes, a great success, but the result of team effort, stressing that: “Working as a team is not easy, but it is especially when the team is heterogeneous that high-level results are achieved.” It was also an opportunity for the students to observe and analyze real company data, learn about successful advertising campaigns, and understand that a positive attitude is essential at work: “It is also important to laugh at work, because it reduces stress and strengthens bonds, ensuring better results,” Maver concluded.
Underscoring the importance of networking, now more than ever, was Sabina Eminente, Europe Lead, Merchant Loyalty Business Development at Mastercard, who told of her career, a story not only professional, but also personal, because “your personal life is your professional life and vice versa, you have to find the right balance for you, especially today when the boundaries between the two are even more blurred.” Eminente asks the young people to learn from each and every experience, citing his roles in a multinational company like Nestlé and in startups like lastminute.com, and to his current presence in Mastercard for more than 15 years, an opportunity he discovered by accident:
“The more people who stay in touch with you, the more doors can be opened to you. For example, the opportunity in Mastercard was online, but I would never have learned about it if it weren’t for my network.” He adds, “When it comes to networking, it is not the depth of the connection that is important, but rather the breadth of the connection: spread the word as much as possible about what you are looking for.” In his management career, Eminente Eminente has led several impactful projects, such as the deployment of contactless technology in Italy, and he then spoke passionately about continuous learning and connecting with his team, “Nowadays, even a graduate from the best institution in the world will have obsolete skills in five years, it is critical to continue to engage and be curious.”
In 2022, once again RBS is confirmed to be the most international business school in Italy, with 62% of foreign students, mainly from Germany, Spain, the United States and France. Not only that: 35% of its staff are international, as are 36% of its faculty, 269 partnerships with educational institutions on 4 continents.
From the first day, students also held introductory sessions to their Master’s degrees, thus learning about their Program Directors and new market trends in their areas of study. Students from the Master’s program in Tourism and Hospitality Management for example met with Salvatore Trani, General Manager of the NH Collection Hotel Roma Palazzo Cinquecento, who talked about the challenges they faced, pointing out that: “If you don’t have the right employees you have very little chance of success: you have to take care of them. If you want to be a customer-centric company, you have to focus first on your people and find time to celebrate successes with them.” Also, in terms of management, regarding the management of restaurants at NH Collection locations, Trani explained, “Our goal is to maintain the Italian heritage by offering unique concepts. The business challenges us not to compromise on quality or creativity, but to always find a balance.”
Finally, Alberto Matrone, Vice President Eastern Europe at HMD Global, with strong management experience in the market, first with Nokia, then with Microsoft and now at HMD, brought the students’ attention to today’s biggest challenges: inclusion, sustainability, and digitization, stating:
“There is a big difference between sustainability and green washing, and as a leader you need to make sure your processes are sustainable from start to finish.” Matrone then concluded his speech with words of encouragement, “Give yourself permission to live a great life. Effort, transformation and change are your keywords: have a goal and a plan, you can always adapt along the way.”
Finally, the students were introduced to all the opportunities of Rome Business School’s Career Services, which are key to their professional growth: 3,285 job and internship offers provided by Career Services (up 27 percent from the previous year), which has enabled RBS to achieve to date a 97 percent job placement rate for its students, an average salary increase of 34 percent one year after completion of the Master’s degree, and that 85 percent of the students now have more responsibility in their jobs. All this is generated by RBS’s strong ties with companies, the continuous updating of its educational offerings, the internationality of its partners, and being a member of Planeta Formación y Universidades, one of the world’s most important educational networks that allows RBS to collaborate with 65 partner educational institutions in 65 different countries. Another notable program that students were able to discover during Welcome Week is RBS4Entreprenruship, Rome Business School’s business incubator that helps students develop innovative startup ideas. Since it was inaugurated in April 2022, RBS4Entrepreneurship has supported the launch of project ideas of nearly 500 students (62 percent of them women) from 57 countries and 22 Master’s programs, who had the opportunity to meet with more than 50 startups founders, venture capitalists and business angels.
In this intake, Rome Business School strongly reaffirms its commitment to the training of the leaders of the future, marked by a methodological approach oriented toward doing, strongly connected to the needs and new trends in the world of work, designing courses that are the result of constant comparison with managerial realities from all over the world. Through Practice labs, Company Shadowing, Company visits, bootcamps in Silicon Valley, Paris, Barcelona, Rome and Tuscany, and multiple opportunities for meeting and networking, students immerse themselves and interact with the world of management from their first days at RBS.
Antonio Ragusa, Dean of Rome Business School comments, “The new edition of Rome Business School’s programs well reflects the key principles of our educational mission: positive impact on students’ professional lives, strong connections with the corporate world, internationality and a value dimension according to the principles of corporate social responsibility. All this was translated into welcome educational sessions featuring top managers from leading international companies, who shared with our students valuable advice for their career path. The unique combination of knowledge, multiculturalism and networking on an international scale that Rome Business School is able to offer makes the study experience at Rome Business School a path of extraordinary professional and human enrichment.”
