It was a bit of a surprise when David Bravo, MBA 25, found himself in Thailand last May presenting a strategic plan to the CEO of a Japanese international footwear brand.
“The company’s headquarters had heard that we were doing a good job so they managed to get us in a room for an hour so we could present our recommendations to the CEO,” Bravo, an international student from Medellin, Colombia, said.
For Bravo, a project through the International Business Development (IBD) program at Berkeley Haas led the team to pitch the CEO. A long-standing first-year elective, IBD allows full-time MBA students to work as professional management consultants on international, high-level strategic projects. Working on teams in places ranging from Senegal to Java to Helsinki, students are connected to corporations, nonprofits, entrepreneurs, social impact organizations, universities, and government departments worldwide.
“IBD gives real-world experience like no other course,” said David Richardson, the program’s executive director.
The IBD class, which students take the semester before they travel to a client country, is structured and intense and includes project management and consulting training.
“The projects are challenging but within students’ scope, giving them the chance to create a strategic plan that has real-world implications,” Richardson said. “Some of our projects are with high-end technology companies that are very focused on profits, but they can also be with social impact entrepreneurs who are trying to make a difference in communities outside of the U.S.”
Students learn their client assignment at a reveal during the first day of class, said Whitney Hischier, IBD’s faculty director. “They have a week to get up to speed, and within that week, they usually schedule their first client call,” she said.
The class culminates with two weeks in the field as students travel to meet with stakeholders in person and present their plans. One project this year came from a Finnish natural berry puree and fruit juice company looking to grow in new markets.
“Our students did a great job of prioritizing which cities and products to lead with, and the key points to emphasize in messaging,” said Judy Hopelain, a faculty mentor with IBD.
Student perspectives
Sarah Beth Intoccia, MBA 25, had neither consulting nor international business experience when she started the IBD class. With her team, she worked with a tech company in Brazil that was looking to move into financial services.
“It gave me a different perspective on how problems are solved in a different culture,” she said. “I had only worked with American companies, so I had to understand how the Brazilian market is different from the American market. What are different challenges in the technology space and also the finance space?”
Not only was it fascinating and challenging; the class also gave her tangible, transferable skills, Intoccia said.
Travel is an essential component of the course. Each May, students spend two weeks with the client, doing further work and presenting results. IBD faculty and staff try to not assign students to a project in a country where they have already lived or worked for a substantial period of time.
For Niveda Kumar, MBA 25, traveling to Tokyo was the best part of the experience. She said she and her team had great contact with her team’s client, tech startup Z-Works, throughout the semester, which deepened when she went to Japan with her teammates Luis Sante, Danni Yang, and Gabi Moreira.
“When we were in-country, you could sense the trust,” she said. “It felt like a barrier had come down between us and the client.”
Despite the language barrier, Kumar said they were able to have conversations with co-workers using a mixture of the basic Japanese they had picked up using Duolingo, coupled with a little English, and a generous number of gestures. They also used Google Translate and Chat-GPT to create a Japanese version of their workshop slides.
Built by a Haas alum
JoAnn Dunaway, MBA 92, created IBD 32 years ago to expand MBA students’ experience in international business. The program was one of the first of its kind at a top-tier business school.
Since 1992, about 1,900 students have worked with IBD in 89 countries. For students, it’s an amazing resume builder, and for clients, it’s a way to tap into the smarts of the Berkeley Haas MBA community, Richardson said.
“It turns out that when you assemble a team of four or five hardworking, energetic, and motivated Haas MBA students to solve a strategic business problem, clients find themselves amazingly impressed by the deliverables the students produce,” Richardson said.
Guilherme Quandt, chief strategy and marketing officer at Brazilian software company Softplan, said participating in IBD as a client “can be a game-changer.”
“The team produced a first-rate study to validate our plans and guide our strategy,” he said. “Hosting the team was an incredible and highly recommended experience.”
Hischier said the course can help students to refine their career goals.
“We get students who come back and say, ‘I love that, I want to work in consulting,’ or ‘I want to work abroad when I graduate,’” she said. “Others come back and say, ‘I now know consulting’s not for me.’”
Kumar, who had consulting experience at Deloitte in Chicago before coming to Haas, encouraged anyone interested in consulting to “jump at the chance.”
“I would say this has been the most rewarding academic experience for me at Haas so far,” Kumar said. “I think if you’re curious about consulting and you’re curious about real international work experience, this is the class for you.”