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Led by professor Julia Ivy, MBA students craft global strategies to help Ukrainian companies expand despite the challenges of war.
When Iryna Colon, a Northeastern University MBA student, enrolled in the course, “Managing the Global Enterprise,” she never imagined the class would bring her closer to her Ukrainian roots.
The course taught by Julia Ivy, a professor in international business and strategy, examines the international business environment and focuses on factors companies take into consideration when expanding abroad.
By the end of the term, students build a consulting case on developing a foreign market entry strategy for an actual company.
Ivy informed her students on the first day of class last semester that they would be creating foreign market strategies for three Ukrainian companies enduring the Russia-Ukraine War.
For Colon, the assignment was especially meaningful. Born in Vinnitsa in west-central Ukraine, she moved to Spain with her family when she was 7 years old. However, she still identifies strongly as Ukrainian.
Colon felt proud and excited, she says, that her fellow students would learn more about her homeland.
“I even shared with my parents [that] I’m going to work, for the first time in my life, with a company that is actually from my country,” Colon says.
Colon chose Nova Poshta, a private Ukrainian postal and courier company, as she had used its services before and was excited to contribute to its growth.
The Ukrainian idea came from Ivy’s colleague in Ukraine, Alexander Mertens, a professor of finance at National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy and professor of economics and finance at International Institute of Business in Kyiv.
“Because of this horrible situation, the companies acquired quite the competences of navigating risks and navigating resilience,” Ivy says.
She saw an opportunity to shift the focus from the struggles of these companies to how they could leverage their newly developed resilience and risk management skills for international growth.
Ivy grouped the students into teams based on the company they were most interested in. Students analyzed political and legal environments, economic trends, industry data and local cultures of various countries they were considering for their company’s expansion.
Jack Jamroz, another MBA student who previously received his bachelor’s degree from Northeastern, says his team took this consulting opportunity very seriously.
Jamroz’s team chose to work with Kyivstar, Ukraine’s largest mobile and data service provider. The company has been maintaining its telecommunications network despite the challenges of war, continuously repairing and updating the existing infrastructure to avoid blackouts.
The team used over 90 different sources for analysis, he says, to ensure their recommendations were practical and beneficial for the company.
“We wanted to make sure that anything that we recommended was actually realistic and not just an idea we throw on a dart board,” Jamroz says.
To sustain its business model, Jamroz’s team proposed Kyivstar to expand into Moldova, creating a new stable revenue stream coupled with an opportunity to support displaced Ukrainians living in the country.
Although the students conducted the research and developed their strategies independently, Jamroz says, Ivy guided them throughout, encouraging them to think critically and helping refine their solutions to best fit the companies’ needs.
Her BE-EDGE method, outlined in her book “Crafting Your EDGE for Today’s Job Market,” played a significant role in shaping the students’ approach. The method describes how a person can shape their career by finding their unique edge and offering consulting services to companies that align with their professional goals.
“I even say [to students], ‘Make your case to shape your space,’” she says.
This way students can not only gain valuable practical experience but also expand their resumes.
“They might develop a relationship with the client,” Ivy says. “They learn about this market and this area of expertise before they actually even enter [it].”
Marjan Monfarednasab, whose team wrote a consulting case for DTEK Renewables, a subsidiary of Ukraine’s largest private energy holding, says her experience in the class was transformative.
She joined Northeastern’s MBA program having degrees in mechanical and civil engineering and feeling unfulfilled by traditional corporate roles she had worked in. She felt somewhat insecure about her non-technical competencies at the beginning of the course, she says, but over time learned tools and frameworks that can be applied in international business, as well as to one’s personal and professional growth.
Monfarednasab praises Ivy’s teaching style for emphasizing self-empowerment and a holistic approach to developing a career.
“I think it would be great for anyone in any major,” she says of the course. “That course has been designed to be omnipotent.”
The consulting case project taught her to communicate effectively with the members of her team who did not have a technical background but brought to the table their own unique contributions.
At the end of the course, students typically present their reports to stakeholders in class. This time, however, presentations were recorded and sent to the Ukrainian companies due to the war.
“For me, it was more about the students,” Ivy says. “They gained practical experience while feeling like they were contributing to something larger than themselves.”
Ivy noticed that this particular project sparked a deeper level of engagement from students.
“The students felt like they were doing something more significant than just another academic assignment,” Ivy says. “They were contributing to something that matters, helping [Ukrainian] companies navigate global challenges.”