MSEL Impact: Managers Who Think Like Entrepreneurs Drive Success

When Alexandra Hadschieff Birk MSEL’19 left her job at KPMG in Vienna to pursue graduate study in the United States, she was looking for more than a degree. She was searching for a program that blended entrepreneurial thinking with global business strategy.

She found that in the Master of Science in Management in Entrepreneurial Leadership (MSEL) program at Babson College.

Birk was accepted into four finance master’s programs, and Babson “invited me to come look at the campus and talk to some of the professors,” she said. “I kind of just fell in love.”

Birk liked the campus’ location near Boston, the engaging faculty, and the small feel of the program. “I felt like I would get close to the people there, and get a really individual experience,” she said.

The focus on entrepreneurial leadership, though, is what made it the right fit for her.

Birk had some experience in creating a business. In Austria, she and her father had founded a beauty startup. And while her path was headed more in the corporate direction, she wanted to keep developing that side of herself.

Thinking Entrepreneurially

While core business skills such as finance and accounting built on her undergraduate foundation, the entrepreneurship courses gave her practical tools for launching startups and managing product development.

“The class that I still to this day think I learned the most in is more like on the whole entrepreneurship, How do you actually do a startup from start to finish?” she said. “Right out of Babson, I was in a smaller consulting firm for the first two years. There, I was on a project for almost a year bringing a new product to market. For that, I used a lot of the design thinking tools I learned (at Babson).”

“I think it broadened my horizons a lot. It made me think differently. It made me think entrepreneurially, even in the corporate world.”
Alexandra Hadschieff Birk MSEL’19,

Birk also said she had courses that encouraged building self-awareness and negotiation skills, helping her understand her work style and stress responses.

The program’s emphasis on working in diverse, non-hierarchical teams taught her adaptability and collaboration skills essential in consulting and cross-cultural environments.

“I think it broadened my horizons a lot. It made me think differently. It made me think entrepreneurially, even in the corporate world,” said Birk, who now is a manager and business consultant for EY.

Building a Network for Life

The feeling of belonging that Birk experienced on that first visit to campus only grew with time as she built a network of friends, professors, and colleagues.

“You’re automatically part of this network,” Birk said. “Once you’re a Babson student, you’ll always be part of Babson.”

That sentiment has rung true for her since graduation. Birk recalls calling a few of her professors to get advice on her career path since leaving campus.

“I know even after so many years I could reach out to some of these professors and be like, ’Hey, can you help me think through this? Or connect me to some more people?’ And I know they would,” she said.

Beyond the classroom, Birk immersed herself in campus life as a class representative and TEDxBabson organizer. Meeting regularly with program directors and faculty members to represent her cohort’s perspective, she appreciated Babson’s genuine openness to student feedback.

“They really cared about what we had to say,” she said. “That’s something I hadn’t experienced before—it felt like our voices mattered.”