How I Became A Responsible Leader Through My Transformative IMBA

With extreme weather events on the rise around the world, sustainable business is only growing in importance, and startups are leading the charge. Nearly a third of the startups listed on the 2024 Startups 100 Index placed sustainability at the center of their business strategy.

Pedro Prado (pictured right) is one example of an MBA entrepreneur pushing a sustainable agenda in his business.

Pedro’s startup, LogShare, aims to reduce carbon emissions in transportation and logistics by enabling businesses to rent unused freight space from one another, increasing efficiency and reducing overall trips.

We spoke to Pedro to find out how he started his entrepreneurial journey and how the International MBA at emlyon business school helped him do it.

From logistics at Coca-Cola in Brazil to an International MBA

Pedro had a successful career in logistics before starting the emlyon IMBA. He worked at Coca Cola for six years, running big projects including being the operations venue manager at the Olympic and Paralympic Games in Rio de Janeiro in 2016.

It was a challenging career, and one he enjoyed, but Pedro realized that he had hit the limit of how much he could grow in his current role.

Crucially, he also began to have ambitions to launch his own business.

“Having entrepreneurial ideas and reaching the top at Coca Cola – it was the perfect moment to study abroad and invest in the MBA,” he says. “I needed to do this step up in my career.”

Learning from leaders at emlyon’s startup incubator

After discussing the idea of moving abroad, Pedro’s wife began to look for opportunities in Europe and settled on a job at Groupe Casino in France. This narrowed Pedro’s search, and he homed in on emlyon business school for his MBA.

He did this primarily on the strength of the school’s entrepreneurial culture and track record of creating MBA entrepreneurs.

emlyon business school boasts an on-campus startup incubator to nurture student startups in the ideation and launch phases, plus an accelerator to guide businesses through the growth from startup to scale-up.

“Whenever I had time I used to go to the incubator to talk to the entrepreneurs that were based there,” Pedro says. “That was most impactful.”

The International MBA also offers new venture classes as part of its curriculum. This includes a New Venture Project that sees students form groups to apply the theory they learn in class to real-life projects under the guidance of their professors.

“We had to develop a venture from scratch,” Pedro recalls. “Identify the market potential, the go-to-market strategy, and later, even pitch it to entrepreneurs in a Shark Tank style.”

“My first thought about my sustainable startup was on the MBA learning trip”

Perhaps the most impactful part of the MBA for Pedro was the international learning trip.

Pedro traveled with classmates to Finland, where they heard from a range of companies about topics such as design thinking and building client relationships.

The visit primarily focused on corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives, a subject that has stuck with Pedro ever since.

“For me it was the first time I was so connected with those kinds of initiatives,” he says.

“Nowadays I have a company in Brazil focusing on reducing emissions for transportation. For sure my first thought about it was on that trip.”

From MBA grad to sustainable startup leader

From his experience talking to startup leaders at emlyon’s incubator and learning in-depth lessons about entrepreneurship on the program, Pedro knew he couldn’t achieve startup success overnight.

He also knew that the IMBA had prepared him well for consultancy work. Working on case studies and group projects on the IMBA gave Pedro the skills to adapt fast to new information, diving deep into data, and suggesting hypotheses and solutions in a shortened timeframe—all essential skills for management consultants.

To build his skills and experience in the real world, Pedro returned to Brazil to work in consultancy, even working at McKinsey.

He never lost sight of his overall goal, however. After two years at McKinsey, Pedro took up a role at Amazon, “to learn from the biggest startup on the globe".

Having honed his skills and collected invaluable experience both on the IMBA and as a graduate, Pedro finally launched his company LogShare in 2022.

From the international learning trip and new venture classes on the IMBA to the postgraduate consulting career the MBA facilitated, Pedro can clearly connect the dots between his IMBA and his current startup success.

“Now, seven years later, I totally recommend this school,” he says. “It was really a transformative time for me as a person and a worker but mostly as a founder.”

Image © Willian Justen de Vasconcellos on Pexels, reproduced under this licence.