How My MBA Helped Me Become Head Of ESG At A Venture Capital Firm

Yoko Kojima is a citizen of the world. Born in Japan, by the time she’d turned 20 she’d spent time living in Australia, Canada, and the US.

A graduate of a bachelor’s in international politics and economy, Yoko went to work at the Japanese electricals manufacturer, Hitachi, in 2013. There, she spent five years managing projects across cities in Turkey, Slovenia, and Japan.

A successful start to her career, as she approached her sixth year with Hitachi, Yoko began considering her next career move.

“I started to question if I was making a real impact with my work,” she explains.

She craved a new experience in a different country and was also keen to learn a new language. Assessing her options, she decided business school would offer the chance to immerse herself in a new country while also expanding her career potential.

Choosing IE Business School 

When deciding how best to take the next step in her career, Yoko decided an international MBA combined with a degree in international development would provide a career boost while also allowing her to build on the skills she’d developed at undergrad and during her career.

She’d considered the eventual possibility of landing a job with a large multilateral institution, such as the World Bank or United Nations. Studying in a key country in Europe, such as Spain, would offer exposure to such opportunities while also allowing her to learn the language.

As one of Spain's top business institutions, located in the heart of Madrid and offering a dual International MBA degree with a Master’s in International Development, Yoko chose to study at IE Business School.

She successfully applied for the program and enrolled in 2020. Her previous experience spanning multiple countries and cultures provided a strong platform to successfully land a place, she thinks.

“I wouldn’t say it is a prerequisite, but it really helps to maximize your experience. I don’t think people have to live abroad for extensive years, but rather to have a mindset of being open and courageous.”

Embarking on a personal development journey 

Yoko’s experience at IE involved expanding her knowledge and skills while also immersing herself in an exciting new culture.

Her classes focused on fundamental business theories, while also emphasizing how business can be used to make a positive impact. The IE IMBA curriculum covers areas such as management, economics, operations, and finance. There’s also a range of modules dedicated to entrepreneurship and areas like impact investing.

“I was already interested in impact investing, and I had a couple of finance type of roles in the past, so I had my basics, but I needed to study new concepts. IE had a way of choosing subjects that suited me,” she says.

Having recently spent more than five years working with the same company, Yoko found that living and studying in Madrid made for a large cultural adjustment.

During class, IE students are encouraged to participate in group discussions and undertake a range of team-based projects. There are also community-building initiatives outside of the classroom, encouraging the diverse cohort of students to get to know one another and enhance their cultural understanding.

“In the first semester of the IMBA, we had a weekly cultural social cooking session within the whole class. We took turns by country. One of those was making dumplings together and it was one of the first socials I did as an MBA. That was amazing,” she says.

“In the Spanish and Latin American cultures, everyone expects you to be there, hang out, and socialize all the time in order to be trusted,” she adds.

While this proved challenging at times, Yoko feels this immersive experience helped her build into a stronger person who today is more confident in her abilities and comfortable with taking risks.

This was essential in preparing her for life after graduation: “Learning how to take risks and be somewhat half-blind to go with it, with the faith that I can get something out of it or step up my game if I take this risk, that is essential for my profession.”

Becoming head of ESG at a venture capital firm

Since graduating from the dual degree in July 2022, Yoko has landed a role at Mundi Ventures, a specialist technology venture capital firm that operates across the globe.

In her role as head of ESG, which was established when she joined the firm, she is responsible for overseeing everything that goes on within the company’s environment, social, and governance operations.

“They didn’t have anybody as a full-time person before me working on sustainability, so it was really creating a department from scratch,” she explains.

Her key goal is to implement sustainability considerations within investment decisions; starting at the point where companies are sourced, continuing through the due diligence stage, and finally in launching ESG-driven initiatives with startups that have received funding.

“The world has been thinking about sustainability since it can be a competitive advantage in economic benefit or ensuring financial return in the long term. It is important to pursue the ESG strategy from those economic lenses as well. But to begin with, ESG is a must,” she says.

With IE helping her successfully transition to a job that is heavily focused on making a positive impact, Yoko is confident that she can help achieve a positive cultural shift through the world of finance.

“It’s important to implement [sustainable finance] in our day-to-day life,” she explains.

“Everyone consumes something, and everyone is involved in economic activity, and when you change the way we offer it as a human society, which is the economy that touches everybody’s mind, it is not the textbook that does the work.”