When students come to AMBS, they are not only choosing a school but a community. The city of Manchester makes an indelible impact on the experience of Full-time MBA candidates. Last year, Matias Ricci Perez, the VP Community for the class of 2020 felt there was a lack of contact with local businesses and entrepreneurs and Born and Raised was created. He explained, “I felt there was not a sense of belonging in the city and I thought that it would be interesting to explore how to make the cohort feel more connected to the city of Manchester. I started by promoting the walking tour that’s available every day to get to know the city and then I explored what business life is like in Manchester, which led to me creating this event.”
The event was co-hosted by the Growth Company, a not-for-profit organisation established to support and grow businesses in Manchester. Matias told us a little more about the history and the goals of the event. “This is the second time we have done this event- we did it last May and then again in January, and I hope it’s going to be repeated next year. The event is called Born and Raised in Manchester, it is where we showcase entrepreneurs and companies who started and grew their businesses in Manchester. They have the chance to tell us about the challenges and opportunities of having a business in Manchester and we have ten different speakers from a range of industries, from consulting to a security company. We also had two wellness companies, it was very diverse.
“It was also important that the companies were at different stages in their development, so for example, we had one that was officially founded in November of last year and one that has been in business for more than 15 years. There’s such a variety of different companies and I think it’s always interesting. For business students, it’s particularly important to have that touchpoint with reality – of what running a business is really like. We can sometimes spend too much time thinking of strategies and the best way of doing things and you can forget that businesses have to start from scratch. A lot of the time entrepreneurs are seen as always an entrepreneur but it’s more than founding companies- they need to be doing the job. These people need to do everything in the company from sales, promotion, packaging, and delivery – all of it. When I talked to different people who attended, they really liked that aspect of the talks.”
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