Anna Oreshnikova

Interview with the graduate of the EMBA program GMR10 and Special Projects Director at JetBrains Anna Oreshnikova about his studies at the SSE Russia.

Anna Oreshnikova,
Special Projects Director at JetBrains

We, graduates of the EMBA program of the Stockholm School of Economics in Russia, are often invited to meetings with future students to greet them and introduce the program to them. I have recently participated in such a meeting - and experienced a very exciting flashback.

There, you look at the eyes and facial expressions - and you see yourself before the start of the program with that mixture of concentration, excitement and enthusiastic anticipation of something meaningful to come. These were the feelings I had when I came to SSE several years ago. And long before that, I’d started working for a startup consisting of six people, which today has grown into a big international business. As is often the case with startups, we were all professionals, everyone in their own area, but had no management skills. Everybody was in charge of everything, and we were all acting on a hunch, making our fair share of mistakes in the process. Over the years, the business had grown - and I realized that in such a big company it was no longer enough to just have common sense, talent and even accumulated management experience.

I felt confused and not as self-assured as I used to be. Of course, you can find a lot of useful books and attend lots of different trainings (I did it all, of course), but I wanted to get a deeper understanding of the laws of business, to get systematized and, most importantly, practical knowledge. So, I needed to get an education... To make a decision - it's great, it's already half the battle won! But how do you choose where to go? I turned for advice a respected business coach, who conducted our corporate training on emotional intelligence.

He recommended the Stockholm School of Economics, which I had already known about from a couple of quite successful friends of mine also alumni, and for that advice I will always be incredibly grateful to him. I, like everyone else, had to shuffle between work, home and study, but it was the beginning of a new path for me, exciting and full of hopes, new friends and opportunities.

Live learning format, vibrant teachers from Sweden, Australia, Finland, Czech Republic, each with his own approach and mentality, working together on all kinds of business tasks with very different and interesting people - all this not only gave me important knowledge, but also allowed me to significantly expand my horizons, develop new qualities and see myself and my personal challenges in a different way.

And even if after getting the highly-anticipated diploma I didn't experience immediate fundamental changes in my life, as some SSE graduates did, during the two years of study I gained a much-needed inner sense of self-confidence: if I want to change something in my life (a job, a house or a hobby), I don’t fear uncertainty anymore, I can build my future to be what I want it to be. And for me personally, this is the ultimate result.