Monique Farquharson, AMBA’s MBA Student of the Year 2022, tells David Woods-Hale about her varied career and how she exemplifies her life motto, ‘fail fast, learn fast’
Monique Farquharson has had a varied career, ranging from teacher to business developer, to entrepreneur to consultant. Earlier this year, she won the coveted title of MBA Student of the Year.
Ambition spoke to Farquharson to hear more about her global career and how she thrived during her MBA programme at Aston Business School. The ‘Student of the Year’ award tops off a successful couple of years for Monique who was the first winner of the Aston Enterprise Scholarship. She seized the opportunity by engaging in consultancy work with four different companies, securing an internship, helping to deliver Tedx Aston University, and becoming a global ambassador for her Business School.
Monique also completed the global business challenge and was named global business champion – one of only four such champions from a group of 100 overseas students, representing seven different universities around the world.
Could you introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about your career?
I come from the beautiful island of Jamaica, and I have lived in a number of countries throughout my lifetime, and also worked across various industries.
While I was in Jamaica, my background was in teaching. I was an educator and I taught maths and science. I then moved to do actuarial science, just to give myself a bit of a challenge. That led me into being a business development specialist, and then a business analyst and then an entrepreneur. I then hopped over to Japan where I was doing a beautiful job as an assistant language teacher, while doing some research and development for my company.
I then went to the UK and while there I pursued my MBA. Now I am at Accenture as a Business Consultant.
Congratulations on winning the AMBA MBA Student of the Year award. How did it feel to win, and has it made any impact on your career so far?
Well, it was just mind-blowing. When I went to Aston Business School, I didn’t know that there was this award. I was just doing things that I loved to do and that I was interested in. The School was very excited to send off my profile to the AMBA awards and I was super nervous.
When I heard the words ‘Monique you won’ it was amazing because I was just doing things that I was passionate about without working towards an award. To be given one, was really humbling, so I’m very happy.
You were the first person to win the Aston Enterprise Scholarship. Could you tell me more about the scholarship and how you won it?
I had applied for the Aston Enterprise Scholarship while I was in Japan. In order to apply for it, we had to prepare a whole business case for Aston. The School then reviewed it and it invited me to interview. Afterwards, I had to do a video pitch for my business to the university. That was very interesting because it was during Covid times. It was supposed to be in person, but instead we had to record a video.
You’d already had a really exciting career prior to taking on an MBA, so what motivated you to do an MBA, and why did you choose to do it in Birmingham?
Birmingham was quite an easy decision for me because when I was doing some research into different cities to live in the UK, I found that Birmingham was one of the youngest cities and had a very exciting, diverse population so I really wanted to be a part of that.
My decision to do an MBA was because I had a very mixed career background, with many job titles and industries. I wanted something that could basically help me to pull together all the knowledge I had gathered over the years and put it into something I could use in my career. I found an MBA would be the ideal degree to do.
During your MBA programme, you acted as a consultant to several large organisations. Could you tell me a little bit about how that learning and consulting experience worked?
So, one of the beauties about Aston University is how practical some things are. Instead of being very theoretical, where you do a bunch of reading and then writing, what Aston offers is the chance to speak and interact with real businesses, and that was very important for me.
I did about four different consulting projects throughout my MBA. I learnt quite a bit because I was an entrepreneur – still am – but as an entrepreneur, you see business from one perspective. Doing this MBA, you’re seeing businesses from a different perspective because now you’re in that position where you’re trying to help solve a problem for these different organisations, and using the theory that you have learnt in the MBA to affect these businesses.
It was quite a good experience and I learnt a lot, and it has propelled me to do what I’m doing now, which is working as a consultant at Accenture.
During your programme, you were Head of Speakers and Performers for Tedx Aston. Can you tell me about this and how it impacted your Business School experience?
Ted X was a fantastic experience. That was probably, one of my favourite experiences through my entire tenure at Aston.
At Tedx, I was in the Head of Speakers and Performers, so I procured speakers and the performers for the events. Together, my Co-head Noor and I networked with different individuals to narrow our choices to a top six who would be the speakers at the event.
That experience was very special to me because it was a very first time that we got to invite international speakers. I had the chance to invite two speakers from my home country. This was very important for me because I wanted to show that we have amazing talent in Jamaica.
Jamaica is very popular when it comes to athletics because we have Usain Bolt, and it’s famous for reggae music because of Bob Marley. I wanted to show different sides of Jamaica. There’s the business side – which is why I invited Zachary Harding – and the more nurturing side, hence I invited Dr Terri-Karelle Reid.
You were part of the Aston MBA mentoring scheme. Can you tell me what you gained from this experience and what traits you think make a good mentor?
At Aston, as part of our MBA programme, they look at your profile and then they choose or help to choose a mentor for you. While I was there, I was mentored by a wonderful individual – Glen Conybeare. I think some of the key things that make a really good mentor is basically me describing Glen.
He was very easy to talk to and I could get a lot of information from him based on his experiences. He shared his experiences, the ups and downs, with me and he also guided me. It is because of Glen that I was interested in Accenture. He knew my background and then he helped guide me to make better career choices.
Guidance and just being open are some of the things that are important in being a mentor.
You also completed the Global Business Challenge and were named Global Business Champion. Could you tell us a little bit more about the challenge and what you had to do?
This was one of the opportunities that Aston provides. It’s a business clinic, where you work in a team with students from all over the world. My team had students from about six or eight countries. Together, we had to solve a communication problem for a company.
My team thought that I was somehow impactful on the team, and they all decided to nominate me. I ended up winning the Global Business Champion, which was an amazing experience.
What advice would you give someone thinking about completing their MBA?
For me, I think an MBA is a really good degree to have if you want to become an entrepreneur or you want to progress in your career. The MBA opens your mind and it allows you to think from different perspectives.
For example, as an entrepreneur, I now have an understanding of what it is to create a product and then build that business.
An MBA does allows you not only to be a leader but also to be a manager – which I think are distinctly different things.
The MBA helps you to rip apart the business and understand how each of its different facets work together and why they’re important. It helps you to pull together all the knowledge you have to solve problems. Understanding how to solve problems is very important for any career path you take, and I think that an MBA prepares you for that.
You live by the motto, ‘fail fast, learn fast’. Can you tell me about a time where you have lived by this?
I would probably draw from PetitSquares, which is the name of my business. When I was in Jamaica, I had to fail fast and learn fast so many times because I had started this business offering Matcha to my home country.
I was offering it in the form of a latte and that was a huge failure. I noticed that most of my customers did not take well to the latte. I had to learn very quickly and go back to the drawing board, redraft the recipe and offer a completely different beverage. That worked very well for me.
So, my life motto is that even if you’re not ready, do what it is that you need to do and then if it fails, you can go back to the drawing board very quickly and learn from that mistake that you have made and then correct it.
What’s next for you in your career journey?
Well, honestly, I just think of life as fluid. It really depends on what I’m going to be interested in next. But right now, I’m trying to build my understanding and my skill set in analytics and digital marketing. As such, I am working at Accenture as a Digital Marketing Consultant, and that is where I want to expand my career for the next umpteen years.
At the same time, I am still expanding as an entrepreneur. I have registered my business here in the UK and I’m very excited about just launching, and just taking it to the next level.
