From January 19 to 27, the Embassy team joined FLAD in attending a series of final student presentations to women entrepreneurs by groups of student consultants from the five Universities participating in the Connect to Success (C2S) MBA/Masters Consulting Program, including Católica Lisbon School of Business and Economics, Nova School of Business and Economics, Faculty of Economics of the University of Coimbra, Porto Business School and the Faculty of Economics of Porto.
The MBA/Masters Consulting Program is one of three Connect to Success components, and consists of a dynamic partnership that provides students with real world practical experience while simultaneously offering women owned businesses (WOBs) an opportunity to get a specific business challenge addressed by teams of MBA and Masters students over the duration of a semester.
Student consulting groups may, for example, assist a woman entrepreneur to create a business plan, devise a strategy for the introduction of a product or service, identify potential acquisition candidates, create and install a new business processes, develop a marketing strategy, evaluate operational practices, and/or build a strategy to attract investment.
The presentations involved eleven groups comprised of thirty-two student consultants in total, who presented their final project proposals to the entrepreneurs with whom they were matched at the beginning of the semester. The entrepreneurs also gave testimonies on how the consultancy project helped them solve specific business problems or achieve their objectives.
These final presentations also mark the official ending to the fourth edition – Fall 2016 – of the Connect to Success MBA/Masters Consulting Program. The fifth edition – Spring 2017 – was launched this past January.
