INTERVIEW WITH THE DEAN
Climate change is among the topics on the rise at the school, courtesy of the Centre of Expertise on Climate Extremes (ECCE), an initiative between HEC Lausanne and the University’s Faculty of Geosciences and Environment. It draws on expertise from the business school’s departments in finance, operations (encompassing data science and statistics) and actuarial science to help develop innovative methods for assessing the risks associated with extreme weather events. “We bring experts in finance and statistics but also actuarial science to the table, because insuring against these climate extremes is becoming more difficult and we will have to answer questions around how the risks and probabilities involved can be calculated,” Schmid Mast notes. The ECCE also offers a prime example of the school’s efforts to prepare students with teaching and expertise from outside the traditional domains of business. It’s a perspective that the HEC Lausanne dean sums up neatly when returning to the topic of characteristics and competencies needed by tomorrow’s leaders: “The solution to many of our current challenges is interdisciplinary. You need to be able to listen to other people, compromise and collaborate.”
system of credit validation. “The link with practice and experience outside the university environment is extremely important. Some students will already have it, of course, but we also have a lot of students who have never worked and the more we can give them a reality check, the better,” she reasons, before adding: “I also pushed for them to be able to get credits for charity work.” The problem for those who lack work experience, Schmid Mast maintains, is that it becomes so much harder to “anchor what we are telling them in terms of theory” because they don’t have the lived experiences to use as a reference. The school is now working on tweaks to its master’s in management programme, with the help of its International Advisory Board. Established in 2024, the board comprises business leaders from renowned companies, including the CEO of TAG Heuer, a former vice-president at Nestlé Health Science and a partner at PwC. Schmid Mast outlines the benefits: “We had a session with [the new board] and asked about the skills they want to see from our students and the topics they think will become more important. They are helping us identify gaps and understand industry expectations.”
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Business Impact • ISSUE 6 • 2025
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