Armed with a new city-centre headquarters offering greater connections to business and society, Emlyon Business School is seeking to diversify its student body and attract more leading academic talent. Dean Isabelle Huault reveals how an evolving business world and changing market inform the school’s strategy and programme offerings. Interview by Tim Banerjee Dhoul Open for business A t the start of this academic year, Emlyon Business School opened the doors of a new purpose-built campus in the centre of Lyon, having spent more than 50 years at a site in Écully in the city’s suburbs. The move lies at the heart of the school’s strategic plan for 2024-2028, as its executive president and dean Isabelle Huault explains. “The ambition is to use this campus as a means of attracting more international students and faculty and to facilitate co-operation with other international institutions. It’s a campus which is truly
already large numbers of international students, with 130 different nationalities represented. Most notable here is the school’s international MBA on which almost all enrolled students hail from outside France. However, Emlyon now wants to boost the number of different countries and regions represented in the one-year programme. “Right now, we have lots of students from India, China and countries in South America, but we really want to diversify the nationalities we see on the international MBA and attract more people from, for example, Eastern Europe or Africa,” Huault reveals. Encouraging more prospects from outside France to study in Lyon is an aim found across the school’s programme portfolio. This isn’t just about enriching classroom experiences with global perspectives, it’s also an acknowledgement of a changing market, as Huault indicates: “There will be a decrease in the demographic number of students in Western countries
connected to a city and open to the world.” Diversifying the student body A total of 3,300 new students enrolled across Emlyon’s portfolio of undergraduate and postgraduate programmes last September to bring its total community above 9,000. Among these are
16 Business Impact • ISSUE 2 • 2025
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