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
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 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, a business analyst and then an entrepreneur.
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 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 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.
Next, I 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 invited me to interview. Afterwards, I had to do a video pitch for my business to the university. That was very interesting
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