There are many things you learn from an early career in journalism, such as how to build and develop contacts, how to ask the right questions, how best to communicate your ideas, and how to persevere to find whatever information you (or your readers) need to know.

So, having begun my career as a financial journalist covering investment banking and over-the-counter derivatives during the Global Financial Crisis, I had a strong set of basic skills that would serve me well in future roles.

A Career Built Across Markets and Roles

I joined S&P Global in 2016 to help shape digital development and content strategy for what was then Platts, a leading provider of energy news, data and analytics. The comfort I had built dealing with high-level stakeholders through years of questioning bank executives and regulators proved crucial when advising senior leaders on transitioning to a digital-first publishing operation. Through a series of internal moves, my work expanded to evaluating project plans, financials, and implementation timelines, where my reporter’s curiosity remained central, and I continued to apply the same rigor and quality I had brought to the publications I led.

Today, I lead a global editorial team responsible for the quality and direction of news and research across multiple products and regions. This role, which I enjoy, has been the culmination of a 20-year career in business-to-business media, journalism and research management. It’s a journey that has taken me from the UK to the US and back again—making stops in various places in between. Among the most memorable of these were South Africa, where I once rode in a taxi that had a plastic crate instead of a passenger seat, and the spotless, gleaming streets and skyscrapers of Singapore, Asia’s commodity trading hub.

I took some detours. This included a foray into UK politics. Although it came just as Brexit was beginning to suck all the oxygen out of the country’s political debate, I consider myself lucky to have had the opportunity to forge positive change as a local elected official and candidate. I’ve also enjoyed moving things forward as part of my work with many voluntary and community groups.

Deepening and Broadening My Skills

Despite my varied and interesting career, which has taken me to different countries and through a range of different organizations, I had long been keen to find a way to deepen and broaden my business and leadership skills. With the Weekend Executive MBA program at Fuqua, I found this.

I embarked on the program relishing the challenge and little expecting just how useful and immediately applicable many of the things I learned would be. The impact was to overlay my existing experiences and skills—picked up from journalism, and a few other places—with a new set of frameworks and tools:

1. Understanding Innovation Strategy

A particular highlight was our elective term class on managing innovation in a global organization, in which we learned about the different types of methods many successful companies use to manage and drive innovation. These concepts have proven very valuable to me in my full-time role as we increasingly look to integrate new technologies such as generative AI and automation into our editorial workflows and customer-facing products.

2. Applying Operational Thinking

Another class that was something of a revelation was operations management. As the senior leader of an operational function—one that our stakeholders and clients rely on to deliver subscriber products—the concepts were highly relevant to my day-to-day role. Among other things, the class involved a memorable trip to the factory floor of Machine Specialties, Inc., a North Carolina-based precision parts manufacturer. Many of the course learnings about capacity, bottlenecks, service times and wait times can be just as validly applied to content and data products.

3. Becoming a More Reflective Leader

Elsewhere, the work we’ve done on leadership and development has made me vastly more effective as the leader of a large and geographically dispersed team. I’ve become more self-aware and conscious of the need to occasionally step outside of my comfort zone, be vulnerable, and ask for my team’s feedback and support.

As someone who manages large, complex projects involving cross-functional stakeholders, I’ve become better at reflecting on my leadership skills and the areas where I can improve. I hope and believe that my manager, colleagues and direct reports would say the same thing!

4. An Introduction to Lifelong Connections

Finally, my Fuqua experience has filled the gaps for me in another big way: I have met some of the most talented, clever and fun people I’ve ever had the privilege to meet. I’ve enjoyed studying alongside my classmates and being part of their MBA journeys for the past two years. And their personalities, life stories and experiences have shaped and enriched my learning experience. I hope the friendships we’ve built will endure long after our time in Durham is finished.

These highlights barely do justice to the wide range of courses we took together, along with all the accompanying late-night study sessions, frantic team assignments and lively social activities. I don’t know if that young journalist would recognize all of it, but I think he would approve. The curiosity and thirst for knowledge are still there, but Fuqua has given me new perspectives and tools that I didn’t even know I was missing.