Why I chose it

After graduating from Exeter, I wanted to go further, not just in terms of qualification, but in terms of how I think. UCL's MSc Management offered a rigorous, international environment with a sharp focus on strategy, finance, and organisational behaviour.

The modules I found most interesting and that stuck with me were:

• Innovation Practices
• Influence & Negotiations
• Decision & Risk Analysis

Innovation Practices challenged the way I thought about why and when new ideas actually matter. It wasn't just about creativity. It was about timing, context, and execution. We examined why most innovations fail not because the idea is bad, but because the moment is wrong, the organisation isn't ready, or the people pushing it don't understand the system they're trying to change. It made me realise that innovation isn't a spark. It's a process, and often a slow and uncomfortable one. Influence and Negotiations was the one module I specifically chose, and it remains one of the most useful things I have ever studied. We went deep into the psychology of persuasion, the mechanics of how deals get made, and why the person who understands the other side's interests better almost always wins. It gave structure to something I had always done instinctively: reading rooms, adjusting my approach, finding the angle that moves things forward. Decision and Risk Analysis reframed how I think about uncertainty. Most people treat risk as something to avoid. This module treated it as something to understand, quantify and navigate. We worked through frameworks for making better decisions under incomplete information, which, when you think about it, is every decision that actually matters. For the first time, the way I naturally think had a framework behind it.