Post by HEC Paris Executive Education

The stage at Commencement Day was the visible reward. The real one was quieter: Radisha Silva had returned to school to outgrow her own limits, and she had. VP at J.P. Morgan in Geneva, born in Switzerland to Sri Lankan parents, she built her private banking career on people and relationships. Six months into an internship at Rothschild & Co, the CEO offered her an analyst role before she'd finished her bachelor's. "You can be a very warm, trustworthy person," she says, "but if you don't have the analytical depth, it becomes at some point a ceiling in your career.” So she set out to break it. The Executive Master in Finance at HEC Paris, taken while moving to J.P. Morgan and completing a second diploma in commodity trading. Two degrees and a new role, run in parallel, across one full year. "There's a big difference between knowing you can do the job and being able to demonstrate the intellectual framework behind your decisions," she says. That framework is what now lets her walk into a room of sharper minds and hold her position. By graduation day, that gap was closed, but it's not the part she talks about most: "I got some of the most honest feedback I've had in my entire life. It reshaped the way I lead conversations today.” Her peers, executives as demanding as she is, taught her as much as the classroom did. They also dissolved an assumption she'd carried for years: that "financial leader" was a title tied to one sector. It isn't. It's a mindset. “The analytical rigor, the way you frame problems, the discipline around risk. Those skills travel.” Radisha built this shift on the Executive Master in Finance (EMIF) at HEC Paris. Read her story: https://lnkd.in/eqESJ7fy To the EMIF cohort walking with her: you know exactly what this year asked of you. Which ceiling did going back to school help you break? Virginie Pagnoux Emma Cholley Ioanid Rosu Evelina Codjia Valeria Cordero Aguirre