Sally Abou Ouf
MA Human Resource and Consulting, 2010
Country of origin: Egypt
Employer: Kraft Foods
After a ten-year work experience that was marked by being the Learning and Development Leader for Cadbury-Middle East and North Africa, I decided to pursue my postgraduate studies. The rationale was that I wanted to boost my knowledge repertoire by joining a specialised programme that would further accelerate my career progression.
The search journey to find a high quality Master’s programme in the area of HRD took a while until I found Lancaster University. Reading the curriculum and assessment methods for the MA, together with the Management School rating, made me realise that this was exactly what I was looking for.
Watch Sally as she describes her experience on the MA in this video.
Gaining practical perspectives
On the practical side, the programme focused on linking the knowledge studied with the real world. A number of professional guests came to share their experiences with us, which helped in putting what we were studying into a practical perspective. One of the programme pillars was a consultancy project where we worked with a real company on an organisational problem. In our consultancy, we ensured that our recommendations were supported by research findings to add credibility to our findings to the client; and this further enhanced our knowledge. The fact that part of our projects and research was group-based was another good opportunity to face the team dynamics – an important feature of the real world – and how to handle it constructively to achieve results.
On the social side, spending a year in Lancaster was a great experience in making friends with people from around the globe, appreciating our commonalities and respecting our differences. Lancaster in general is a very friendly place to live in. The whole ethos encouraged effort to excel and make the best use of what is available socially and academically.
Finishing the programme with Distinction, I returned to Egypt, my home country, to rejoin Kraft Foods after they had bought Cadbury and become the Management and Organization Development Manager for Egypt and Levant, responsible for all HRD-related activities – from staffing, learning and development, career planning and performance management.
It is a very challenging role with a wide scope but I honestly feel that the knowledge and exposure I gained while studying for my Master’s degree at Lancaster strengthened my experience and gave me the confidence to commit to making a difference in my new role.
