How juggling work and study during an online master’s boosted a career in business

Choosing the right path for him

Born and raised in Ecuador, Daniel Serrano came to Lausanne for his bachelor’s at EHL and has stayed in the city ever since. After several years spent working for EHL in alumni and industry relations, he decided to apply for a master’s. “In the back of my head, I always wanted to do a master's, and I always said I didn't want to do it straight after a bachelor’s. That was a personal decision, mainly focusing on the fact that when you get a little bit of experience, you see things in a different way. For me, that was crucial so that I could also, while doing the master’s, apply different concepts and strategies to what I was already doing.” A year after finishing his master’s, he took up a new job at FELFEL.

What does FELFEL do and what’s your role at the company?

“Our aim is to become the hospitality partner of many different companies in Switzerland. We do that via a concept of fresh food with local ingredients and with a network of different partnerships that we have in the country. In a nutshell, my role is taking care of our current clients. As soon as a client signs with us, they come into the customer success area. Here, we really take care of the onboarding process. Then, once the service is launched, we follow-up with them on a regular basis. What we really try to do is optimize the collaboration that we have with them. As a hospitality company, we do quite a lot of events, so the interaction that we have with them is really important, and we are in charge of organizing those activities so we can bring more engagement to their employee communities.”

You came to this role after taking a master’s in business analytics – why did you choose to study that?

“Business analytics is the science of collecting, utilizing, and analyzing data to take business decisions that would contribute to the business performance. It’s something that we will need more and more in the future. As the world becomes more digitalized, we have data everywhere. For me, that was very much an added asset that I could have in my professional career, saying, I want to have these competencies moving forward because no matter which position or which company I'll be working at, I will need them.”

Why did you choose to study with HULT?

“I wanted to do a program where I could do my studies and at the same time continue to work. HULT offered a very interesting program that was very hands-on, very business-applied. You could do it fully on-site, hybrid, or fully online. I chose the fully online version at the beginning, and that meant that every three weeks we had courses from Thursday to Sunday from 9am to 6pm. It was a very intense four days of classes. And then you had deadlines in the next two,

three weeks for the projects to be handed on. It was actually a non-stop cycle. I probably lost a few years and a few grey hairs in the process, but it was all for the better! I really enjoyed the experience.”

Although you studied online, did you get any in-person experiences?

“Something very special about HULT is that they have five different campuses around the world. At the beginning, I was lucky that I was invited to Dubai for the launch of the program, which was very nice to get to know the professors and the peers. We also have two different elective periods throughout the course and you could choose any of the campuses around the world to do those electives. In my case, it was Dubai, it was London. I was able to go to those different cities to visit the campuses, to get to know different people.”

What advice would you give to bachelor’s students looking to take a master’s?

“Try to choose the program that you want, not the program that some other people want for you or tell you to take. I think it's about following a gut feeling – if this is something that interests you, go for it. It's not the last studies that you're going to do. I think nowadays we learn on a daily basis and the world changes so fast that even if you do a master's on a specific subject that later you maybe won't use as much, you will always have an opportunity to keep on learning.”

Check out the full list of student profiles and their diverse career paths.