Rome Business School celebrated the RBS Graduation Ceremony2022. In a hybrid mode, online and presential, MBA, Master’s and Executive Master’s students culminated their studies surrounded by friends, family, and some of the most national and international RBS companies partner.
“We are in the age of uncertainty, where our solid strategic planning framework is rapidly becoming obsolete. In this context, as managers, we are called to change the way we work to create strategies and lead people. You are now the ones who have to answer this call, to lead the economy towards sustainability, finally more attentive to the environment and to people,” said Marco Pesaresi, General Manager of Ferrarelle Società Benefit, Patron of the ceremony.
In this academic year over six thousand hours of lectures, 198 lecturers of whom 38 percent were international and 22 Program Directors supported students and provided them with skills and tools to grow professionally and generate a positive impact on society. One of the values of RBS is the strong connection with companies; in the past year alone, 175 company meetings and face-to-face meetings were held with about 90 international managers and corporate advisors to launch graduates into the world of work right away. Indeed, the professional impact is significant: 97 percent placement rate, +616 partnerships with domestic and international companies, 3,285 job and internship offers published, and the RBS4Entrepreneurship program this year incubated and launched 12 projects on the market.
“Throughout these years, you have attended the lectures, the workshops, every meeting with a lot of passion, but the time has come to take this knowledge and make it your own, take it further,” said William Carbone, Program Director of Rome Business School’s Master in Artificial Intelligence.
Also present at the ceremony was Alice Alfonsi, HR Business Partner Leroy Merlin to receive the Top Employer Partner Award, who affirmed: “We want to thank Rome Business School for recognizing us with this award. We are a company that turns its gaze to the development and continuous search for young talent, and today we celebrate the success of Danilo Migliaccio and Armando De Marco, who have entered internships and continue with a path of growth to become future managers of Leroy Merlin Italy. We hope that this partnership will become increasingly solid and allow us to celebrate the successes of tomorrow’s future leaders every year.”
Rome Business School is committed to training responsible leaders who are capable of being change agents, inclusive and innovators. The ceremony’s patron reminded them that companies must also change, and people are the ones to do it: as of 2021, Ferrarelle Spa has become a “Benefit Company,” formalizing its commitment to adopt initiatives to create benefits for people, the environment, and culture above the generation of profit.
Indeed, Marco Pesaresi reminded graduates that “we are in an era of change, where our priorities and relationships with others and the environment are changing. As managers, as leaders, we have to dive into this change in order to lead others, convincing them to overcome their resistance, giving them the energy to challenge themselves, motivating them, creating a sense of urgency…. This is leadership.”
Antonio Ragusa, Dean of RBS, said in front of the international audience, “The world needs each of you [graduates]. You have the power to improve our society and make it more prosperous, peaceful and just, like the leaders you will be for your communities, clients, families, cities. This is your time to launch new challenges, new projects. Take action and believe in yourself, because even the achievement we celebrate today shows that you are capable of doing great things here and anywhere in the world.”
Today Rome Business School is confirmed as Italy’s most international business school, welcoming students from more than 150 countries and demonstrating the richness that exists in this multicultural environment. In fact, for Enrico Pizzarello, a graduate of the International MBA, thanked RBS:
“We have learned to work as a team leveraging a culture of progress instead of competing against each other. We strongly believe in meaningful connection, cooperation and resilience because from the beginning of this MBA, we have appreciated our differences in background and education as a strength and this has allowed us to grow so much.”
Indeed, this is what RBS wants, to create better managers for a better world, and to do this it has deployed several initiatives and programs to support students, including RBS4Entrepreneurship: in just one academic year, the business school incubator launched 12 innovative projects developed by students. In addition, 437 final Capstone Projects were presented, giving alumni a chance to immerse themselves in a real business scenario and “solidify themselves as a team, strengthening our connection and unleashing our unlimited potential,” said Danilo Migliaccio a graduate of the Executive Master’s in Data Science.
As a society, we are increasingly connected, more interconnected, able to create relationships that can generate greater and greater impact. For this reason, Marco Pesaresi urged graduates to “cultivate their curiosity, explore, be surprised by different points of view, listen carefully to others. Great ideas can come from anywhere, and it is important that, as leaders, you know how to listen, that you are driven by empathy, by wanting to grow, by innovation, and that you always remain a bearer of hope.”
