Federico Cresta

Benedicte Germon: How did you get into the KEDGE EMBA program ?
Federico Cresta: Since I was a university student in Telecommunication Engineering early 2000, Business Degrees and top management stories in financial newspapers have fascinated me.  The MBA was the key common aspect for all successful and solid modern managers and entrepreneurs.

Later on, I landed at Oracle and reached a Manager position covering all technical, operational and managerial aspects; I experimented looking at broader company processes, I was able to quickly digest them and contribute, even if I only had hands-on exposure.
I then considered that was the moment for me to scale up my knowledge and capabilities with a full understanding of business and multinational companies.
 
Amongst others, I chose the KEDGE Global Executive MBA program for a series of reasons:
- Its real global experience (full weeks abroad for vertical Business seminars),
- The choice between several specialisations seminars including the Global Management one in Shanghai,
- A very high ROI perspective,
- Its international recognition thanks to the triple accreditation and world top tier position in FT EMBA ranking,
- And finally the flexibility in seminars scheduling (everything can happen in professional and personal life!).
 
BG : What have been your main takeaways?
FC: It is a deep and full transformational journey, both professional and personal (and still it is).
I’ve re-framed the knowledge I had, I better understand other people’s needs, and have been able to fill any knowledge gap on what I had learned by doing, or seen as a stakeholder in the previous part of my career.
The seminars and assignments with participants having different levels of experience (from senior specialists to CEOs) and coming from different industries have helped me gain confidence in my capabilities, gain knowledge and find similarities with other industries.
With respect to the main takeaways, I can mention the ability to communicate efficiently with any level (including C-levels); a better knowledge on how all the functions contribute to organizations, and their focus; a rounded understanding of how and what is necessary for the company to work on.  And also, speed up understanding the context and accelerate decision making processes.
 
B.G.: What did the overall KEDGE experience bring you and what would be the 2-3 key points you keep in mind?
FC: KEDGE experience has given me a full International and deep global management knowledge: I lived an inspirational International Business seminar in India, and a top-level view of global management in Shanghai.
 Companies are made of people and making companies successful as a leader involves helping people succeed.
To this end, during the program, we have focused on people and gained mandatory soft-skills such as cross-cultural leadership, team management, and raised awareness of corporate social responsibility issues.
In addition to that, I gained a large set of business tools to use in any context, as the being able to make up and interpret a business plan (to evaluate a startup or reframe a business unit), or understand any kind of financial figure to be more proactive.
 
B.G. : What you are currently up to Federico ?
FC: While attending the KEDGE Global Executive MBA Seminars, and thanks to the MBA, I was given the opportunity to move from Oracle to Publicis Media in Italy, with the role of Head of Technology, beginning 2019. I’m now in charge of every technological aspect linked to the main business of the company and its data: advertising trading and creativity.
Thanks to all fundamentals studied during the EMBA, I faced with resiliency the complexity of the advertising media in addition to the brand new role within the company.  I felt confident with interpreting the situations and innovating, re-applying and building on knowledge and experiences learned from other industries.
In addition, the EMBA has helped me reach and speak with ease to any person within a global organization at any level, without a specific or formal introduction. This is important to leverage an internal and external professional network to express full company potential.
The flexibility of the program has allowed me to remain focused on my professional career and I’m currently finishing up my capstone project about a marketing platform for an emerging niche food sector.
 
B.G. : Any project/idea you may wish to share ?
FC: The pandemic situation has shuffled the business environments but now I have the tools to understand, observe the evolution, and react. Hard-skills such as Financial Management and Multinational Finance, or “soft-skills” as Change Management have made the difference.
The sudden changes of GDPs have affected procyclical (with a contraction) and countercyclical (reaching operational limitations) industries, and KEDGE EMBA has enbled to evaluate the global context to anticipate the needs, and to structure approaches to be quickly reactive, and newly proactive.
The MBA was/ is a personal and professional transformational journey, and now makes the difference to support companies and people to pass through these transformational times!
 
Thanks Federico Cresta for your testimony !