Live and learn in Paris: Meet Flore, MSc International Finance

In a video profile, Flor Ravelojaona, class 2021, shares how MSc International Finance enabled her to explore, grow, and discover a new career path that could lead her to executive-level positions in sustainable finance.

The EMLV MSc International Finance helps students, no matter the background, develop the right professional hard and soft skills to participate in corporate decision making with firms and market activities. Flore Ravelojaona departed from a Managing Director position in a Malagasy company providing engineering support in telecommunications and power supply to start from scratch a new career in international finance. In this interview, she shares some insights into her time with EMLV Business School.

Meet Flore, MSc International Finance student at EMLV

I’m Flor, I’m from Madagascar, and before this master, I worked for an international radio for more than 20 years. I am now studying international finance at EMLV.

I had in mind to go to study in the Netherlands and France, but in the end, I say because I’m coming from a francophone country so I say to myself let’s also value my French, so that’s the choice of France. I was passionate about finance. My former background was more in economics; we studied finance globally, so I decided to go for international finance.

Then the choice is you have to go to La Defense if you want to study international finance. Then the choice of EMLV is more related to the fact that the Pole it’s also hosting an engineering school next to the business school.

I find this transversality very interesting, especially later on your career path, because I’ve also worked for technology companies, so I know that it’s a kind of value, later on, to have this interconnection within one school.

The MSc International Finance program: transversality and soft skills

It’s around 29 courses in total there are indeed a lot of technical classes in finance. Still, everybody knows it: I think the soft skill scores are the most important as it highlights your natural work style behaviour. They matter later on when you work in reality, in the professional world, to interact with people.

I also like that many lecturers could share their own professional experience with us, which gives you already a sense of what to expect when you go in real life, in the real world, and it’s not only theoretical.

There is one course which I also really like, it was about business simulation. So it’s like it’s a kind of course where you are put on a type of scenario and where you have to work with people from different backgrounds like marketing, business, and then understand that everyone has their input within a company.

Choosing a career in ESG and sustainable finance

I’m more looking for a job within finance, sustainable finance and responsible management, and ESG finance; by the way, that’s one thing I discovered within this course. I think it’s something that matters nowadays, and for my next career path, I would choose to go for ESG finance.

I appreciate the reactivity of the school; I find it like a kind of personal support. It started already from the beginning during the recruitment process.

I sent an email and then a few days after you get a reaction even if it’s not the answer, but at least that shows that they received your email and that goes all along the process. The professors were accommodating; the program directors were beneficial.

I recommend EMLV Business School. I know that there is a technical lab within the school that, unfortunately, with the Covid pandemics, I could not experience myself. That’s something which I recommend for future students. The last thing, at EMLV, they have something called “Devinci Startup“, which would be valuable to experience next to your studies because they are helping you to build your own startup company and go through all the processes.