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Second edition of Mount Kilimanjaro elective

Second edition of Mount Kilimanjaro elective

On the 21 October 2012, using the mountain as a classroom and as a metaphor for business, 15 women will experience leadership in ever-changing environments while climbing Kilimanjaro in the MBA elective course at RSM, RSM MBA Kilimanjaro Leadership Project. These women will need to work together and lead each other through difficult terrain to push past physical and mental barriers in their trek to the 5,895 meter summit.

This is the second time the successful Mount Kilimanjaro elective will take place. This year, next to RSM MBA students, a number of businesswomen, keen to address the challenges experienced by women progressing into senior management positions, will be joining our students on the mountain. “How amazing would it be to develop yourself and support other women in developing themselves while climbing a mountain? Now I’m selected and I know for sure that climbing the Kilimanjaro with this group of women will be an experience I’ll never forget!” says Monique, one of our EMBA students. Another EMBA student, Hilde Albregts adds: “How surprising is it that you succeed, when you only do things you know you could do anyway? How much joy could there be if you did not let caution keep you away from any challenges a little less certain to end in success? That is one of my reasons to go hike up the Kilimanjaro; to do something where there is little certainty over the outcome….”.

The climbers will again be led by Rebecca Stephens, the first British woman to climb the ‘Seven Summits’ - Mount Everest and the highest mountain on every continent. From this experience Stephens developed her lecture series “The Seven Summits of Success” (also available in book form). In it, she uses striking climbing metaphors to illustrate lessons for making it in the business world. These include the importance of pursuing a passion from within, how success is only achieved through interdependence and teamwork, and plenty of positive thinking.

The RSM MBA Kilimanjaro project is a women-only special elective designed to enhance leadership and networking capabilities for female MBA participants. The Mount Kilimanjaro Women Empowering Women Leadership Elective ran for the first time in 2011 and aimed to address the specific challenges that women face when climbing the corporate ladder. This is a subject of great interest to the project’s initiator Dr Dianne Bevelander, RSM’s Associate Dean of MBA Programmes, who has actively researched the subject in her paper Ms Trust: Gender, Networks and Trust - Implications for Management and Education which has been published in the journal Academy of Management, Learning and Education.

Bevelander discovered that while women like to and support each other on an emotional or task-orientated level, the picture changes when risk is involved.  “When there is risk, women tend to choose men” she said. RSM’s groundbreaking project aims to address the lack of female talent at the top. “We need more women at the top, more role models!” enthused Bevelander. “This second edition of the RSM MBA Kilimanjaro Leadership Project will certainly see at least 15 more young women reach new heights.”

Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University is consistently ranked amongst the top 10 business schools in Europe. It is located in the international port city of Rotterdam where core Dutch values of openness, flexibility and acceptance of diversity have attracted businesses on a global scale. Our emphasis is on groundbreaking research and practices relevant to business; our primary focus is on developing business leaders who carry their innovative ideas into a sustainable future. Our portfolio includes a broad array of bachelor, master, doctoral, MBA and executive education programmes. www.rsm.nl

For more information on RSM or on this release, please contact Marianne Schouten, Media & Public Relations Manager for RSM, on +31 10 408 2877 or by email at mschouten@remove-this.rsm.nl.