Aula Magna is Reinventing the Structure of Business School For Women: An Interview with Founder Clara Lapiedra
By Naisha Roy
Aula Magna Business School, a fully digital program-based foundation, is changing the way business education looks for women. Founded by Clara Lapiedra, the school aims to provide resources that help women develop integral business skills such as leadership, diversity, blockchain, and more. Its courses are self paced and modular, allowing women to take their time and become experts in their workplace. The school has been Listed in the Executive Education report at the Financial Times and includes materials by Harvard Business Publishing. Through its programs, Aula Magna hopes to help close the workplace gender gap and provide equitable resources in corporate environments that may not have them. Lapiedra, the school’s founder, is also the founder of Womepreneur, a consultancy service for small businesses. With an education from Babson College, the IESE Business School, and Stanford University, she’s extremely experienced in honing the skills necessary to be a fierce woman in business. She spoke to Women Who Win about how she developed the programs for Aula Magna as well as their newest program, the Executive Development Program.
1. What inspired you to start Aula Magna, and did you notice a discrepancy between male and female resources in the business workplace that you hope to fill? What makes the business school unique from other programs offered online?
After completing my degree, several masters, and an MBA, I was a manager in international companies for 20 years. During this time, I realized a thing or two concerning women’s quality and access to education toward primarily male positions. Thus, leading me to founding Aula Magna Business School, the first woman-centric business school that offers top-notch and up-to-date programs for women in corporations. I’ve been a woman, sitting in minority, in classes of executive programs such as my MBA in world-wide renowned business schools. I have figured out in all processes what it’s like to be in minority and what a program needs in order to be women-centric, approved for working women, some of them even moms, who do not wish to give up on their work-family balance in order to continue learning and progressing in their professional lives.
2. Some of your programs include Diversity, Equity & Inclusion, and Digital Business Plan. What do these courses entail, and what skillsets can participants hope to gain from them?
All our programs respond to the needs of current companies: global, connected, inclusive, and data driven. Our Diversity, Equity and Inclusion program, shares an approach for implementing a diverse and belonging culture within the corporate workplace.
3. Why is it important for women specifically to hone these skillsets and have resources aimed directly at them?
I am striving for a world in which women have the same real opportunities as men. But I mean real opportunities, not the ones in which women cannot afford to invest a huge number of unproductive hours in theoretical programs. This will occur through the improvement as access to well-developed education. At Aula Magna, we believe in Nelson Mandela’s saying, “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world”, the sooner we can improve education for executive women, the sooner we can benefit from its results.
4. Tell me about your newest program that you are launching, the Executive Development Program. What makes it different from everything else offered at Aula Magna and why is it important for the company?
Our newest program, launching March 17th, is an international Cohort. The Executive Development Program (EDP) is designed to be adapted both to your personal and professional life. All interactively through our eCampus, where you will be able to learn, attend live sessions with professors, prepare cases, network with both professionals, and other students, and test oneself. This program focuses on a handful of topics. From learning managerial skills current companies are expecting applicants to demonstrate, such as innovation, UX & customer centricity, digital transformation, project management, ethics and sustainability, and strategic vision. All the way to developing your soft skills in order to enhance your marketability as an applicant or improve your effectiveness in the office. These skills include negotiation, personal branding, persuasive communication, and leadership.
The program is structured into three sections. The “Individual” block, “Company” block, and “Ecosystem” block. Each Section features audiovisual and written information on applied theory, with illustrative examples. It also includes a practical business case that will be discussed in teams and with the cohort in a master session. The cases you will study throughout the program have been developed by us with an emphasis on those deriving from leading companies in their sector. We also always ensure each case demonstrates compositional gender parity and contains female protagonists so it exemplifies our school’s mission.
This program differs from other programs offered, because with each new program we are continuing to improve. I follow the motto, “the sooner, the better.” There’s a saying that says, “If you’re not embarrassed by the first version of your product, it means you launched too late.” There’s no such feedback as the one by real customers who consumed your product or service. Continuous improvement comes next, and that’s something we implement in each new cohort because we listen to the Voice of Customers (VoC) with their experience, the data we get from our eCampus, and the surveys. That’s the only way in which you’re always creating, improving, implementing changes, and then selling again the wheel of lean start-ups.
5. What advice do you have for women in the Business world who may be fighting against some of the inequalities you have mentioned and trying to navigate a corporate environment?
I would say, “A ‘no’ is not the end. There are a number of B-plans, C-plans… up to Z.” To me, every ‘no’ has made me a stronger and more resilient person and entrepreneur, so I thank all of them!