Student Profile

Emer Moloney

Why did you decide to sign up for Leading with Finance?

I took CORe and had a great experience. Therefore, I kept an eye out for Harvard Business School Online’s new offerings. As a research associate at Harvard Business School’s Europe Research Center, I regularly work on finance topics. The Leading with Finance course caught my eye since I was due a refresher having taken some finance courses quite some time ago as part of my bachelor’s degree.

What was your favorite part of the program?

My favorite part of the program was that the style of the course is such that you're forced to actively provide reflections throughout (sometimes with little other information upfront), which is a much more strenuous exercise than passively reading about different concepts and being handed various formulae. This meant that I took away a lot from the course. The interaction with other course participants also contributed greatly to my learning (reading others’ reflections, reading comments on my own reflections, and asking questions via peer help). The finance course went beyond my expectations of being a great refresher, to adding greatly to my finance knowledge.

How are you applying the skills you've learned in Leading with Finance?

I regularly encounter many of the topics covered in the course during my case writing research, for example, private equity, debt re-leveraging, risks when investing abroad, and company valuations. My confidence in approaching these and other topics has greatly increased. I now feel that I have a broad overview of finance and can approach these topics with a strong, integrated framework instead of approaching them in isolation.

Any advice for people who will be taking Leading with Finance?

I would advise anyone interested in taking the course to set aside more than the suggested time of 30 to 35 hours to write thoughtful reflections and take notes.