Vicki Brady CFO and group executive, strategy & finance, Telstra

Master of Science in Management, Stanford University Graduate School of Business, 2004

“I knew that to move into more senior management roles I needed some broader experience, particularly in strategy development and marketing. I chose Stanford for my Masters because of its links to the tech sector and Silicon Valley; I really wanted to understand what it took to develop a strategy inside a tech company. The Masters really reinforced for me that you have to start with the customer. So when it came to developing strategy, ultimately you needed to understand the customer and then how you’re differentiating. That’s what drives me, even in the role I’m in today.

One of the professors in my degree had worked with Andy Grove from Intel. I got a lot of great thinking out of him sharing that experience. One of the radical things the leaders of Intel did was ask themselves: What if we sacked ourselves and were re-employed to start again? What would we do differently? Grove’s book Only the Paranoid Survive was quite powerful for me in that learning process.”