Behind the Scenes at Bucherer: What Five Days of Job Shadowing Taught EDHEC Global MBA Participants About Leadership

For five days, EDHEC Global MBA participants Melba Melton and Jiverny Hoog stepped inside the world of luxury retail, accompanying Nathalie Celia, Managing Director of Bucherer France and an EDHEC alumna of the programme Grande École (PGE), through meetings, budget discussions, hiring decisions, and strategic conversations.

The experience formed part of the Global MBA's job shadowing initiative, which gives select participants direct access to senior leaders and the realities of executive decision-making. For both participants, the week offered more than insight into leadership. It helped validate career transitions that motivated them to pursue an MBA in the first place. 
 

The initiative is designed to bridge the gap between theory and practice. Participants shadow senior executives, gaining first-hand exposure to leadership, decision-making, and organisational dynamics in a live business environment. The experience offers a rare opportunity to observe how strategy is translated into action while exploring potential career paths from the inside.

What Leadership Looks Like Up Close

By design, the week gave participants a front-row seat to executive leadership. Rather than focusing on major presentations or formal meetings, Melba found herself paying attention to the subtler moments that shape decision-making.

"I learned that the most substantive work happens in the margins," she says. "Not in formal presentations, but in how a question gets reframed before a decision is finalised, in the dynamic between people in the room, and in the instinct to slow down on certain things and move quickly on others."

What stood out most was the role of judgement.

"The decisions I observed were not being made by reference to a checklist. They were being made by someone with deep institutional knowledge and a clear sense of what the organisation could absorb at a given moment."

In Jiverny's case, the experience revealed something different.

"What struck me most was how much leadership at that level is about consistency: setting the tone, reinforcing priorities, and making sure that people across the organisation feel aligned and motivated, even in brief interactions."

Nathalie has long recognized the potential in creating opportunities like this is; they are valuable precisely because they expose MBA participants to those realities.

That two-way exchange is central to the experience. Nathalie in particular noted the potential real-time contribution participants can make.

"MBA students are bright, have an interesting perspective, and ask relevant questions that challenge us. It's a rich exchange that benefits us as much as we try to give to the students."

 

Learning Through Exposure

For both Nathalie and the participants, one of the most valuable aspects of job shadowing is the opportunity to learn through immersion.

"Discovering a new company and integrating into a new team for a week isn't easy, but it helps develop essential agility," Nathalie explains.

"It allows you to experience a different intercultural environment and a different management style. This intercultural richness is crucial in management, as companies often operate across countries or integrate multicultural teams."

For Melba, the experience highlighted areas of leadership she wanted to develop further herself: one example came during budget discussions.

"Coming from a legal background, I had some familiarity with financial oversight in a compliance context, but watching how budget decisions were actually reasoned through in a retail environment gave me a much more concrete appreciation of why financial literacy matters at a senior level."

The impact was immediate.

"It was actually grâce à [thanks to] Nathalie's example that motivated me to pursue the Finance Specialisation at EDHEC."

In Jiverny's case, one of the most memorable moments came during a discussion with a commercial partner.

"It was not a formal negotiation in the textbook sense but that was precisely what made it instructive," she recalls. "She knew exactly when to push, when to listen, and when to let silence do the work."

The experience also reinforced the close connection between strategy, people, and client experience within the luxury sector.

"I left with a much clearer sense of why culture and leadership quality are not soft considerations in luxury: they are core to the product."

A Week That Changed Perspective

Looking back, both Melba and Jiverny say they see the experience as one of the most valuable parts of their respective MBA journeys thus far. 

"I did not want a theoretical MBA," Melba relates on her decision-making process in pursuing in MBA in the first place. "I wanted one that would get me into rooms I could not otherwise access."

"The Bucherer week confirmed that the direction I have chosen is the right one."

Having entered the programme with a clear ambition to transition from public-sector compliance into governance and leadership roles in the private sector, the shadowing experience gave her a clearer understanding of what that transition would require.

"Watching Nathalie work made clear that the role I am aiming for demands more than legal expertise. It demands sharp commercial judgement, the ability to read a room, and the kind of credibility that is earned over time rather than conferred by a title," she reflects.

Jiverny was equally struck by Nathalie's leadership style.

"What struck me most was the combination of sharpness and groundedness. She was always prepared, always present, and never seemed to need the room to know it. That kind of quiet authority is something I want to grow into."

As for Nathalie, that broader perspective is exactly what the programme is designed to encourage.

Both GMBA participants agree that the lesson was simple: some aspects of leadership can only be understood by seeing them firsthand.

 As Jiverny puts it: "The pivot feels less like a leap now and more like a natural next step."