Griffith Uni MBA drives a career switch into advising on ESG

Juliana Ribeiro started out in naturopathy, but her MBA is helping her switch to a career in the environmental, social and governance area of business.

Griffith University MBA student Juliana Ribeiro. Photo: Lyndon Mechielsen

Juliana Ribeiro sampled various jobs before deciding to take a Master of Business Administration course and settling on employment that provided her with intellectual stimulation and gave her the scope to pursue her interests of sustainability and health.

Now 35, Ribeiro was born in Brazil and emigrated to Australia as a child. After finishing high school in Brisbane, she wasn’t sure where to direct her talents. She studied the creative arts in school – dance, drama, art – and enjoyed a German language immersion program, which entailed studying the major subjects in German and living in Germany for a time.

Fluent in German, Portuguese and of course English, she took a TAFE performing arts course for six months before deciding to look elsewhere. Then she studied graphic design at Griffith University, and again decided it wasn’t for her.

At the age of 20, she switched to a different field. “I started studying natural medicine, a Bachelor of Health Science, majoring in naturopathy,” she says. “I loved it, loved the science. It was interesting going from creative subjects to a very science-related discipline.”

She took the health science course at Endeavour College of Natural Health part-time, while working in retail. Finally graduating in 2016, she soon started work with a wholesale distributor of natural supplements and remedies. “It was still retail, but in the natural medicine space,” she says. She did a little clinical practice but she soon realised that side of natural medicine was not for her.

Meanwhile, her long career in retail of various types, beginning as a sales assistant and quickly moving up to manager, continued until recently.

“I’ve always had an interest in business,” she says. “And I’m really passionate about sustainability and health and wellbeing – all those values, I guess. I was figuring out where I wanted to be, what kind of work I could do that aligns with my values.”

She wanted a challenge: something more mentally stimulating and somewhere she could make a bigger impact. In 2021 she began looking into the idea of studying for a Master of Business Administration degree.

“I’d been thinking about it for a while, and then after the start of the pandemic, I thought ‘I’m just going to do this, I’m just going to take it on’,” Ribeiro says.

She was drawn to the Griffith MBA because it was strongly oriented to sustainability, embracing sustainable values in all the core courses. She decided to study part-time, online, in an accelerated mode (just over 25 hours a week) and continue working full-time. The course’s subjects encompassed a wide-ranging field of study including broad economics and managerial problem-solving. Each of the subjects was viewed from the perspective of sustainability, Ribeiro says, focusing on the environmental, social and governance (ESG) aspects of doing business that might not have been considered in earlier decades.

Ribeiro thoroughly enjoyed the course and when the professional services firm KPMG ran a management consulting challenge in different Australian universities she decided to put a team together from Griffith and take part. Her team was asked to determine how best to triple the impact of a particular not-for-profit organisation by 2025.

“We had to design a presentation and pitch it to a KPMG team,” she says. “We were short-listed for the semi-finals. It was so much fun, I really enjoyed it, and I realised that engaging in meaningful work was the challenge I was looking for.”

She now says the challenge helped her understand what fulfilling employment could entail. She got in touch with the KPMG ­organiser, which led to an introduction and employment in the KPMG enterprise division in Brisbane, where she now works in a business transformation team.

Ribeiro works with mid-market clients including corporates, local councils and not-for-profits, with work on business strategy, operating models, and market research, including assisting an energy company with its sustainability strategy. She has worked with directors, CEOs and boards, expanding her networking circle.

She has also volunteered for the Australia Brazil association ABRASSO, based in Brisbane and the Gold Coast, and she wants to build on that effort after she has finished university.

With three subjects left to complete, she looks forward to graduating. In the future she hopes to integrate her previous experience and formal learning in health and retail in her professional career, working with companies to help develop their ESG strategies and achieve their sustainability goals.

“I have a passion for retail and health,” she says, “and maybe in the future I can line that up with the ESG perspective.”