Global Communities at INSEAD Master in Management

I thought I understood what a global community meant before coming to INSEAD.

But in reality, I didn’t.

I thought it meant having 50+ nationalities in the same classroom.

Turns out, it’s much more than that.

It’s a French person working at Google taking the time to explain the company and how to make the most of your time at university.

It’s a person of Pakistani origin working in consulting sharing honest advice on your CV and career choices.

It’s someone working in Singapore giving you a completely different perspective on marketing and consulting.

It’s meeting someone once, asking for help, and being slightly surprised when they actually make time for you.

But what surprised me even more was realising that this exchange doesn’t just happen across countries.

It happens across industries and functions too.

I recently found myself helping a Chartered Accountant test the customer validation for one of his startup ideas. We worked on his Meta ads and discussed how we could refine his proposition across his website and through his creative materials. We also looked at how the messaging could be made clearer for the target audience and how customer responses could help us understand whether the idea addressed a real need.

Another time, I was speaking to someone from finance who wanted to understand more about consumer behaviour in India. I explained that India is not one single, uniform market. We have more than 20 major languages, along with many different cultures, religions, castes, values and beliefs. Even when you move from one Indian state to another, the way people communicate, interpret messages and respond to brands can change significantly. A marketing message that works well in one region may not have the same meaning in another. This is why marketing in India often needs to be developed with a strong cultural lens, so that communication remains relevant and does not unintentionally offend or exclude people.

And suddenly, the same network that I had thought of as something I would learn from was something I could contribute to too.

That’s when it clicked.

A global community isn’t just about crossing borders. It’s about the constant exchange of perspectives across countries, industries, functions and experiences.

You might come to a conversation looking for career advice and leave with a completely different perspective on an industry. You might think you’re helping someone with something you know, and end up learning something you didn’t know you needed.

The direction keeps changing. Sometimes you are the person asking questions, and sometimes you are the person offering support. Sometimes you are learning from someone’s professional experience, and sometimes you are simply sharing a part of where you come from.

And maybe that is what makes INSEAD feel less like a network and more like a family and a community. Not because of the number of countries on the class profile. But the number of people willing to show up for each other, willing to make time for one another and share what they know.

It is the feeling that there are people around you who are willing to support you, even when you have only just met them.

40 days in, I’m still figuring out what this place means to me.

But what a global and diverse community means, I already understand.