Professional doctorate: Deepening your knowledge of finance and networking

Gabriela Rodrigues and Eduardo Chukr have been working for at least 10 years in the area of finance. After doing MBAs, specialist courses and master’s programs, they decided to pursue a doctorate in administration, focusing on finance.

The two second-year doctoral students share a love of studying, which drives them to keep their knowledge base up to date. Gabriela, a consultant and strategy specialist at a financial institution, says that a professional doctorate is unique because it actually has practical applications. “Sometimes we get so caught up in our day-to-day work that we forget to check out the latest studies on the subject. The professors give very real examples and we can see opportunities to use different models and techniques at work,” she explains.

Eduardo, who is Hershey’s head of corporate finance in Latin America, says that he is also a big believer in professional master’s and doctoral programs. “They tie in perfectly with what we experience on a day-to-day basis, our problems in decision making and the way we need a theoretical framework to think about strategy. It makes perfect sense to me and so I’m a fan of the concept,” he says.

Gabriela explains how her doctorate has given her insights that help with her work demands. “There was a subject I studied while I was dealing with a specific demand at work, about how we were going to recover from some impacts of the pandemic. Professor Claudia Yoshinaga presented several studies that talked about the gender of managers, and I realized that we had never looked at how much the gender factor could affect the situation,” she recalls.

Eduardo adds that it is also important to bring corporate reality into the academic world. “We can present the dilemmas we’ve been through and the decisions we’ve made at our company, to analyze whether we made the right decisions and discuss what else could be done, as well as alerting other institutions,” he explains. He has also taken discussions from his doctorate to his company. “I’ve seen a lot about digital transformation in my doctoral studies and how it’s going to impact the world of finance. I have taken these discussions into my company, which is implementing several digital systems, ensuring that there is strategic discussion on this subject there too,” he says.

According to Gabriela and Eduardo, the advantage of focusing on finance as part of a doctorate is the depth of discussion on different subjects. The class is able to engage in more fluid, rich and focused discussions. “When you have to put together an argument to back up a decision, you ask yourself how other people are doing this. Would other companies make the same decision as us if they had this data? I think we can see this networking very clearly right there in our classroom,” Gabriela says.

“I took some individual subjects in the traditional part of the doctoral program and I could see how the focus on finance is different. There are strategic issues geared at finance that I can discuss in the classroom today, which I wouldn’t be able to discuss with other colleagues in the traditional part of the program. They’re not used to the theories we use and practice. For example, finance professionals have to make everyday decisions about capital structure and pricing,” adds Eduardo.

Networking is also facilitated, opening up new prospects and possibilities. “The fact that the classes are centralized makes it easier for people from outside Sao Paulo to be in the class. I was surprised by how many people from other regions are in my class and I think this brings richness to the discussions by getting in touch with other realities,” Gabriela says. Eduardo stresses how networking can be advantageous in a doctorate focused on finance. “Our knowledge is shared. If I have a dilemma at work today and I raise my hand in the doctorate to expose these problems, I know that, at the very least, I’ll leave with a lot of insights that will help me come up with a solution,” he says.

Finally, Gabriela shares what the doctorate has meant to her. “In general, this doctorate teaches you to not always think in the same way you’re used to. It teaches you to think outside the box, to question. Is what they’re saying true? It’s about verifying market assumptions through studies. Otherwise, we’ll be stuck in time, doing everything the same. Everyone has always done it like this in the company, one person passes it on to another, and you end up doing the same thing. The doctorate makes you think about what could be better or what the world is doing differently that I can also do,” she says.

Eduardo has found recent discussions about digital transformation and the future of finance very useful. “What strikes me most about the course today is its discussion about the behavior of financial managers and the implementation of new technologies. The program discusses the future of our field, which is changing, and what kind of professionals we need to become. There’s a perfect combination of access to state-of-the-art knowledge, professors who are very well prepared to lead discussions in class and having these debates with professionals of the highest caliber,” he says.

Find out more about the Finance line of our Professional Doctorate in Administration here.