“We decided to take a deeper dive into the industry, learn how these programs are managed, see what other schools are doing and what they aren’t doing, as well as which students have access to these opportunities,” says Dhawan. Then they focused on filling a gap in the travel industry, founding Bschool Travel while in school. Their business attracted four university partners before they graduated.

“We realized as students that these programs often lacked flexibility and customization and were not aligned with MBA interests,” with many cultural opportunities best suited for alumni groups or high school and undergraduate students, says Jarosz, managing director and head of program development and operations.

“Our demographic was not aligned with those experiences,” he says. “We wanted to curate cultural experiences that were very much focused on the demographic of full-time MBA and EMBA students.”

The business also began with a commitment to consistent, quality academic programming, no matter the location, and a desire to improve access for all students.

“One of our main missions is not just access, but equitable experiences,” says Dhawan, managing director and head of business development. “We’re region agnostic. We operate all over the world and we have a standard threshold of quality to ensure that students going to Asia and students going somewhere in Europe are getting an equally impactful experience.”

Bschool Travel only works with business schools and customizes programs accordingly. For EMBA Programs, that means five-star hotels, executive-level speakers, and white glove service. It also means carefully crafted curricular engagements to reflect the experience and needs of senior-level leaders. Involving other executives as speakers helps nurture an ecosystem of engaging conversations, which can lead to business deals and collaborations that benefit both speakers and EMBA students, says Jarosz.

Bschool Travel covers all aspects of global experiences for business school students. “We really consider ourselves a soup-to-nuts solution for our university partners,” says Jarosz, with capabilities to handle all aspects of curriculum development and logistics, including on-the-ground travel management.

“We also often will highly encourage universities to do a pre-departure cultural intelligence assessment,” he says. The assessment helps students understand and acknowledge their own biases, an awareness that also may help them address those biases during their travel and come into play during their in-country project work.

Bschool Travel understands that each university has unique challenges and customizes its suite of services to meet those needs. Some programs ask for travel management and logistics services, while others request Bschool Travel to build the whole program from designing curriculum to taking care of logistics to collecting post-departure evaluation data.

“To the faculty and administrator, we are a partner,” says Jarosz. “We view ourselves as an extension of their team.”

During the pandemic, Bschool Travel developed online global immersions, a necessity at the time that evolved into an additional option for schools. A strong supplement to global in-person offerings, these programs enhance accessibility to experiential learning to a greater student population.

“We have some universities, even though they’ve returned to doing their in-person immersions, that are now continuing to do one or two virtual immersions where students can still have interactions with local companies,” says Dhawan.

The pandemic also helped Bschool Travel further fine-tune its mission as it enhanced its curriculum design options. “Before the pandemic, we thought we viewed ourselves as a travel company,” says Dhawan. “Now we see ourselves as an educational services company. That shift in mindset and mission has been instilled in the company’s DNA as we grow.”

Bschool Travel currently operates in more than 100 countries. In 2020, Bschool Travel expanded its presence in the U.S., another pandemic response that continues to be popular.

With the recent return to international programming, the Bschool Travel team stays ahead of the curve to find the next emerging destination that will be attractive to business school students.

“That’s the most fun part of it – putting our student hats back on,” says Jarosz. “If we were students and had a list of global immersion countries we could go to, where would we be most excited to travel?”

Joining EMBAC offered an opportunity to both learn more about business school trends that help them add value to experiences and to expand their network.

“It is such a great opportunity to be part of this community that is so collaborative,” says Dhawan. Dhawan and Jarosz attended their first conference in Austin last fall and found much in common with members.

“Everyone is there for the same reason – moving the student experience forward,” says Dhawan. “And that’s our focus too – everything is focused on the student experience, adding value for the student, making the experience as impactful as possible.”

And by working closely with universities, Bschool Travel helps them pilot new global experiences. Its flexible model allows its partners to explore and plan global immersions without any financial obligation until the feasibility of the program is confirmed.

“We try to be a sandbox for our partners where they can build new programs and don’t have to worry about the financial strain or common industry terms that prohibit a new idea from coming to fruition,” says Jarosz.

Both Dhawan and Jarosz find student success stories rewarding. Those highlights can range from a company recruiting a student, adopting student recommendations, or developing business deals or partnerships with students.

“That is why we do this,” says Dhawan. “We do this for the positive student outcomes.”

For more information about Bschool Travel, contact Dhruv Dhawan dhruv@bschooltravel.com at or visit https://bschooltravel.com/.

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