How My MBA Made the Link Between Art and Business | Meet Our Change Makers

Why It Matters

It shows that artistic skills such as risk tolerance and collaborative creativity can boost business innovation, prompting leaders to foster cross‑disciplinary development and early mentorship.

Key Takeaways

• Embracing change requires mindset shift, not just scale.
• Musician’s failure tolerance fuels risk‑taking in business career.
• Warwick MBA taught intellectual humility and diverse perspectives.
• Supporting others early accelerates personal and collective success.
• Small actions can create meaningful change in arts and business.

Summary

The video features a professional harpist turned EU Youth Orchestra manager who pursued a distance‑learning MBA at Warwick Business School to explore the intersection of art and commerce.

She explains how music ingrains a tolerance for failure and a relentless pursuit of perfection, traits that translate into entrepreneurial risk‑taking. The MBA forced her to confront different mindsets, cultivating intellectual humility and a broader strategic outlook.

Memorable moments include the “wall of sound” she describes in the orchestra and her mantra that “change doesn’t have to be big to be meaningful.” She emphasizes the power of early encouragement, noting that mentors who believed in her before any accolades made the biggest impact.

The story illustrates how artistic disciplines can enrich business leadership, encouraging organizations to value creative resilience, mentorship, and incremental change as drivers of innovation and talent development.

Original Description

Helen Leitner started life as a harpist before working at an Opera House. Now, she works as Head of Communications and Advocacy for the European Union Youth Orchestra.

But from 2021 to 2023, she completed an MBA with Warwick Business School - shaking her out of her mindset and helping her see the links between art and business.

Helen is a Change Maker. Bold, curious and determined to make a difference.

---

At Warwick Business School, we champion people who turn bold ideas into real impact. That's why change starts here.

► Discover Warwick Business School: https://www.wbs.ac.uk/

► Explore our MBA programmes: https://www.wbs.ac.uk/courses/mba/

► Find out more about our Change Makers: https://www.wbs.ac.uk/about/meet-our-change-makers/

In this video:

00:00 What change means to Helen

00:34 Becoming a musician and beyond

01:09 How an MBA helped Helen

02:03 The journey towards success