Nursing a grand ambition

Liz Martin is starting to see the bigger management picture on her MBA course

"I left school at 16 and had a fabulous career without bothering with academia. At 22 I was the first female manager with Tesco, then became training and development manager with Next. Then I had a daughter with cerebral palsy, which took me out of the job market for 10 years.

I did an HND in Business Administration, then joined the NHS where I introduced change management at a hospital in Paisley. Everyone had qualifications as long as your arm, so I took a part-time degree in Business Administration. But I decided that wasn't enough...

Competitiveness in the NHS has been removed by the Government and so it doesn't need people like me any more. I have to go back into organisations that want to change things.

I'm a single parent with two children. I'm borrowing to pay for a full- time MBA at Strathclyde Graduate Business School because I'm confident I'll get a good job. It has opened up avenues I didn't expect. I was a little sceptical, thinking I'm 40 years old and know an awful lot about management in different fields. What can they teach me? But they've opened up a lot for me - especially in the globalisation of industries. I'm excited and ready for new things.

I've most enjoyed strategic analysis. You look at so many aspects and concepts in business and bring them together, and use the history as well as the present and future to come up with a plan. It's amazing. I love it. I find the staff here very flexible and open. I've studied at two other universities, and found their attitudes old-fashioned. Strathclyde is much more a learning organisation."