The thing I really liked about IE University was that there are over 100 nationalities which make up the student body. Just talking to staff members and students I learned that students bring their own international experience to the classroom and actively learn from each other as well as their professors. IE University is connected to the rest of the world through its student body, through innovative partnerships with some of the best employers in the world and through its attitude towards developing global citizens.

As for programmes, IE offers degrees in Business, International Relations, Law, Architecture, Communication, Psychology, Information Systems Management, Design, Politics, Law & Economics (PLE) as well as three dual degrees through which students can study two degrees at the same time.

IE has two distinctly different campuses - one slightly north of the centre of Madrid and the other a short 20-minute train ride in the beautiful city of Segovia. Unesco World Heritage–listed, Segovia is nothing short of breathtaking and is the perfect setting for learning. Words do not do it justice, you simply have to visit Segovia! Just check out some of my images below - I can’t say any more than that!

The Madrid campus is very sleek and a perfect example is the level of thought behind the design of the internal and external fixtures and fittings. It’s actually quite provocative, there are intriguing and inspiring quotes everywhere. The line between students and staff is non-existent; classrooms are opposite staff offices on each floor, which means students, can access teaching staff at almost any time. This tells you a lot about how open it is as a place of learning. It’s an easy place to study. IE has some impressive expansion plans and will move to a building next door to KPMG, PWC and Deloitte soon enough.

Before I go, organisational design is something of great interest to me and one thing that stuck out at IE was the level of effort that has gone into ensuring IE has a truly international feel and is internationally-minded. Staff members had a story to tell about where they were from, how many languages they could speak and where they were off to next to meet with students. What was really interesting to me by the end of my second day was the “light bulb” moment of the true impact of a diverse and internationally minded student body has at the individual and collective level. On the individual level students get exposure to other perspectives 24/7 and at the collective level students are working hard to have an impact on a global scale. There are examples of this through the work done in their Student Labs – a group of students from the Comms Lab were tasked to help Athletico Madrid rebrand and engage audiences around the world. This international mindedness allows for a deeper level of empathy and an understanding that people will always have different perspectives, especially those from other cultures. Students and staff often started a point with “in my opinion..." - that’s very telling about how somebody is able to distinguish the difference between reality and their own perspective, which is often hard to develop, and spot, yet essential for the global world we are now living in.