During Spring Reading Week, 41 HBA students took part in an experience many had anticipated for months –
travelling to London, U.K. as part of the HBA Career Trek organized by Ivey Career Management. Moving between offices in the city’s financial and commercial centres, each day offered the students a new environment, a new set of conversations, and a deeper understanding of how global organizations operate.
Firms including Morgan Stanley, Google, Bain & Company, Boston Consulting Group, Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, Social Finance, and Trint welcomed students into their offices. What began as a series of firm visits quickly became something more reflective.
Below, HBA ’27 candidate Madisyn Thurley, this year’s Career Trek Student Ambassador, reflects on how the experience reshaped her perspective on career paths and working in international professional environments.
Lessons you can’t find in a textbook
There is something that textbooks simply cannot replicate: sitting across from professionals at firms like
Bain & Company and Morgan Stanley, and asking them, genuinely, how they got there.
At each firm we visited, conversations felt less like presentations and more like candid dialogue. Professionals pulled back the curtain on timelines, missteps, and pivots that rarely make it into a LinkedIn headline.
What struck me most was the recurring theme of non-linearity. One alum had changed industries twice before landing in the role he now described with obvious enthusiasm. Many others spoke openly about the uncertainty they carried as students, and how they gradually gave way to clarity through experience. These were not cautionary tales – they were reassuring ones. I came into the week expecting polished pitches about firm culture and graduate recruitment cycles. I left with a far more honest picture of what building a career actually looks like, and a quiet permission to be less rigid about my own.
The alumni network in practice
The alumni kickoff dinner set a tone for the week that I did not expect: warmth. It would have been easy for these events to feel transactional – a room full of students hoping to impress, and professionals offering advice from a careful distance. Instead, the energy was generous. Alumni lingered in conversation well past what their schedules likely allowed. They asked us questions and listened to the answers.
The final social carried the same spirit – a genuine send-off that felt less like a networking event and more like a community saying goodbye for now. What became clear across both events was that the Ivey network is not something that activates upon graduation; it is already functioning, already making space. Watching alumni interact with one another, swap recommendations, and introduce students to people they thought we should know, reinforced something important: the relationships you build in this program are long-term investments, and the people ahead of you are, by and large, rooting for you.
Why I would tell anyone on the fence to go
The HBA students came to London with varying levels of certainty about what came next. By the end of the week, I do not think anyone's five-year plan had been finalized – but that was not the point.
The trek has a way of replacing vague anxiety about the future with specific, actionable curiosity. You stop wondering whether working abroad is possible and start thinking about what it would actually require.
If you are even considering an international career, this trip is a must-go. Not because it hands you answers, but because it puts you in the same room as people who once sat where you are sitting and figured it out anyway.
That kind of proximity to possibility is rare, and it is worth every bit of the week.
View more photos below
At the Canada Gate at Buckingham Palace
Exploring London
A visit to Morgan Stanley
Posing in front of the Canada House
Networking at the Google office
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