London Campus Corporate Leader turned Entrepreneur: Meet Nasser Alassad

Nasser’s desire to make a pivot from corporate life to entrepreneurship is what ultimately led him to pursue an Executive MBA. Nasser started his career in management consulting, where he learned how organizations think, make decisions, and scale but he always knew he eventually wanted to be the one building rather than advising. His instinct ultimately pulled him into entrepreneurship and investment opportunities across technology, retail, architecture, and beyond. What began as a single venture grew into a portfolio of businesses he’s built or backed over the years, each one teaching Nasser something the last one couldn’t. Looking back, Nasser realized the common thread between his experiences weren’t the industries themselves but the decision he made years ago to bet on his own judgement rather than stay inside someone else’s structure.

Chicago Booth’s Sokolov Executive MBA Program serves as the next chapter in Nasser’s journey as he works to sharpen the financial and strategic instincts he’s built through his experiences over the years, with the end goal of continuing his entrepreneurial pursuits with more precision.

The biggest return hasn't been a single framework, it's the confidence gained to formalize instincts I built over years of moving from corporate life into founding and investing. Frameworks from courses like Corporate Finance and Strategy have given language and structure to decisions across ventures in various industries that I used to make on instinct alone. I've become far more rigorous about testing assumptions with data before acting, rather than trusting conviction built purely from experience. It's changed how I lead, too. Conversations with teams across my ventures now push harder on the "why" behind a recommendation, not just the "what." That shift in how I think, more than any single number, is what's made the investment in Booth’s EMBA program worth it.

Corporate Finance and Entrepreneurial Finance & Private Equity have been the most directly useful courses I’ve taken, as they speak directly to the investor side of my journey: evaluating and building ventures rather than just operating them. My Negotiations course also stood out—I learned practical frameworks that I've already used in real conversations, not just theoretical ones. If I had to pick a favorite class it would probably be Strategy because it gave me language and structure for decisions I was already making intuitively. The professors' willingness to work through examples from my own path, rather than generic case studies, made the material stick.

I treated the Executive MBA the same way I've treated every major decision since leaving corporate life for entrepreneurship. It’s an investment I made deliberately, not a cost I absorbed passively. I built expected costs into my planning early, similarly to how I would size up any new venture before committing to it.

My advice to anyone weighing on the financial piece of the EMBA is to be honest upfront about what it will really cost, both in tuition and your bandwidth. Having people you trust to carry the day-to-day matters as much as the financial plan itself. Lastly, don't wait for a "perfect" year to start your journey because there won't be one. The earlier you build your toolkit, the longer you’ll get to compound the return on it.

My hesitation going in was less about geography and more about whether stepping back into a classroom, after years of learning purely by building and investing, would actually add something new. What settled it was realizing Booth’s EMBA program wasn't asking me to abandon the instincts I built as an entrepreneur. Instead, Booth offered me frameworks to sharpen my skillset with the structure and language I never had the time to develop on my own. Once I saw pursuing an EMBA in that way, the specific location didn’t detract from the caliber of the program and people I'd be learning alongside. Any early doubts faded quickly once I experienced what Booth had to offer.

What I value most about Booth’s global network is being surrounded by people who've taken a leap of faith in their own way. I’ve encountered many classmates and alumni who’ve also come out of the corporate structure and decided to build and invest on their own terms in different industries all over the world. Those conversations remind me that the path from corporate life to entrepreneurship isn't a straight line for anyone, and there's a lot to learn from seeing how others have navigated it.

The same instinct that pulled me out of corporate life and into building my own ventures is what makes balancing Booth’s EMBA program possible. I've spent years learning to build teams I trust rather than trying to hold every thread myself. That discipline of delegation, honed across technology, retail, architecture, and consulting ventures, is what lets me step away for Booth’s international session weeks without things falling apart. If anything, the EMBA has sharpened this muscle further—it forces me to be even more intentional about where my personal attention actually adds value versus where a strong team can carry things. The hardest part isn't the hours, it's context-switching between building mode and classroom mode, but that's a familiar rhythm for anyone who's moved between founding, operating, and investing. Being surrounded by a cohort on a similar path makes the balancing act feel less like a burden and more like part of the growth.

If there's one thing I'd want people to take from my story, it's that the leap from corporate life to entrepreneurship isn't reckless—it's a decision you can make deliberately and keep sharpening for the rest of your career. Booth’s EMBA program has been part of that sharpening for me, not a departure from it.

• Outside of work, Nasser, his wife, and child call Jordan home; it’s where Nasser goes to recharge between ventures.
• Nasser enjoys swimming and running. It keeps him grounded.
• Nasser enjoys exploring new parts of the world; it’s helped shape how he thinks about business outside of the classroom.