30 years in. The MBA still moved the needle.
And now I’m looking for thirty women — many of you reading this, I hope — to study alongside me.
Many of you reading this answered the survey that became my MBA capstone. Women’s Network Australia helped distribute it, and your generosity with your time produced the data that changed the trajectory of my business. So this letter starts with a thank you — and an invitation.
At eighteen, I was told university wasn’t for me. Not by a school. Not by an admissions letter. By my father. The truth is I’d already been accepted — I’d been offered an accountancy internship with a fully funded place at university to go with it — but I wasn’t allowed to take it. I went and got a job at the bank instead. So I built a life around the door I was told to walk through. I started businesses, raised a family, weathered recessions, watched the internet arrive, and learnt the kind of things you only learn by being the one who has to make payroll on Friday.
Three decades later, at sixty-three, I sat down to start an MBA.
Why I almost didn’t.
I’ll be honest with you, because that’s what this network is for. I had every reason not to enrol. I’d already done the learning — three decades running a company teaches more than any classroom can. I didn’t have time — owner-operators can’t disappear into eighteen months of full-time study. I didn’t need a credential — at this stage, customers, revenue, and a long operating record are the only resume that matters. And the question I really couldn’t shake was the one veteran founders always ask: where’s the actual return?
Most MBAs answer that with “your career, eventually.” That wasn’t the question I was asking. I wanted to know whether twelve months of structured work would move my business — not in two years, not in five, but inside the year I was already living.
What changed my mind.
The Ducere MBA, delivered through Kennedy University in the United States, is built differently — and the difference is the whole point. There are no exams. The whole degree completes in twelve months, online, while you keep running your business. Every single assignment plugs back into the company you actually own. You don’t study other people’s case studies; you write your own, in real time, on your own P&L.
And then there’s the faculty — which still genuinely astonishes me. Ducere’s founder, Mat Jacobson, has personally interviewed over 250 of the world’s most extraordinary leaders. Former presidents and prime ministers. Nobel laureates. Fortune 500 CEOs. Founders of brands you’ve known your whole life. Those interviews — some 2,500 videos in total — are woven through the curriculum, not as a guest-lecture afterthought but as the core method.
I chose a research project on coaching and networks for women in business — because that was the question my own work kept asking me. I wanted to know why so many capable women join networks and stay quiet, why we wait until crisis to call a coach, and why so much of what’s marketed at us feels like a track that isn’t ours.
What the women said.
Fifty-two women answered my survey — many of them through this network. Eight sat down with me for in-depth interviews. The combined reach across the channels who shared the work was over 86,000 women.
Seventy-six percent had worked with a coach — but most only when something had gone wrong. They waited until the wall before they asked for help. The average impostor-syndrome score was 2.38 out of 5, and almost every interviewee defined coaching success not in dollars but in clarity and confidence — the real ROI is internal.
And the line that changed everything: women didn’t want bigger stages. They wanted smaller circles.
That insight became the model I now run my business on. Circle Builder is a structured way to build the kind of small, trust-rich groups the research said women had been looking for all along. And here’s the part I still can’t quite believe: in 2024, a global women’s leadership network adopted the model and rolled it out inside their international community. Today, ten active circles operate across that network. The work travelled. It earned its place by being wanted.
The numbers behind the story.
Since completing the MBA and the strategic pivot it produced, my income has lifted by 250 percent and my client base has grown by 500 percent. The pipeline is stronger, the work is higher value, and the business that was stalling under fifty thousand a year is now on a trajectory that genuinely excites me. I rebranded. I repositioned into the education sector, consulting to Registered Training Organisations. I launched a new one-to-one advisory for professional women bringing their expertise into online programs. And I’ve just enrolled in the Graduate Certificate in Artificial Intelligence, because the next chapter is already calling.
None of that was on my radar before I started the MBA. All of it came out of the work.
Now — the part where I ask something of you.
This year, I’m on a mission. I want to find thirty women who are ready to do the work alongside me — to enrol in the August intake of the Kennedy University Online MBA and come through the program together as a cohort. Not strangers in a virtual classroom. A circle.
I would love that circle to include the women of this network. You answered the questions that built the methodology. It feels right that some of you might also walk the next chapter with me.
Doing this on your own is hard. Doing it with a group of women who understand what it means to run a real business in a real life — that is transformational. You’ll be supported by the program, by Kennedy University, by Ducere — and by me. I’ve been through every module, every assignment, every late-night moment of “why am I doing this.” I’ll mentor this cohort personally. And I’ll hold the circle so that no one walks it alone.
Join the August 2026 cohort.
Kennedy University of Leadership, USA · Online · 12 months · Work-integrated · No exams
- MBA — Global, Executive, AI, or Space Leadership specialisations
- Faculty of 250+ world leaders — presidents, Nobel laureates, Fortune 500 CEOs
- Designed for women already running real lives and real businesses
- Mentored personally by Joanne Brooks throughout the year
- Investment from USD $9,900 — interest-free, payable in three instalments
- Intake: 3 August 2026. Thirty places. First in, first served.
If something just shifted as you read that.
If something in you shifted as you read this — that little flicker that says maybe, that says what if, that says it’s been a long time since I learnt something new on purpose — please don’t talk yourself out of it. That voice that tells you you’re past it, too busy, not the type, too late: that voice is wrong. I know, because mine said the same things for years.
At eighteen I was told I wasn’t university material. At sixty-three I finished my Master’s. The thirty years in between weren’t the obstacle — they were the qualification. Yours are too.
If you’d like to join the cohort, or if you just want a conversation about whether it’s right for you, write to me at joanne@navig8biz.com. I’ll send you the program brochure, answer every question you have, and tell you the truth about what twelve months of this looks like. No pitch. Just a conversation.
Let’s build the next circle. Together.
— Joanne Brooks
Joanne Brooks is the founder of Navig8Biz, an MBA graduate of Ducere Global Business School in partnership with the University of East London, and a brand ambassador for the Rising 10,000 Women program. She works with Ducere to bring the Kennedy University Online MBA to women in business across Australia and the world. · joanne@navig8biz.com · +61 434 602 024 · navig8biz.com
