London Business School’s MBA Class of 2027 is taking shape as one of its most globally minded and entrepreneurial cohorts yet-and few profiles capture that spirit better than Freya Twigden’s. A mission-driven founder with experience at the intersection of sustainability and consumer brands, Twigden arrives on campus with a track record of building purpose-led ventures and navigating fast-growing markets. As Poets&Quants spotlights this year’s incoming MBAs, her story offers a lens into the ambitions, values, and shifting career priorities that are redefining graduate business education in one of the world’s financial capitals.
Freya Twigden From Sustainable Spirits Founder to London Business School MBA Trailblazer
Before arriving in Regent’s Park, Freya Twigden had already rewritten the playbook for what a modern drinks company could be.As founder of a climate-conscious spirits brand,she built a supply chain that swapped monoculture crops for regenerative agriculture,replaced heavy glass with lightweight refill formats,and told a story that connected cocktail culture with carbon literacy. Her startup’s early traction in independent bars and premium retailers gave her a front-row seat to the tensions between rapid growth and rigorous sustainability standards. At London Business School,she is now pressure-testing those instincts in finance and operations classes,debating trade-offs that earlier she navigated by gut feel and mission alone.
Classmates describe her as the person who can talk EBITDA and biodiversity in the same breath. On campus, she splits her time between the Entrepreneurship Club, impact-focused projects, and late-night sessions refining a new playbook for circular beverages with peers from five continents.Her plan after graduation: scale a portfolio of low-waste, high-flavor brands that can move the needle in mainstream hospitality, not just in niche eco-bars. In the process, she’s becoming a case study in how a founder leverages the MBA to pivot from single-brand operator to ecosystem builder-using LBS as a laboratory, not a detour.
- Background: Sustainable spirits entrepreneur with global supply-chain experience
- MBA Focus: Impact investing, operations, and brand strategy
- On-Campus Roles: Entrepreneurship Club leader, mentor in the LBS startup ecosystem
| Area | Before LBS | At LBS |
|---|---|---|
| Primary Role | Founder & CEO | MBA & venture builder |
| Focus | Sustainable spirits brand | Scaling circular food & drink ventures |
| Impact Lens | Supply-chain emissions | System-wide climate solutions |
Inside the London Business School Experience How Freya Is Leveraging the MBA to Scale a Mission Driven Brand
Immersed in London’s global business hub, Freya treats every day on campus as an extension of her startup’s boardroom. She alternates between strategy lectures that dissect consumer brands,hands-on sessions in the Institute of Entrepreneurship and Private Capital,and evening meetups with classmates who bring perspectives from impact funds,luxury retail,and big tech. Rather than pausing her mission-driven venture, she is deliberately using the MBA as a live laboratory-stress‑testing distribution models, experimenting with pricing, and pressure‑testing her sustainability claims under the scrutiny of peers who are both supporters and skeptics. The result is a feedback loop where classroom theory feeds directly into brand decisions, and real‑time performance data from her company enriches classroom debates.
- Key goals: sharpen strategic thinking, refine impact metrics, and build investor‑ready narratives
- Core resources: LBS Leadership Incubator, Entrepreneurship Club, alumni founders’ network
- Practical outputs: new go‑to‑market roadmap, updated brand story, pilot collaborations with classmates’ firms
| Campus Lever | Brand Outcome |
|---|---|
| Impact Investing Electives | Clearer social ROI framework |
| Global Experiential Courses | New supplier partnerships |
| Marketing Lab Projects | Refined positioning and visuals |
| Founder Roundtables | Stronger scaling playbook |
What distinguishes her experience is how deliberately she curates the people around her. Freya seeks out classmates with backgrounds in operations, supply chain, and climate tech to sit in on product reviews, question her assumptions, and help map a path to scale without diluting the brand’s environmental and social promise. She uses office hours with professors to translate big‑picture theories into bite‑sized experiments for her team back home, and she leans on LBS’s diverse student body to test messaging across cultures and markets. On any given week, her calendar is a blend of investor pitch simulations, design sprints for sustainable packaging, and late‑night working sessions in Sussex Place-each one bringing her a step closer to building a mission‑driven brand that can compete on a global stage.
Lessons in Purpose Driven Entrepreneurship What Aspiring MBAs Can Learn from Freya Twigden’s Journey
Entrepreneurship, as illustrated by Twigden’s path, is less about chasing the next big valuation and more about designing a business that relentlessly serves a clearly defined “why.” Before building anything scalable, she interrogated the problem she wanted to solve and the community she hoped to impact, allowing her venture to grow from a mission rather than a marketing slogan. For aspiring MBAs, this reframes the typical case-study mindset: instead of starting with market size and exit strategy, begin with the human tension you can’t ignore. That approach demands uncomfortable clarity about personal values, but it also creates a sharper filter for opportunities and partners, weeding out projects that are merely profitable from those that are genuinely worthwhile.
Her experience also shows that purpose is not the enemy of discipline; it’s the framework that keeps strategy honest. Twigden leaned on data, operational rigor, and constant feedback loops to test whether her ideals translated into real-world behavior, treating metrics as a truth-telling mechanism rather than a vanity scoreboard. Future MBAs can borrow several practical tactics from her journey:
- Anchor strategy in a personal thesis about the change you want to see, then pressure-test it in diverse markets.
- Pair values with KPIs, so impact is measured with the same seriousness as revenue and margin.
- Use the MBA as an experimental lab to prototype, fail fast, and refine the mission with peer and faculty critique.
- Curate your network around mentors and classmates who challenge your purpose, not just endorse it.
| Lesson | Applied MBA Practice |
|---|---|
| Purpose before product | Define a mission statement before your pitch deck |
| Impact with evidence | Build dashboards that track both profit and purpose |
| Learning in the open | Turn class projects into live tests of your venture idea |
Actionable Career Advice Freya’s Recommendations for Standing Out in Competitive MBA Admissions
Freya’s playbook for MBA differentiation starts long before you hit “submit.” Rather than chasing every shiny credential, she recommends curating a story arc that makes admissions officers remember you in one sentence. That means doing a ruthless audit of your past experiences and future goals, then doubling down on the two or three themes that genuinely define you-whether that’s building a climate-tech startup, transforming a family business, or spearheading inclusion initiatives in a conservative industry. She suggests treating your request like an editorial feature: each element (resume, essays, recommendations, interview) should reinforce the same headline. Freya also urges candidates to prototype their narrative in the real world before applying-testing career hypotheses through micro-projects, weekend ventures, or stretch roles that show evidence of action, not just ambition.
- Turn impact into metrics: Quantify everything-revenue moved, hours saved, people led-so your achievements read like an investor memo, not a diary.
- Curate your ecosystem: Freya advises building a “board of informal advisors” (mentors, peers, ex-bosses) who can pressure-test your goals and later become powerful recommenders.
- Show range, not randomness: Side projects are valuable only if they echo your core themes-she favors depth in one or two areas over a scattered list of hobbies.
- Practice ‘conversation essays’: Draft essays as if you’re speaking to a curious friend, then refine for clarity and structure; this keeps your voice authentic amid polished prose.
- Rehearse like a founder for interviews: Build a mini pitch deck about yourself and practice answering questions as if you’re defending a seed-stage startup-your startup is you.
| Freya’s Focus | How to Apply It |
|---|---|
| Clarity of Story | Write a one-line “thesis” for your career and test every essay against it. |
| Proof of Action | Launch a lean project that demonstrates your post-MBA direction. |
| Strategic Networking | Target a handful of alumni for deep conversations, not dozens for surface chats. |
Future Outlook
As Freya Twigden prepares to join London Business School’s MBA Class of 2027, her journey underscores the evolving profile of the modern business student: globally minded, mission-driven, and unafraid to cross conventional sector boundaries. From entrepreneurship to impact-focused leadership, her story reflects both the ambitions of her cohort and the broader shifts reshaping management education.
In the coming years, Twigden and her classmates will be tested by an unpredictable economic and geopolitical landscape. Yet it is precisely this habitat that will demand the kind of analytical rigor, cultural fluency, and entrepreneurial resilience that LBS seeks to cultivate.
If her trajectory to date is any indication, Twigden will not only absorb the lessons of this next chapter but help define what it means to be part of a new generation of MBAs-one that aims to balance profit with purpose, and personal success with broader social impact.
