Mbacké BabouHEC Paris MBA · Class of 2028
An engineer turned business operator, moving into strategy.
Making complex systems work for the people who use them.
I spent five years inside large organisations, first writing the software, then keeping enterprise clients running on it. The part I was best at was never the code. It was getting people to agree on what mattered first. That is the work I came to HEC to do at strategy level.
Thoughts
Opinions on business, tested against what I've seen up close.
Journal
What sixteen months at HEC are teaching me, written as it happens.
Field Notes
Short findings on the industries I've worked in or studied, and why they matter.
Click a circle to filter the notes
Systems, people, decisions: the machinery of how I work.
Work
Five years building and running software for large organisations, before moving into strategy.
- DakarRoots
- ParisSince 2015
- NextParis · Middle East · London
- Managed technical relationships with 4 enterprise clients worth €2M in annual revenue, keeping client satisfaction at 95%.
- Unblocked the team's most complex client upgrade by resolving 34 blocking issues.
- Coordinated teams in France and India on client incidents, meeting 100% of agreed service targets.
- Cut the team's high-severity incidents by 50% by prioritising escalations and spotting recurring patterns.
- Replaced legacy reporting with a self-service dashboard used by 3,600+ branch directors, cutting load time by 80%.
- Relaunched a regulatory reporting project stalled for 2 years, shipping its first live release in 6 months.
- Delivered 9 releases in 3 years without missing a deadline, agreeing priorities with business owners.
- Mentored 2 junior developers and set the team's quality standards.
- Event Director for a community association's annual gathering: 1,000+ guests, €95K budget, 100+ volunteers.
- Built a member directory and task app with SQL and AI tools, adopted by 300 members.
- Taught an 8-week hands-on Photoshop course to 3 cohorts of 5–10 learners.
- MBA, HEC Paris (2026 – 2027). Foundation Excellence Scholarship, Leadership Fellows, Academic Representative, football captain.
- MSc Intelligent Systems Engineering, Sorbonne University (2015 – 2020). Internship building a real-time robotic control interface.
- French · native
- Wolof · native
- English · C1
- Arabic · learning
- SQL
- Python
- Excel
- AI-assisted coding
- McKinsey Forward
- Project management · CELSA
About
The person behind the bullet points.
Who I am
Growing up in Senegal, engineering felt like the most exciting way to build things that matter, so I became one. I studied intelligent systems in Paris, built applications for a bank, then managed a €2M+ portfolio of international enterprise clients in B2B SaaS. Working with people from very different backgrounds, I realised I wanted more than to build one feature. I wanted to understand how decisions get made and how companies create value. That's what brought me to HEC Paris.
What I'm into
Seven years behind the camera at weddings and events, and teaching Photoshop on the side. Formula 1 for the strategy calls, karting for the speed, and two years of horse riding. Captain of the HEC MBA football team. Currently learning Arabic.
Who I follow
- Eloa Guillotin ↗Building a hydrogen-electric aircraft at Beyond Aero: deep tech turned into a company.
- Uche Ezichi ↗A diaspora voice on leadership and careers.
- Roland Berger ↗The strategy work I most want to learn from.
- Anthropic ↗How AI moves from research into real businesses.
- Lewis Hamilton ↗Two decades at the top, and a platform used beyond the track.
- High Performance ↗The podcast on how top people in sport and business handle pressure.