CEMS Alumni Stories of Impact and Purpose - Jack Casey

1. Journey 

How did your CEMS experience - across Sydney, Barcelona and São Paulo - shape your global mindset and lead you to found Impact Consulting while still a student?

CEMS played a crucial role in shaping my global mindset by immersing me in highly diverse, international environments. By gaining extensive exposure to the corporate and social partners, CEMS really made me think more deeply about how organisations approach identifying talent and skills. For me, CEMS set the benchmark for how universities need to look at bridging the gap between education and employment - by bringing organisations directly into the classroom. Founding Impact Consulting as a student myself was a direct response to that, to help universities create structured ways for students to engage directly with employers and graduate with practical, relevant experience through real-world company projects, internships and placements

2.Purpose 

You created Impact Consulting to ensure every student gains meaningful work experience before graduating. What personal conviction or gap did you feel compelled to address?

The main conviction behind Impact Consulting came from seeing how many students (particularly here in the UK), graduate with zero or very limited professional work experience. That gap isn’t about talent or motivation, it’s structural. Too often, professional experience is inaccessible, leaving many students feeling frustrated and feeling very lost after graduation - with a lot of uncertainty over what they want to do. As a result, we created Impact Consulting to make course-relevant professional experience more accessible, by embedding these experiences directly into the curriculum, so that every student, regardless of background, can graduate with relevant experience and a better idea of what they want to do in their career.

3. Impact 

Since launching Impact during COVID, you’ve partnered with universities worldwide and engaged thousands of students in real-world projects. What impact are you most proud of so far?

For me, the most exciting part of entrepreneurship and what I’m most proud of, is building a team and a culture where people genuinely enjoy coming to work and where they feel deeply connected to the impact they’re having. At IC, our team is motivated by the knowledge that our work directly shapes young people’s confidence, careers, and access to opportunities. Seeing members in our team take real ownership of that responsibility, and care about students’ outcomes has been incredibly rewarding. That shared sense of purpose is what has allowed us to scale partnerships with a wide range of universities and engage thousands of students in meaningful, career-relevant work.

4. Looking Ahead

How do you see the role of globally trained graduates, including CEMS students, evolving as higher education and employability continue to change? 

Globally trained graduates, including CEMS students, will increasingly act as the bridge between academia and the world of work. As higher education shifts toward skills, adaptability, and lifelong learning, employers are placing less emphasis on static knowledge and more on the ability to work across cultures, navigate ambiguity, and deliver impact quickly. Graduates with international exposure are better equipped to do that. Their value won’t just be in having a global perspective, but in applying it, working effectively in diverse teams, understanding different markets, and translating theory into practice. As employability evolves, globally trained graduates will play a key role in helping organisations operate and compete in an increasingly interconnected world.

Jack's Trajectory: 5 Key Moments

 In Five Insights – Leadership Takeaways

• One defining decision - Having my co-founder Jamie join Impact
• One risk that changed everything - Offering ‘Free Pilots’ to universities at scale to trial our support, which was a great decision in the long term, but was a big risk initially
• One failure that taught something important - In entrepreneurship, the importance of failing fast. We spent too long considering another business model, which we knew wasn’t going to be as successful.
• One belief that shapes leadership - People do their best work when they feel trusted, purposeful, and genuinely connected to the impact they’re creating.
• One piece of advice to future global leaders - Listen deeply across cultures and focus on creating real-world impact for others, everything will follow from there