Non-Stop Cycling Trek from Sarajevo to Lausanne Marks Culmination of 4 Year Relationship Between IMD and Bosnia

The MBA class of 2005 at IMD in Lausanne, Switzerland is just a bit different. The intensive 10 month business program is coming to an end. Like MBA students around the world, they are worried about finding jobs for after graduation. But, despite their hectic schedules being crammed with schoolwork, consulting projects, and job searches, they have prioritized something else: the future of Sarajevo.

Cycling for Sarajevo (www.cyclingforsarajevo.com) is an initiative of the IMD MBA Class of 2005. The class, which is made up of 87 people of 38 different nationalities, has set out to raise sFr.50,000 ($39,700) to benefit the children of Sarajevo by cycling from Sarajevo to Lausanne, a distance of more than 1200km, in just 3 days and 3 nights – without stop. The journey will begin in Sarajevo on September 29th and end in Lausanne on October 2nd of this year.

“As a Slovene, I witnessed the devastation of Sarajevo with horror. Now I am glad to be able to help, even if just a little bit, in the efforts to rebuild the city.” Rok Trost, member of the IMD class of 2005, and coordinator of the Cycling for Sarajevo event.

Ten years after the war and on the tenth anniversary of the massacre at Srebrenica, Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) and Sarajevo are still in desperate need of infrastructural improvements. The monies raised will be employed towards such improvements to local schools, which are still suffering the lasting effects of the war. The IEDC Bled School of Management will assist us in ensuring that the monies are utilized to its best capacity, helping to bring hope and opportunity to the children of Sarajevo.

The IMD MBAs believe that investing in children means investing in peace for BiH. It means being devoted to a future free of war and full of hope. In a city steeped in more than 800 years of history, whose young people remember only too well what happened in the war, the fledgling business leaders believe their effort can have a special resonance.

One of the components of the IMD MBA program is the Discovery Expedition, where the entire class is taken to a country facing a difficult business environment. In partnership with the IEDC Bled School of Management, the MBA Classes of 2002-2005 took their Discovery Expeditions to post-war Bosnia & Herzegovina. This special project was chronicled in a special BBC episode in 2003.

Through the years, the MBAs have been exposed to business leaders, government representatives and other locals of all walks of life, with the objective of gaining a deeper understanding that our role as future leaders goes far beyond economic gains for the corporations we serve. Each year, after completion of the formal Discovery Expedition the MBA Class has embarked on a project to contribute towards the improvement of the socioeconomic conditions in BiH.

IMD is a leading global business school based in Lausanne, Switzerland. For over 60 years, IMD has worked with leading global companies to develop and retain management talent. IMD is the “global meeting place”: the most international of business schools worldwide. It offers learning based on innovative and highly relevant research that can be applied to business challenges immediately. This is IMD's "Real World. Real Learning" approach (www.imd.org).

IMD is ranked number one worldwide in executive education (Financial Times, 2008). IMD’s MBA is ranked first worldwide (Economist, 2008).