Arya Matamedi’s career in wealth management runs through London and the Middle East. It does not, for the most part, run through Italy.
So, then, why did he decide to spend two years studying in Milan at SDA Bocconi School of Management, in a country where he had no plans to build a career at all?
The unconventional MBA choice was an odd decision on paper. By the time Matamedi applied to SDA Bocconi, he was already several years into a career at Coutts & Co, advising some of the UK’s wealthiest entrepreneurs and families.
He wasn’t short of options closer to home, or in the financial capitals his career would eventually take him toward.
But instead of staying on the traditional fast track in London, he opted for an unconventional MBA route: choosing a country with no obvious link to where he was headed professionally.
And he says that was rather the point.
“Living in Italy, studying alongside classmates from a wide range of industries and countries, and stepping outside my comfort zone gave me a much broader perspective on business and leadership than I could have gained by staying in my day-to-day role,” he says.
For professionals weighing their next move, Matamedi’s experience shows that an unconventional MBA choice might actually provide the highest return on investment.Source: Arya Matamedi
Sometimes, studying abroad is about going literally further
That instinct — to deliberately study somewhere unconnected to his eventual career hub — is one a lot of prospective study-abroad students wrestle with.
The safer, more obviously strategic move is often to study close to where you intend to work, in the market you already understand, surrounded by the networks that feed directly into your industry.
Matamedi’s decision ran the other way, and it wasn’t really about the MBA curriculum at all. He already had the technical grounding he needed.
“Warwick had given me an excellent technical foundation in accounting and finance, while Coutts taught me a great deal about portfolio construction, markets and working with clients,” he says. “However, I increasingly felt that, if I wanted to progress into more senior leadership roles, I needed to broaden my perspective beyond investments alone.”
That’s where SDA Bocconi’s real pull came in — not just the syllabus, but the setting.
“Behind every investment is a business, and behind every successful business are leaders making strategic decisions every day,” he says, invoking a principle he attributes to Warren Buffett: never invest in something you don’t understand.
Matamedi wanted to understand the businesses behind the balance sheets, not just their numbers — and he reasoned that sitting alongside classmates from entirely different industries and countries, in an unconventional MBA setting completely removed from London wealth management, was the fastest way to get there.
There was a practical dimension he’s candid about too: an MBA can widen the door to certain opportunities, even if it doesn’t guarantee a career outcome on its own.
Building a global network through an unconventional MBA path
None of this means the location was irrelevant — if anything, the opposite. Being based in SDA Bocconi in Italy while orienting his career toward London and, increasingly, the Middle East forced a kind of independence that studying somewhere more obviously aligned with his industry might not have.
He had to build relationships and confidence in a setting where nothing was handed to him by geography.
That distance turned out to matter later, too. When he eventually interviewed for his current role at MIO Partners — a process he entered without ever having previously heard of the firm, given how quietly it operates — he found himself talking to several Bocconi alumni along the way.
“While the SDA Bocconi network didn’t lead me directly to MIO, it certainly influenced my confidence in pursuing the opportunity,” he says. “During the interview process, I met and spoke with several alumni from the wider Bocconi network, and those conversations reinforced the value of the international perspective I had developed during the MBA.”
For students weighing where to study, particularly for a master’s degree meant to launch or accelerate a career, it’s important to note that the safest, most obviously connected location isn’t always the one that pays off.
Sometimes the value of studying abroad isn’t the market access it buys you, but the distance it puts between you and the assumptions you didn’t know you were making.
The views and opinions expressed by the interviewee are solely their own and are provided in a personal capacity. They do not reflect the views of MIO Partners, or its parent organisation, McKinsey & Company.
