The Aston graduate making a difference
Aston Business School graduate Mehalah Beckett completed her BSc (Hons) International Business and Economics degree in 2005. Since then, Mehalah has established her own company, Lead Powerful Impact, during the coronavirus pandemic in 2020.
Lead Powerful Impact is a consultancy and coaching business specialising in accelerating sustainable business and purpose-driven leaders. Mehalah is a professional leadership coach and sustainable business consultant, who describes her role as “accelerating the impact of changemakers” through supporting leaders to make a positive economic, social and environmental impact with their companies.
Aston University provided Mehalah with a great degree, offering her a comprehensive teaching of business along with a placement year. She described this as “an incredible experience that [she] learned so much from” and opened her eyes to a career path that influenced the next 15 years of her career. Working as a financial analyst for IBM, Mehalah was able to develop many transferrable skills during her experience in a blue chip company and helped her to discover what was, and wasn’t important to her in the world of work.
She said: “I wanted something with a lot more purpose behind it and that's shaped the rest of my career.”
Discovering her passion
Growing up, Mehalah was raised in a socially responsible way. With her mother working as a social worker and her father as a teacher, she was able to witness their dedication to helping others but also observed their modest public sector salaries. Initially, Mehalah rebelled against her parents by going to business school, with the aim of becoming an accountant, but upon trialling this path while at Aston University, Mehalah realised that her passions aligned with her parents more than she had expected.
With a desire to develop her economist skills after completing her masters degree, Mehalah entered the public sector, working for the National Audit Office in London. Four years later, Mehalah progressed to working with the Malawian government as an economist within their Treasury, supporting Malawi with its developing economy. After gaining valuable experience, Mehalah was able to secure her ‘dream job’ as a development economist for the Department for International Development in Kenya, advising the Somalian Government on how they could improve their economic development in a sustainable way.
After 12 years in international development, Mehalah returned to the private sector, where she could make decisions faster and test her theory that business could be the best sustainable force for good in the world. As Director for Africa, with the Australian adventure company Intrepid, Mehalah provided income to African communities from an industry she is incredibly passionate about. During her time at Intrepid, Mehalah transformed four businesses across the region, taking three of her business units through the B-Corp certification process; a sustainable business certification and movement taking the world by storm.
Reflecting upon her career, Mehalah realised that across the two sectors there were two aspects she loved most – coaching her team and making a positive social impact.
She said: “I really believe in the power of everyone to live into their potential and really smash through that and achieve great things in life.”
Becoming an entrepreneur
Having discovered her passion for coaching, Mehalah set up her own company, Lead Powerful Impact, where she could accelerate her impact on the world by working with changemakers who could make a real difference to areas she is passionate about, social and environmental sustainability. No longer desiring to be on the frontline, Mehalah now supports leaders by challenging their thinking and taking their businesses to places they never imagined. As a leadership coach, sustainable business mentor and B Corp consultant, Mehalah has all the skills and ideas to help these businesses make a positive change in the world.
When asked about her business’s name, Mehalah explained that “I work with leaders, hence the ‘lead’, and ‘powerful impact’ is what they can have when they're working with me as their powerful coach; championing their ideas, challenging their thinking and celebrating their wins.”
For Mehalah, starting a business during a global pandemic has been “a wonderful opportunity to serve”. These unprecedented times are full of uncertainty, but as someone who thrives under change, Mehalah has enjoyed rising to every challenge, something she learnt during her time at Aston University and throughout her career. Mehalah is committed to giving back and in 2020, Mehalah coached 30 leaders pro-bono to improve their social impact and to support them through the difficult challenges the pandemic brought. With many leaders struggling with furloughing staff and dealing with the impact of Covid-19, it was clear that Lead Powerful Impact was the right business at the right time.
As a leader and business owner herself, Mehalah says she couldn’t have done it without the incredible support she received from her coaches, mentors and business school education.
As a result of spending time with Mehalah, leaders are re-energised by their mission, focused on their strategy and at peace with their progress so they fall back in love with what they do, take their business and impact to the next level. If this is something you crave, you should reach out.
So why Aston Business School?
When asked if she would recommend Aston Business School, Mehalah replied “I would 100 per cent recommend it.”
Mehalah applied to many international business degrees around the country, but when she visited Aston University on an open day, she instantly knew that this was the university for her.
She said: “It was really important to me that [when] I came to university I could invest in myself and then reap the rewards afterwards.
“I knew that it would be a really high class education, but not only that, I think what I liked and [what] excited me most about it was that all of the professors and the lecturers were also working in the industry.”
For Mehalah, Aston University provided the right location, the right academics and the right amount of student life. It was clear that Aston University was a place where she could set up her career.
If you're anything like me, you'll absolutely love it, in terms of academics, as a place to live, as a place to make lifelong friends, and as a place to set you up.