Roxana is from Venezuela and chose to come to Maastricht University – Campus Venlo for the master’s programme in Health Food Innovation Management. “I studied Nutrition in Venezuela and Portugal and after my bachelors’ degree I worked as a dietician in a hospital. I found out that there is a lot of controversy about healthy food. That is when I decided I wanted to learn more about trends in the food industry from a scientific point of view.

I also worked for a consultancy agency in The Hague for six months, advising about sustainability, which is another topic high on my agenda. Currently I’m in the last few weeks of a six-months internship at Unilever, working for the Global Cross-Category Nutrition Department. All very interesting but I now know for sure that my dream is to have my own company one day and be independent, creating a positive impact on other people. What this company will look like, I don’t know yet, but it will definitely be related to food and well-being in general.
I was very enthusiastic about this particular master’s programme, since it’s the only one available that combines business management with health and nutrition. In this programme, you also learn how to become an entrepreneur, which perfectly supports my future career.

Although the master’s programme is situated in Venlo I choose to live in Maastricht. Having lived in the Netherlands for a while already, I was happy to move to Maastricht when I got accepted, since Maastricht is like a picture postcard, so pretty. I really love that everything in the Netherlands is so organised, especially compared to Venezuela.

So far, the programme has been beyond expectations. It feels great that the Problem-Based Learning environment makes you completely responsible for your learning process. Isn’t that a wonderful - in fact the best - preparation for what awaits us after our studies?”