Engineer Deborah Baker is living her dream of running a manufacturing firm.

Her designer water filters are now sold in stores and supermarkets across the country.

When she returned from a class reunion at Harvard Business School last spring, the words of the dean stayed at the front of her mind.

Ms Baker said: "The dean told us when students enrol at Harvard they are about to change their lives.

"They certainly do that. When you leave Harvard you think you can do anything.

"The professors constantly re-enforce this message but you also learn what you can't do as well and how to compensate for it.

"That helps prepare you for running a business in the real world."

Ms Baker, from Bosham, near Chichester, was still at school when she decided her future lay in running her own company.

Having been brought up in the industrial heartland of the Midlands, manufacturing was the only sector she felt she could consider for starting a company.

Looking back on her career, she said her MBA helped her to fulfil her ambition and enabled her to branch out into producing goods that could hardly be more different to the products she worked on at the start of her career.

Ms Baker swapped the heavy manufacturing world of motor cars for domestic water filters.

She started as an apprentice at car maker Jaguar, which sponsored her through her four-year master's degree in mechanical engineering at Imperial College, London.

She worked for Jaguar for a year after leaving university before switching to Toyota at their newly-opened plant in Derby for three years.

After training in Japan, she worked to improve quality and productivity at the company's suppliers but felt while she was gaining valuable experience in manufacturing, she was missing out on the finance and marketing training she needed to achieve her ambitions.

Her solution was a Sainsbury Management Fellowship - a two-year International MBA in the United States at the Harvard Business School.

Ms Baker said: "The MBA was the real stepping stone to what I wanted to achieve."

In the first year, she undertook a constant stream of case studies, dissecting the lessons to be learned from real ventures and honing skills that have proved priceless.

She said: "Each case study was debated in class, which taught us to think on our feet. It makes you good at public speaking and arguing your point and you sharpen your ability to get to the heart ofan issue quickly and take the decisions to deal with it."

In the second year, she specialised in entrepreneurial subjects and made the contacts which have paved the way to fulfilling her ambition.

One of her second year papers was on Harvard graduates who established a search fund, matching investors with graduates who wanted to buy out or set up companies.

Ms Baker took that route, securing private equity backing and becoming managing director of Peacehaven firm THD, which makes power-shower pumps and plastic injection moulded parts.

The company thrived under her management but, after three years, she decided she needed a fresh challenge.

She started with Oceanic in Bosham, a manufacturer and supplier of home water-filtration products, then named Purer Filters, in October 1999.

Ms Baker said: "I had noticed that the water-filtration market was growing and I felt, as an engineer, I could bring something to the design side which would different-iate our products from competitors in the marketplace."

She worked on the business model and secured financing before launching production through sub-contractors in January last year.

Her design has proved a success and Oceanic has secured deals to supply Next, John Lewis, Fenwicks and Bentalls.

Asda and McCord are also expected to stock the filters.

Ms Baker said: "The combination of my engineering background and the business education I received at Harvard have been key to taking my career forward.

"In manufacturing, expertise in both business management and engineering is a big asset.

"You are a more effective leader and have confidence in all aspects of the business."