MBA – 25 Years After My UnderGraduate Degree

Since I decided in 2017 to go back and get my MBA from the University of Cincinnati, the primary question I have received was “Why”? I must admit I had wrestled with the decision, and whether I should do it or not.  After all, the last classroom I sat in with a professor was in the mid 1990’s. Did I really want to spend the next several years learning more about business, and in a classroom setting?

To answer the question, requires a closer look at my career.  I had experienced immediate success as a software developer out of college so much so that I was the only employee retained out of 125 employees after the company was purchased by a public company. However, I was not retained as a programmer but as a sales and business subject matter expert (SME) on the company’s software products, which I had an inherit knowledge of since I helped develop them.

That led into a sales and systems engineering role in my only enterprise company I ever worked for – EMC Corp.  I then joined a startup company as co-owner and helped scale it to tremendous success over the next 11 years.  My next role was an investor and CEO of an early-stage software company, and then COO of a technology company that I relocated to the Midwest. This career path provided me more diversity and experiences than being at a Fortune 100 company for 15 years and doing essentially the same thing everyday.

But I was ready for something new, and decided I needed a reset or Changing Your Lens.  My MBA provided an opportunity to focus on the gaps in my abilities as an executive leader, and has afforded me the resources (academic research and technology) that I never had access to while attending a smaller university on a basketball scholarship.

I had always enjoyed the international business environment. Having been required to travel internationally many times throughout my career, it was always something I looked forward to. I know it takes a bit of a mental imbalance to get on a plane for 8+ hours, have a few days of meetings, and then get back on the plane, but it truly didn’t bother me.

I focused a great deal of my courses on International Business and Marketing. Courses like cross cultural management, global entrepreneurship, branding strategy, innovation tools, and others have sharpened my skillset in a variety of ways and I now have a lot more tools at my disposal in my business dealings.

In the end, the experiences and relationships I have built over my MBA program have been invaluable. So much so that one of my professors made the initial introduction to a South American institutional investor which has created a nice pipeline of business for my consulting company… something I didn’t even foresee would occur.

I will be receiving my MBA in the next few months and could not be more pleased about the decision I made.