Role & Company: Sr. Business Solutions Analyst, Adobe
Location: San Francisco Bay Area
1. Please describe where you were in your career when you first considered getting an MBA. What were you looking for in an MBA program?
My love and passion for technology brought me to a career in IT. Over the years I had picked up many technical skills, but I was lacking the well-rounded business acumen to continue growing my career. Building the technical skills felt straightforward, but trying to understand what the business really needed was a lot more complex. I wanted an MBA to move out of a technical role and into a leadership role, directly working with management to help grow Adobe's business. I wanted to be able to directly contribute to the plans and decisions needed to drive our growth. I wanted an MBA program that was respected in the industry and I knew that with SCU's prestige in Silicon Valley, I could feel confident that companies would be confident in my education. I knew I could trust SCU to deliver a world-class MBA.
2. Please describe your experience with the SCU Online MBA program.
The experience online has been wonderful so far. I was originally a little worried about going online, but the online learning platform, professors, and students deliver an exceptional experience. I genuinely feel connected to my fellow students, and have even managed to turn some into friends. Conversations with professors have been incredible, showing me how truly experienced and talented the faculty is at SCU. Furthermore, I have genuinely enjoyed the course content thus far and I feel that I am already getting a return on my investment for the MBA. The course content is deep and directly applicable to the realities of the business world. I was hoping for a world-class education from the MBA program and the Online MBA has exceeded my expectations.
3. How have you been able to incorporate learnings from the program into your work?
I have immediately applied some of the leadership techniques covered in MGMT 3000. The course helped me see exactly where my team at work was struggling and provided some techniques to help address some problems we were facing as a team. Furthermore, the learnings from accounting have really helped me understand the key pieces of a business and how particular business decisions require a deep understanding of the financial health of an organization. The learnings already have me thinking differently about the projects and investments my team is considering over the next year.
Every day I grow my skill set with the MBA program and I am starting to earn a seat at the table with my leadership team. By understanding how a business operates through the management of its people or the management of its financials, I am able to focus my ideas and energies on changes that have the largest impact on our business. Coming from a technical role it's often easy to have an idea, but now I find myself asking "What's the value to the business?" and "Will this get us to where we need to be in five years?"