Steven, long time no see – I hope you had some great days off during Easter break. Can you tell us a little bit about what you have been up to these days?
Of course, and I am glad you asked because Easter break and a road trip to Portugal with friends was exactly what I needed. We stayed a couple of days in the South and then joined a friend in his beach house in Lisbon. It made made me realize that the MBA at IE provides one with a truly international network as anywhere I go there are people that will make me feel at home because of the experiences we share through our studies here at IE.
Great! I guess you can’t wait to get some more days off, now that you know you have family all over the world. But how is it coming back to school after this one week long vacation?
The first day was tough. The workload has been going up with many projects due and it was like being hit by a hammer. One example is the project for Operations Management class, where we will analyze queuing problems at a hotel reception desk in Dubai.
How did you come up with that?
One of my group members owns a hotel and has a lot of contacts in this industry. He suggested the project and we all saw it to be very interesting, so decided to give it a shot.
Great stuff Steven. But I am sure there are also other things in your calendar that help you get a little bit away from all that studying right?
Yes, fortunately! I mean we live in Madrid and my classmates are very active in some of the IE clubs. There is an Argentinean Barbecue as well as a Mexican and Colombian Night coming up in the next couple of days.
So with all this on your plate, how do you manage to balance your social with you student life.
Well, as I kind of pointed out, at IE I am not only presented with academic activities but also a lot of extracurricular opportunities. So, I really had to know how to plan my time from the get-go to grab everything I want on the way. So yeah, time management and setting priorities is key, as networking occasions are happening around every corner.
Very good. And by the way, how is Gongolo going?
Pretty good actually. In our entrepreneurship class with Prof. Bryant we just had our presentations of the business plan and I have to say that the class really liked our idea. Although the feedback from our Prof. was a little ambiguous, I am sure based on the class reaction that we have a good project. Also, with the entrepreneurship club, we are preparing a pitch night where students can come and pitch their start-up ideas; and, we are also currently working on a Start-Up Day with which we hope to plant IE students in current start-up companies for an internship period of one month to give them an entrepreneurial experience. Some start-ups have already shown their interest and we are planning everything.
I guess you truly do have a lot on your plate. So, thank you very much for your time and let’s catch up soon again.
No worries. Just one more thing, I attended an event before spring break for which IE invited scientists from MIT to present some products they developed in the pharmaceutical industry. The idea is to connect with MBA students to make the product marketable with a good business model. I am telling you this because I got the chance to stay in touch with one of them who developed a product to improve radiologists’ ability to detect pulmonary emboli with technology based on IT algorithms, called computed tomography pulmonary angiography (CTPA). So again, opportunities are around every corner.
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