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Joe Collura: The Benefits of an MBA

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“The MBA has expanded my mindset, introduced me to new concepts and helped strengthen my engagement at all levels“.

Joe Collura, MBA(FS), Class of 2021

Republished from Faculty of Management, News & Events

Suzanne Bowness – Alumni & Friends, October 21, 2021

Grad profile: A leader grows as a learner

Posted by Suzanne Bowness on October 21, 2021 in Alumni & Friends

Joe Collura says his career advancement happened in tandem with his progress through Dalhousie’s Master of Business Administration with specialization in Financial Services. When you consider that his current role is vice president of strategic partnerships for multinational bank JP Morgan Chase & Co., it seems that the degree has had a positive impact. Responsible for managing the bank’s strategic channel partnerships in Canada, Collura leads a team of vice presidents and works closely with other top executives.

Already entrenched in his profession, Collura found the flexibility of the blended/online MBA program was a real draw given his need to balance a busy work and family life with moving his education forward. “The way the program is built was perfect. It allowed me to learn what I needed, and to allocate the required time because the course content, deliverables and online sessions were provided in advance. It was very convenient,” says Collura. He also enjoyed the intensive in-person learning units as a platform for bringing the subject matter together and a culmination of the course. “There was always good dialogue. Being able to process the course material with other classmates and witness their struggles and strengths, was invaluable.” Collura’s two favourite courses were Strategic Leadership and Change and International Business, both highly relevant to his role.

Dedicated to the banking field, Collura started his career with 11 years at RBC, where he held various positions as an individual contributor as well as management roles, which spanned sales, operations and employee development leadership. He then shifted to the Bank of Montreal for four years before moving to Meridian Credit Union, where he took on even more focused roles as a senior manager leading various strategic initiatives in both business banking and retail lending.

Collura was at Meridian when started the MBA in 2016. He recalls that he immediately started to apply skills and especially new ways of thinking from his courses directly to his work. Those overarching themes from the MBA included embracing a data-driven approach, and focusing on relationship building as a route to success in everything from international business to organizational strategy. “The MBA really helped expand my thought process and approach. I’m thankful for that,” he says.

What Collura loves about his field is the opportunity to help others, both as a leader and in terms of the clients he serves. “I am grateful for the opportunity to develop and guide. This also extends to business owners and a consultative approach around payment acceptance, which not only helps address immediate needs but also introduces new ideas and concepts to expand their business,” he says.

While Collura is already at a senior level in his career, he says he can still see himself moving up as an executive. Even though the road ahead is even more challenging at this level, he says that working his way through the MBA helped prepare him. “It really will be a culmination of all the things I was lucky enough to learn along the way: I need to continue to be thoughtful in the way I am communicating, mindful in how I’m presenting business cases, and diligent in representing data-driven decisions in a way that resonates. The MBA has expanded my mindset, introduced me to new concepts and helped strengthen my engagement at all levels,” he says.

Emily Speight: From the Classroom to Real Life Applications

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“The professors did a really good job of finding ways to keep it engaging and exciting”.

Emily Speight, MIM, Class of 2021

 

Republished from Faculty of Management, News & Events

Suzanne Bowness – Alumni & Friends, October 21, 2021

Grad profile: Passionate about privacy

Posted by Suzanne Bowness on October 21, 2021 in Alumni & Friends

Master of Information Management grad Emily Speight says her degree has set her up for success as she shifts her career to focus on privacy issues full time. (Provided photo)

As an information management professional, one of Emily Speight’s favourite professional topics is privacy — from its relevance to our democracy to its importance for every individual. As a student in the Master of Information Management (MIM) program, she gravitated towards courses that dealt with the topic, and even found other ways to bring it in.

“If there was flexibility on an assignment, I turned it into a privacy assignment. I put a privacy spin on everything. And I think that made me realize just how passionate I am about that topic,” says Speight.

Now, that passion combined with her new MIM designation has taken her all the way to a new role focused squarely on privacy for professional services firm Deloitte.

Applicable concepts

Beyond her favourite topic, Speight says she enjoyed all the courses in the MIM.

“I remember looking at the course list as I was enrolling and there wasn’t a course that I didn’t want to take; they were all things that were really applicable to my work,” says Speight.

Once she started, she also came to appreciate their practical approach. “Within two weeks of starting courses, I had concepts I could take back to my work and make a difference. So, I was able to apply what I was learning immediately,” she says.

Speight started her MIM in September 2018, after her husband had finished his MBA online. “The day we drove home from his convocation, as we unpacked the car, I said, ‘it’s my turn now, I’m going back to school,’” recalls Speight.

Building skills while still working

She says she chose the MIM for its singular focus on information management (compared with other library programs where information management is just one component), and for Dalhousie’s reputation. She also liked the fact that the program was online so she could keep working. “That means I don’t have to quit my job. I can do it as part of my life,” she says.

Working as information coordinator for Red Deer County in Alberta, Speight was responsible for implementing and administering the county’s electronic document and records management system. After 14 years with the county, she was supervising two full-time employees, creating information management policy and procedures, and rolling out new digital initiatives. A lifelong information professional, Speight had also worked as a medical library technician for her local health region and as a library technician for law firm Bennett Jones.

She earned her MIM following certificates in Foundations in Management from Athabasca University, Information Access and Protection of Privacy from the University of Alberta, and a Library and Information Technology Diploma from the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology.

Because Speight’s supervisor was very supportive of her continuing her education, she took the opportunity not only to apply her new knowledge at work but to focus some course assignments on issues she was grappling with. She was even invited to present her capstone course research at the 2021 Alberta Rural Municipal Administrators’ Association annual conference after presenting her research to the chief administration officer at her workplace.

Speight says she enjoyed both learning online and the in-person intensive aspects of the program. She appreciated that every professor had their own style of teaching but were all helpful. Right from her introductory course with Bertram MacDonald, she knew she was in the right place.

“He was absolutely incredible. The feedback he provided was incredibly thorough. Also, my writing skills improved dramatically.”

Embracing a new challenge

Online, she liked asynchronous elements like the discussion boards where she was able to chat with classmates about professional topics. “I think for people who tend to be a bit more hesitant in a crowd, or more introverted, they have the time to be able to do that. It’s very democratizing,” she says, adding that she’s made great connections and even some close friendships through the program.

Equally valuable were the intensives, which she did both at Dalhousie and online after COVID-19 hit. While she enjoyed being on campus, Speight says the virtual intensives were also valuable. “The professors did a really good job of finding ways to keep it engaging and exciting.”

Speight says she feels that the MIM set her up well for the next step of her career and is keen to focus even more regularly on her favourite topic.

“I’m really looking forward to working on privacy full time. Right now, it’s privacy legislation in Alberta that I’ve worked with primarily, whereas with the broader role, I’ll be dealing with privacy legislation across Canada. It’s a new challenge.”

Anya Daradics: A Boost to her Service

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Republished from Faculty of Management, News & Events

Suzanne Bowness – Student, News, June 3, 2021

A boost to her service

Posted by Suzanne Bowness on June 3, 2021 in Students, News

Anya Daradics has long known that she wanted to work for the federal government, and eventually in management. No surprise then that such a goal-oriented person was on the lookout for the right program to get her there. She found it in Dalhousie’s Master of Public Administration (Management).

By the time she started the program, Daradics was already well on her way to accomplishing her early career goals. A naval reservist since high school, she completed her bachelor’s degree in 2010 in political science at Carleton University, then landed her first job working for the Canada Border Services Agency in Ottawa as a program officer. From there she moved to Transport Canada as a Maritime Security Analyst, then on to Public Safety Canada as a program officer. She also moved back to the Vancouver area.

Today she’s returned to Transport Canada as Emergency Management Program Manager, where she is responsible for emergency management training, preparedness and response for Canada’s Pacific region. It’s a job she loves in a setting that suits her. “I’m a very passionate federal government employee. I enjoy going to work every day probably because I’m a problem solver,” says Daradics.

Given her commitment to public service, choosing a master’s program that was familiar to those in her field was important. “I chose Dalhousie because it was a good fit for working full time, and because it was a program recognized as being very suitable for federal government employees.” Daradics began her program in 2017, and says she’s liked the flexibility of blended learning to balance her busy work life, along with her family (she has a one-year-old and two step-children aged 9 and 13) and her responsibilities as an active naval reservist serving in middle management.

Daradics says her favourite courses have included Intergovernmental Relations, Strategic Management in the Public Sector and Policy Formulation and Analysis; she liked the balance of academic and theoretical. “The instructors did such a great job of balancing academics, postgraduate education and the public service,” says Daradics. She points to one of her favourite professors, Lori Turnbull, as someone who brings examples of problems she’d encounter on the job for students to dig into. “If you’re really passionate about your work, it’s a joy to be in the classroom working under her because you feel like you’re just trying to solve the problem of the day,” says Daradics.

Daradics also liked the flexibility to work on assignments that related directly to her own work. For example, in an elective course she took through the MBA program last term, she wrote a paper on change management in her current organization. She’s since referenced the paper in meetings when the topic has come up. Finally, she enjoyed the face-to-face intensive component of the program, despite attending only one in Halifax (she turned the opportunity into a short vacation with her mother in the summer), and the others in Alberta and Ottawa where she combined them with work trips. “They were very rewarding times, especially some of the intensives when I’ve walked away thinking, ‘wow, that was such an engaging conversation.’ Everyone in the room cares so much about government,” recalls Daradics.

Now that she has graduated, Daradics is already recommending the program to others. “I’ve had a few colleagues investigate whether this program was suitable for them. I tell them I felt like it was worth my time and brought me benefit. This program provides you with a really in-depth understanding, from an academic perspective, of the way the federal government in Canada works,” says Daradics. “Especially if you’re at the management level, you don’t always have the time to understand the way the government is supposed to run. In an academic setting, you get the opportunity to really understand from a theoretical perspective the way it’s supposed to work.

While she’s glad to wrap up one element in her busy life, Daradics says the benefits are worth the balancing. “If you can juggle it all and prioritize the workload, it is really rewarding at the end that you’ve accomplished something even as you are working on your career.”

Juliana Serroul: Broadening her skills and mind

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Republished from Faculty of Management, News & Events

Suzanne Bowness – Alumni & Friends, June 18, 2021

Grad profile: Broadening her skills and mind

Posted by Suzanne Bowness on June 18, 2021 in Students

 

Juliana Serroul is both a staffer and a learner at Dalhousie. By day, she’s director of research in the Faculty of Health. By night (and weekends and some intensive days), she’s a student in the Master of Information Management (MIM) program.


Well, she was until very recently. Now, as she graduates from the program, Serroul (shown right) has begun to get some of those after-hours back after a dedicated journey that started in back 2013.

While she may be on campus, Serroul chose the MIM program in part because it was completely online, allowing her to continue working full time.

When she started classes, she was in a different job in Dal’s Office of Research Services, overseeing the office’s database and its information management processes.

Already, she could also see how the MIM program would benefit not only her current work but her continued trajectory in research administration.

Less textbook and more practical

Serroul says she most enjoyed courses like Management of Privacy, User Experience and Knowledge Management. Even though she took her undergraduate degree in the Faculty of Management, she says the graduate-level courses featured a different presentation of material, “less textbook and more practical,” with many professors bringing current expertise and experience from their work in the field.

She also really appreciated the two-day intensives where students met face to face.

“They provided all the perspectives from your peers. Sometimes it was a validation of what you were thinking, and other times it was the complete opposite. But then you’d be like, ‘Oh, yeah, I hadn’t thought about it that way,’” recalls Serroul, adding that her peers also expressed enthusiasm for this part of the program.

“I think most people would say that was the most valuable part of the program because it brings it all together and your fellow students are there as well.”

Skills for both work and life

Serroul also appreciated the MIM’s flexibility. When her job responsibilities became more intense, she put the program on pause for a couple of years and then reengaged when she moved to her new position — where, she adds, she found the program’s lessons equally relevant.

“We’re looking at records management currently in the research unit. And also program evaluation, we’re looking at processes and working towards improving and/or changing them. That’s the difference in this program—you can actually take what you learn and apply it immediately.”

Serroul says she found the courses relevant even from a life perspective, particularly the discussions on topics such as privacy. “In the capstone, we did a wrap-up exercise about how we felt about the program and information management as a field. We were asked to reflect on our opinion when we started, and if that had changed over the course of the program. And it totally did,” says Serroul. She notes that she and her colleagues expressed a sense that their early view of the field was fairly narrow, focused on libraries and records management, but that the program opened them up to realizing the field was much broader.

“It touches every part of your life, whether professional or personal. You’re dealing with information all the time and you don’t even realize it. It’s just so ingrained in everything. It becomes apparent that it is a very broad field, and it’s still evolving.”

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