Class of 2016: Corporate Residency Update

March 24, 2015 Kathleen Heymans Leave a Comment

The Corporate Residency is a key part of our program because it gives students eight months of solid work experience where they are not treated as students so much as real employees. Students take positions across Canada (past CRMBA students have done international residencies, too!) to gain experience across different industries.

Returning in second year is exciting and enriching in part because the class is able to bring so much work experience from diverse sectors back into the classroom. The class of 2016 is a few months into their Corporate Residencies now, and we thought it was time to hear how they have been doing! Here are a few updates from the cohort:

Alison Conrad

Background: Environmental Sciences
Employer: Scotiabank (Halifax)
CR Position: Commercial Banking Associate, Scotiabank

“When I entered the CRMBA program, I knew that I wanted a residency that would be completely different than anything I had ever done before. I wanted a challenge so that I could not only find what I was passionate about, but push the boundaries of my mind and grow as a businessperson. Working in commercial banking has brought me from analyzing metals in a lab to analyzing and understanding businesses, and it has been an amazing learning experience in so many ways. After just two months, not only do I feel more comfortable in the corporate world, but I also feel more confident and capable in my technical skills and my overall self. If I were to say one thing, it would be don’t be afraid to push beyond your limits – you never know, you may end up finding something you love doing.”

John Aitken

Background: Geography and Environmental Studies
Employer: Stantec (Toronto)
CR Position: Sustainability Analyst

“The Corporate Residency was one of the main reasons I chose Dalhousie for my MBA. Having ‘real-world’ experience simply cannot be replicated through lectures, projects, or cases. I knew before starting the CRMBA that consulting was a field that I wanted to get into. I felt that consulting would give me exposure to many different clients, and a variety of unique projects. My particular role is great because it integrates my environmental studies background into consulting.”

Sydni Kind (JD/MBA)

Background: Commerce, Marketing (Minor in Political Science)
Employer: Cushman & Wakefield (Calgary)
CR Position: Junior Consultant, Valuations & Advisory Department

“Working in a commission-based department, dependent on the current flow of clients requesting property valuations, can cause the workload to fluctuate significantly. I have had the opportunity to work with major commercial real estate clients, assisting in financial and operational decision-making. I have been able to learn from some of the best in the field of valuations, developing in a time-sensitive but learning-focused environment, where collaboration is highly encouraged. The confidence they have in the work I produce and the opportunities available to take initiative are some of the best parts of the job thus far, and I feel these can only improve going forward. I look forward to the rest of my residency experience.”

Patrick Tillman

Background: Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
Employer: Medavie Blue Cross
CR Position: Customer Engagement Specialist

“My previous work experience took place in a research lab, so my Corporate Residency has been a refreshing change of scenery. Equipped with the tools obtained in a vigorous six months in the classroom, I was able to hit the ground running and contribute to the Marketing & Communications team at Medavie Blue Cross almost instantly. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed my Corporate Residency up to this point, particularly the level of involvement I’ve had so far, and the number of responsibilities I’ve been given. If I had any words of advice for the incoming cohort, it would be to not shy away from stepping outside your comfort zone whenever you can, especially those coming into the program without any business experience like myself.”

Lauren Bosnjak

Background: Neuroscience
Employer: Bank of Montreal (Toronto)
Position: Brand Advertising Coordinator

“Coming into the program I imagined myself doing something related back to my neuroscience undergrad, however the program has opened me up to opportunities I didn’t know existed. Brand advertising at BMO has taught me invaluable experience in project management. I am managing my own projects as well as learning as my team manages their own; I think this is the biggest thing I will carry with me no matter where I end up in my future. The advertising team at BMO is supportive of my learning and getting the most out of my experience; that is my favorite part about working with them.”

The Corporate Residency is one of the best parts of this program. It’s a great opportunity to work in an area of interest, build on existing experience, and prepare to launch your career!

For prospective and incoming students, spending a bit of time considering where you might be a good fit and what you are most interested in can help you target and obtain the position you want. When you join the CRMBA program, you become part of a much larger, stronger network of students and professionals. I would encourage the incoming class to connect with current students and alumni if they are interested in learning more about the program or a particular residency experience!

Managing real people – Aaron Bonner

April 15, 2013 Evan Bannerman Leave a Comment

Originally from Qualicum Beach, BC, Aaron completed his BBA at Vancouver Island University with a double major in Marketing and Operations Management with a Diploma in Engineering. While studying for his degree, Aaron worked as a civil designer and on projects ranging from small subdivision developments to large-scale capital projects. He is now in his first year of MBA studies at Dalhousie University. Aaron enjoys sailing, rock-climbing and hiking.

Residency Experience

I am in the middle of my corporate residency at Calgary Lock & Safe, the largest full-service locksmith/security shop in Alberta and among the top 10 in Canada. My title is Manager of Business Development and Strategy, but essentially my role is as a turn-around/business development consultant. My day/month includes a wide range of activities borrowing from accounting, finance, marketing and general business management. I oversee our three-person business/accounting team whose tasks include accounts payable, accounts receivable, general office activities and showroom sales. I am also responsible for dealing with pretty much every issue that comes up on a daily basis. My long-run projects include designing, constructing and implementing the company’s new accounting system, building our commercial credit application, developing our marketing strategy and identifying and improving company-wide processes and procedures.

Navigating Culture and Emotions

While the main purpose of my position is to help develop internal systems and processes that will allow the company to grow, much of my time is spent on managing people. Possibly the biggest shock for me was being thrown into a trades company that had a unique culture that I wasn’t necessarily used to. Most of the company’s employees are tradespeople, in contrast to the white collar environment to which I am accustomed. Different levels of formality, language, tone and even dress creates and maintains each unique culture. As a result, a manager needs to be very aware of how employees are interacting with each other, and respond quickly when a breakdown of their relationship occurs.

Another important element is the ability to engage in conversations without overreacting emotionally. The focus should be the issue, not necessarily the person. In fact, tone is often a more important element of a message, verbal or otherwise, than the specific wording. A good manager should be able to sense the type of emotion being put into the conversation by the tone, and adjust accordingly. I have found that the key is to remain calm, choose my wording and tone carefully, and focus on the issue at hand, not the person.

Managing Real People

At some point in almost every university graduate’s career, there will be the need to manage people. Perhaps not directly through formal authority, but indirectly through social circles. The big question is, how are we supposed to do this effectively? Prior to my work-term, my view on employees was that they should do their job, or they should leave. This is probably a result of the time I spent in the engineering industry and the intense culture surrounding it, but it has earned me the nickname at work of “Iron Fist”. However, what I have come to realize is that we do not all have the luxury of being able to hand-pick our employees to match our personal styles and preferences. I would guess that only a tiny portion of managers will ever be in a situation where they can hire an entirely new team. So for the rest of us, we need to find a way to work with existing employees and leverage their talents no matter their working style.

In any organizational behaviour textbook, statistics and models are used to predict employee behaviour and to determine how jobs are allocated. However, in the real world, you are dealing with real people with real personalities and real feelings. As a result, there are a plethora of personal issues that make their way into the workplace and, as a manager, you need to keep the positives maximized and the negatives minimized.

Final Thoughts

Managing happiness in the workplace is probably more suited to a psychologist than a manager, but in the business world there are a lot of managers and very few psychologists. As a result, most people management is actually just managing emotions. The age-old saying ‘a happy employee is a productive employee’ is quite possibly the most accurate phrase I have ever come across in business and is something I will consider in all my business undertakings.

An unparalleled experience – Jocelyn’s story

July 27, 2012 Corporate Residency MBA Leave a Comment

Originally posted by Scott A.E. Smith.

James Ewart is currently on his Corporate Residency with Aon in Toronto. Recently, he chatted with Jocelyn Ball, who worked for Aon on her Corporate Residency as a member of the program’s inaugural cohort—the Class of 2011. Jocelyn is now working as an insurance broker for Aon in Calgary, Alberta. She’s a star among stars from that inaugural class, who are continuing to build the program’s reputation in the business world. Enjoy!

First off, why don’t you start by telling us the Jocelyn Ball story and how you came to find yourself in the Dalhousie MBA program?

See Testimonial Video #1!

Alternatively, the answer to that question is:

I worked for two years doing environmental permitting and planning and sustainability consulting. I loved the client focus and knew that I wanted to do something that mirrored that for my long-term career. My employer at the time is one of the Employer Partners of the Dalhousie MBA program, so when I went in to discuss doing an MBA with my boss four years ago, he slid the pamphlet across the desk to me. I was curious and went to Dalhousie to check out an information session. The program immediately grabbed my attention—it promised to be different from the other MBA programs I was looking at. My undergraduate degree was done at Renaissance College (UNB) in an experiential education set-up, so the program at Dalhousie seemed like a natural next step for my education.

Originally, I said yes to another offer at a more established program and well-known school, but I never said no to Dalhousie. When I was trying to figure out where to live in the new city of the other school, something just wasn’t sitting right with me. I printed off the list of companies that recruit at both of the schools I was considering and sat down to compare them. It didn’t take long to realize that the companies I wanted to work for were recruiting at Dalhousie. Dalhousie and the Corporate Residency program were where I needed to be. I haven’t looked back since.

You did your Corporate Residency at Aon, where you now work full-time. Would you say that the experience shaped your career aspirations or did you know prior to the MBA program?

[Read more…]

Adapting, thus excelling – Heather’s story

June 17, 2010 Corporate Residency MBA Leave a Comment

Originally posted by Jordan Fujiwara.

This week we are checking in with another lovely lady working in Calgary: Heather Merlevede! Her residency is with Shell Canada as an Operations Excellence Analyst, primarily working on projects that utilize her financial skills. Originally from Winnipeg, MB, Heather has a BComm (Honours) from the University of Manitoba, majoring in Accounting and Marketing. Through my discussion with Heather, it sounds like she has had some interesting experiences in her residency, and as a result of her adaptability, has enjoyed every second.

One of Heather’s first experiences (one can say challenge) was upon her arrival in Calgary. Prepared to start her Financial Analyst position at Shell Canada, as her job description had been, it turned out that plans had changed on Shell’s end and Heather was moved to a different department and was working under a new boss on her first day. Undaunted, she took to the challenge and threw herself into learning as much as possible about her new position as an Operations Excellence Analyst, and about what projects she would soon be tackling.

Considering, Heather says, “I enjoy the challenge of the variety of projects I work on and the responsibilities I’ve been given in my role on the operations excellence team. I’m not sure if I’d have had the same opportunities in the financial analyst position.” There are few members in Heather’s team, but she works with people from different departments in her projects depending on the tasks involved and what sort of information is required. Heather is unable to talk about most of her projects as they are confidential; however, she was able to talk about one that was completed in late March, a benchmarking project. “Shell contracts a company to complete a benchmark analysis to the industry every few years,” explains Heather. “However, every year the company should benchmark its performance against its previous years’ performance. My job was to compile all the data from sources both at the mine and in Calgary, investigate to ensure the numbers were accurate and what the causes of ‘bad’ figures were, then turn it into a report that would provide the right message about the company’s performance. It was a great project. I learned about the operations and how the company was organized through my role in this project.”

Some of Heather’s other projects require travel up north to the mine. Some would find this an undesirable situation. However, Heather is of a different opinion, enthusiastically explaining, “I go to the mine for some of my projects, am given tours of the site, equipment and workshops to help me understand or have questions answered that relate to the projects. Never previously having seen a mine and how it operates in person, it’s been quite exciting learning about everything. The people I work with have been great, not seeing my inexperience in the Oil Sands industry as a hindrance, but delighted to aid in my learning and development.”

Since Heather’s job encompasses so many of the business topics that one might encounter while taking an MBA, she is grateful for the integrative workshops that were part of the Corporate Residency MBA program. “At work, no project or task relies solely on one discipline, like finance, but must be treated like a full case scenario.” The program has been a little repetitive for Heather, coming right from an undergrad in business, but she says, “I chose this program because of the corporate residency portion, the personal-value based learning, and the integrative elements. I didn’t want a pure case-based technical MBA program that supplied only ‘managers’ and not ‘leaders’ to the workforce.”

The last integrative weekend we had before going our separate ways at Christmas sticks out in Heather’s mind. Other students here have mentioned it as well…the one where we separated into groups, were given a fictitious business scenario, then let loose for 48 hours with no rules and only mildly set objectives, randomly obtaining new information from the supervising professor through email. “I thought it was challenging, interesting and fun,” says Heather. “Everyone took it seriously and played their roles. It was a great variation from a lecture or case report to incorporate all we’d learned into this role-playing scenario. We were actually DOING something and it felt more rewarding than participating in some other school projects.” (I shall be writing about that weekend at length sometime soon, in a kind of blog-miniseries, if you will.)

Given Heather’s somewhat “fluid” start in her residency, and having made so much of it, Heather puts forth the following advice for incoming students: “Once you have a job, I don’t think you should get too caught up in thinking that the job is not exactly what you thought it would be. Go with the flow and see where it takes you. If you don’t, you may miss out on the opportunity to enjoy, and most importantly learn, from the job you DO have. It’s worked out great for me!”

A unique education empowers a unique experience – Jocelyn’s story

June 10, 2010 Corporate Residency MBA Leave a Comment

Originally posted by Jordan Fujiwara.

Before we get in to Jocelyn’s experiences with the Corporate Residency MBA, she has a message for all the incoming students (she will be your VP Academic on the MBA Society for this year): “It’s a great time to mention that your [second year] mentors should be contacting you soon, within a week. As the incoming VP Academic, my job is to serve as an outlet for students who have any concerns about the academic side of things in the program so it can be handled through a formal process.” Thanks for the heads up, Jocelyn! In case you’re a student reading this and wondering what a mentor is, basically a bunch of the second years have volunteered to be ‘assigned’ to 2 or 3 new students. I explained it to my, uh… apprentices (?) in this fashion: “My job is to make sure that your transition into the MBA life is suitably awesome.” I think that succinctly sums it up!

Now let’s learn about Ms. Jocelyn Ball: she has lived all over the place but her family resides in Riverview, New Brunswick. She went to UNB and received a Bachelor of Philosophy degree with a concentration in Leadership. It turns out that the BPhil program at UNB is a fairly new (2000) and unique program in and of itself, with a mantra of the ‘love of knowledge’ and a focus on soft skills, global citizenship and a peppering of other disciplines such as math. “It wasn’t like learning Plato and Socrates,” clarifies Jocelyn, who says the stuff she did in her undergrad actually translated quite well into the sort of stuff we are doing in our Personal and Professional Effectiveness sessions in the MBA (see Ben’s Story for more details on PPE).

You can tell she is not afraid to take risks, even if you only look at her choices for post-secondary education: the new UNB program and the even newer Corporate Residency MBA program: “It was definitely a risk coming into this program, I think that everyone coming took that risk in that it was brand new. But the effort of the administration and people behind the program, in bringing in the right profs, the right dean, creating a cutting-edge curriculum and having a focus on experiential learning makes this program special and makes the risks worth it. My feeling about it is very, very positive overall.”

You might recall Michelle’s Story, where we looked at her work with Aon as a Strategic Business Advisor for Eastern Canada. Well, Jocelyn works with Aon as well, as a Strategic Business Advisor for (can you guess?) Western Canada! She is stationed in Calgary for the 8-month residency and has taken on a huge role: “Recently Aon acquired a new business unit, and my job is to help get them up and running. I’m scheduling meetings and creating business plans, helping develop their website. I’m also travelling to the main Aon branches in the area [e.g. Winnipeg, Vancouver, Edmonton] and presenting the case [of the new unit] to people there. I have responsibility and ownership over this, and it’s very exciting. All the presentations we did in class have helped me be able to do this in multiple offices.”

You wouldn’t see a typical intern-type position with that sort of project placed on its task list, that’s for sure! Thankfully, the work environment at Aon seems to balance out any stress caused by such a responsibility: “We’ve kind of got it down to: you’re not allowed to work here if you’re not able to laugh at yourself. My group is lively and energetic; they pull pranks – my first week on the job the senior VP took a cell phone from a manager and hid it in the ceiling tile [fans of The Office will remember a similar scenario that befell Andy, which led to him punching a hole in the wall, I think. Jocelyn did not report any damage resulting from the prank she witnessed]! It’s an amazing environment.”

She is getting amped up for the famous Calgary Stampede, where “it’ll be ten days of partying and I will wear more plaid then than I will wear for the rest of my life!” In parting, she says to everyone: “for any experience in life you need to throw yourself into it. The more you put in, the more you get out of it. I’m a strong believer in this and it applies to this program, and it applies to life in general. I’m looking forward to meeting the new students in September and am sad I won’t get to meet them in July!”

See you all next week! P.S. Jocelyn is the co-leader of the Halifax Net Impact Chapter, along with Ben Goldberg.

Be sure to check out Jocelyn’s Testimonial Videos as well!

Archives for Calgary