Re-posted from Dal News. Click here to read the full profile:

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.