Long awaited but finally here….
In just less than 7 days, I will start my MBA journey at UBC Sauder School of Business (Vancouver, BC) and will embark on a 2-year journey that will transform me into becoming a responsible leader and give me the abilities to turn my vision into reality.
I couldn’t have been more excited to share this news with my LinkedIn family, but I can tell you that with this excitement comes a lot of hard work ahead along with managing my work and personal life to be able to maximize this opportunity. I’d sincerely like to thank my employer, TC Energy, for supporting me throughout this 24-month part-time program and for providing me with exceptionally appealing references as part of my application. Also, much appreciation goes to UBC Sauder staff for answering any of my questions and helping me guide through the application process. A big Thank You to you.
I couldn’t be done with the appreciations here without mentioning my wife, Mehak. Thank you Mehak for being a constant pillar of support for me and no words can express the gratitude that I have for you. We’ve got a long journey ahead of us and I am always thankful for having you by my side.
OK, much done with teary eyes, let’s get back to business.
Making the decision to pursue MBA wasn’t easy and was not intuitive. As some of you may remember, I initially started my post-graduation journey with a master’s degree in engineering (robotics) at the University of Calgary. The perfectly imperfect nature of robotics soon made me realize that an MASc wasn’t the right place for me. As much as I enjoy doing robotics as a hobby (see my earlier blog posts about drones), I couldn’t foresee turning it into a career where I am programming the solution of non-linear differential equations all day long. I dropped myself out of the program within 2 months and landed myself into a conundrum of where to go next. This led to a lot of inner reflection, strength assessment and meeting with people from all kinds of different career paths for one full year. By year end, I figured what I wanted to do.
My vision, if you may ask for my career,
Is to be a responsible leader that can drive strategic transformation programs and implement breakthrough innovation to solve business complexities. I hope to leverage my competencies in technology to achieve it and use my people-centric leadership style to deliver results. Personally, my vision is to become a person who leads with integrity and respect.
Looking back, I am glad I got to experience some key learnings in my early career path, learnings which oriented me to look out of the box. Looking into the future, I see an opportunity to meet with people, expand my network, develop my leadership style and hopefully become a better person both in my personal and professional life.
Getting into the MBA program at Sauder was collectively a 9-month process which involved lots of nighttime problem solving, proof-reading and comprehending GMAT essays. What led me to choose University of British Columbia’s Sauder School of Business despite me working full-time in Calgary is a large enough discussion for this blog. So, I’ll leave that for some other time.
For those of you wondering, I will continue to work full time at TC Energy, albeit in a new role as a Real-time Systems Engineer from January 2020 and will fly in and out of Vancouver during the weekend classes. And yes, my Air Miles card is ready.