MBA Alumni Profile: Mariman Bart, IMD

 Mariman Bart tells us why he chose to do his MBA at IMD and how the diversity and professionalism in the course helped him.

1. Why did you decide to attend your Business School?

After 5 years working for Siemens in Belgium I went to work for a spin off, called MetaVector Technologies, where I was responsible for Sales, Marketing and Business Development. This spin off experience made me realize that I didn't want to become a specialist but would rather have a job with broader responsibilities, like business unit director. Although I was always pretty young to take a next step in my career, and just went for it, this time I felt I needed a more academic foundation supporting
this next step.      

Being part of the management team of the spin off, I learnt a lot about other parts of the business, but I wanted to structure this knowledge and learn tools that I could use in the future. The most logical step for an engineer to learn more about general management is to take an MBA.    

2. What research did you undertake in selecting your school?

When I was looking for an MBA program I wanted to do a general management program, rather than a specialised MBA, and since I am looking for an international career, I wanted to attend an international business school.

I didn't want to be away from the business environment too long and chose to apply for a one-year program. After checking the traditional MBA rankings and talking to some alumni, I decided to apply to the top two business schools in Europe.

After visiting the schools my preference was for IMD in Lausanne, where the profile of the participants was more experienced and more international. On average participants are 31 years old and have 7,5 years of business experience. As a lot of the learning in an MBA comes from participants themselves, I valued this extra experience highly.

In the application process at IMD they emphasize the diversity of the class. We have 41 nationalities in the group (most of us speak 3 languages or more) and all major industries are represented. This increases the quality of the case studies substantially.

The third most important reason why I preferred IMD was the size of the program. Only having 90 participants allows for much personal attention for learning and career services. This was first apparent in IMD's very professional admissions process.      

3. Did you consider an executive MBA? If so why did (or did you not) decide to take an Executive MBA?

I wasn't looking to join an executive MBA, because I wanted to focus 100% of my attention to maximize my learning rather than share my time between learning and working.      

4. What are the benefits of studying outside your home country?

In Belgium I would never have found the international scene that IMD offers. We have an incredible opportunity to learn from the international business profile of all students, most of them have worked overseas and bring more insight into global business.

I also think that being abroad makes it easier to set aside your social life and focus completely on the MBA, which is imperative given the intensity of the IMD one-year program. I am pretty sure that I would have never been able to study that intensely had I had stayed in my "home environment".      

5. How are you financing your studies?

I have an agreement with my former employer that they will refund part of the expenses when I go back.      

6. What are your career objectives after your MBA? What were you doing before your MBA?

Before I started my MBA I was working in Sales and Marketing in ICT. Although I think Sales is a very important part of a company's business, which general managers should have experience of, I didn't see it as my lifetime career.      

I would like to start as an entrepreneur within a large corporation because I like to work on new ideas and I don't want to be restricted by a job description.      

I plan to continue building know-how and experience in different areas to become a business unit manager. My long-term objective is to become a CEO of a dynamic and international company.