Amina Saigol, MIB’16

Amina Saigol was standing on a stage in Montreal, accepting first prize in a major consulting case competition, when she realized she’d chosen the right Master’s program. It wasn’t so much what she had just achieved (helping to prepare a detailed proposal for how to use technology to build community engagement); rather, it was how she got there.

A few weeks earlier, near the start of Amina’s MIB experience, program manager Jennifer McNeely approached her and a few of her classmates with an extracurricular opportunity: would they consider forming a team to represent Smith in an international case study competition? Amina and her soon-to-be teammates were keen, but they were also a bit nervous: they were each new to business studies, having completed undergraduate degrees in other disciplines, and the learning curve for a contest like this was steep. Almost immediately, their schedules filled with training, meetings, and prep sessions—all supported by Smith staff. “It wasn’t a standard part of the curriculum,” Amina explains. “But once we decided we wanted to do it, staff and faculty helped us find the right competition, got us an invite and gave us all this extra attention to prepare us.”

For Amina, receiving such individualized attention to educational experience was equal parts refreshing and invigorating. “I had never had the experience of everyone knowing who I was and what I wanted,” she says. “Faculty and staff were genuinely willing to get to know each of us as individuals and find ways to get us what we needed out of the program. I really appreciated that.”

Case in point: Amina had an inkling that she wanted to work in tech consulting. So, when it came time to choose an exchange program, she found little in the way of conventional business curricula at foreign schools that fired her up. That changed when her Smith advisors shared details about a condensed three-week program on innovation management at WU Vienna University. It was hands-on, involving—among other things—a consulting project for a real client. It was short, as preferred; having studied in the U.S. in undergrad, Amina wanted to spend most of her year in Kingston, to gain Canadian experience. It was at the cutting edge of where she saw the industry going. It might not have been the expected route, but it was perfect for her.

Amina’s time in Austria was intense: between classes, case studies and socializing with her temporary classmates (most of whom were international MBA students), there wasn’t time for much else—though she did tack a few weeks of travel to the beginning and end of the course. “My international exchange was just right,” she says, adding that the WU Vienna course’s focus on innovation was a key differentiator in landing her first post-grad job. “But the exchange was just the cherry on the top, really. It means more that I was given the support to create a Master’s program that really worked for me.”