Nour Alard, MIB’22
- Undergrad: Bachelor of Management and Organizational Studies, Western University, Canada
- MIB program: Double degree with ESSEC Business School, France
- Exchange option: Four months at Bocconi University in Milan
- Nour’s MIB experience, in a word: “Unique”
“I understood pretty quickly that there’s not just one way of doing things.”
Nour Alard arrived in Milan for a four-month exchange at Bocconi University expecting some culture shock: he knew almost no one in the city, he didn’t speak Italian, and while he’d travelled plenty, he’d never studied abroad. Even still, he found himself amazed by the flashy motorists on the autostrada, the languorous diners at the local trattoria, even the layout of the local supermarcato. His weekends were filled with jaunts to European capitals to see MIB classmates and playing tour guide to the same as they visited his temporary home (Milan, with its rich fashion, art and food cultures, makes for a popular minibreak destination). In every way, his daily routine in the Italian hub was different than the Kingston student life he’d just left. “It was a very eye-opening experience,” Nour says. “I gained an immediate understanding of the country I was living in relative to where I came from. It definitely expanded my worldview.”
Nour is a person who craves cross-pollination, the energizing alchemy that happens when different ideas come together. In fact, it’s what ultimately sold him on the MIB program. He’d enrolled a year after completing his bachelor’s degree, hoping to top up his skills with a flexible curriculum and a bit of practical international experience. Within days of arriving in Kingston to start coursework in the Fall of 2021, he realized he’d also found the kind of iterative educational experience he’d been missing. “In my undergrad, I felt courses were way too structured,” he reflects. “But at Smith, right away we were having discussions in classes—real discussions. People had very different points of view, and we’d debate and argue them. It helped me think—and then believe—that there’s never one concrete answer or path for any problem.” The invigorating spirit of these sessions quickly forged deep, formative friendships, he says: “It felt like we were a family not even a month in.”
As he prepares to move to France for the back half of his two-year program—a master’s in management at ESSEC Business School—Nour is hoping for a three-peat of his experiences in Kingston and Milan. He’s planning a career in tech, possibly in a consulting capacity, and he feels the more perspectives he can understand, the better his prospects will be.
“The MIB has really fostered a dynamic approach to my thinking,” he says. “It’s given me a global mindset, that understanding that—like the butterfly effect—everything is connected and affected by everything else. And I think that will make me prosper in my career.”
