Stephen comes from an IT background and has now gained a broad knowledge in economics and finance, general management and HR after completing MBA
Stephen Dwyer from Co. Kilkenny is a recent graduate of the MBA and is using the knowledge gained on this course in the workforce
Q. Tell me a little about your back ground?
A. My back ground is in IT, mainly IT management and services delivery so I have had some senior roles in It such as Head of IT and service delivery manager, so what I wanted to do was to get more exposure from a business perspective and get a broad view and the MBA did that by allowing me to look at things such as economics and finance, general management and HR, so it really gave me an awful lot of exposure to experience people in the room with student and the again with high quality lecturers. So really the benefits of this is there is a cross pollination of people from different backgrounds. We had people that ran companies, ran pharmaceutical sectors and from high levels of the public sector, so the different professions are coming in with different agendas so you can big interaction in the room and you get really good at presenting and get the competency and confidence level up over the two years. Your confidence in other areas also improve and you gain a knowledge of all aspects of a business. I graduated from college in 2004, I did a cert diploma here in WIT after that I worked in industry for a couple years and worked for a multinational company Citrix in Dublin. I work with enterprise clients at CEO and CTO level, and work on their strategy and where they are going to go in the next three years. With the MBA I have been able to have these conversations with people from all different units.
Q. Was WIT your first choice to come back and do a masters?
A. Yes, I am from and live in Kilkenny so I looked at several courses in the region. I looked at Dublin and Carlow but I think the quality of WIT, with in being close by and first class lecturers I would highly recommend it. It has opened a lot of doors for me now and down the line.
Q. How was work in facilitating the course part time over the last two years?
A. They were very understanding. With the part time option to do Thursday evenings and Saturdays so probably about 15-20 hours a week. Work were very understanding and realised they wanted quality people and if you invest in your people they will help you out in the long run so there was no barriers there. I did my dissertation with a project in work in overcoming resistance to change in enterprise which was very helpful.
Q. There was no work placement?
A. No, it was a full two year programme but did have a week trip to Boston where you went to the likes of Statestreet and some other universities to get some exposure and that was a real highlight for me. About 12 or 15 of us went over. We got to go to different companies and colleges and it was a super trip.
Q. What advice would you give to someone thinking about doing the MBA?
A. I would think that time is going to go by anyway and if you work towards something you are not going to be sorry that you did it, to have that confidence afterwards is the real lesson and to be able to say you have done it by going through the course and saying you did it is a big plus personally and professionally and it really brings you on to that next level.
Interviewed at Conferring 2019 by Áine Byrne
Main Campus Cork Road, Waterford City, 
