Coming into Ivey’s MSc International Business program from Civil Engineering, Alana Morrone, MSc ’23, worried she’d struggle without a business background. But as soon as she stepped into the classroom, those concerns faded.
“It was a very comfortable learning environment. The professors were very encouraging and helped you through the process, no matter where you were coming from,” she said. “And, since I had zero business background, I was learning a lot from the start.”
Interested in working globally, Morrone said she took the program to learn about international business and cross-cultural management. She particularly enjoyed the case discussions on businesses from other parts of the world as well as the opportunity to gain international work experience through the Ivey Global Lab.
“There were so many diverse cases and every class brought forward an opportunity to learn something new in a different part of the world. You’re not just learning from cases that were written with a Western business mind, it’s also cases in China and cases in South Africa. There were so many different cases to build your knowledge on and it’s not just centred around a specific way of learning, especially here in the Western context.”
Hands-on international business experience
Although her Ivey Global Lab was virtual due to COVID-19 travel restrictions, Morrone said she learned a lot about business in India – her placement country – and other countries around the world. Morrone was placed with a natural solutions company based in Pune, India that wanted to move into the skincare space. She worked on a report for the company’s CEO on different markets and skincare trends around the world.
“I was really grateful that I was able to work on it on my own and have that be something to be proud of,” she said.
Morrone encourages future students to keep an open mind about career options and to remember that there’s literally a world of opportunities.
“Especially with the pandemic, we’ve realized how interconnected the world really is and that the work that we do here [in Canada] can impact different markets and economies across the world,” she said. “My big theme is just keep an open mind – you never know what opportunities are abroad.”
Watch the video above where Alana Morrone reflects on her time at Ivey and what the future might hold.
