Your team could use more MBAs. Welcome Kyiakhalid Ruiz, MBA!

Why MBA?

Firstly, I wanted to evolve as a Business Leader after a 15-year career in Communications. In my prior business experiences I had plenty of opportunities to grow as a team member, a team leader, a negotiator and a project manager. I sought out the MBA degree to enhance these skills by learning the Best Practices derived from multiple industries. Also, the MBA degree is an excellent platform for learning about business topics different from my core competencies. The goal was to become a more well-rounded business professional, and therefore, offer more to my next employer.

Why Social Entrepreneurship?

At my core, I have serious compassion for numerous social and environmental causes. Many of these injustices arise from business objectives that prioritize profits over the health of the planet and it’s citizens. The Social Entrepreneurship concentration in the MBA program is designed to find business solutions to social issues. Especially important to note: a Social Entrepreneurship enterprise is not another charity or NGO. A Social Entrepreneurship enterprise is a regular for-profit business that happens to benefit a social cause. This new social movement has spurred the creation of new corporate structures that provide tax breaks for social corporations. Furthermore, these new structures protect the company from shareholders who might sue the company if the company makes decisions that adhere to its social mission when another option would resulted in a higher financial return.

Arara da Mata

My MBA team created a company to replenish a forgotten rainforest in Brazil. The Brazilian economy is heavily dependent on sugarcane exports. Subsequently, this has created a sugarcane monoculture that caused providers to cut down the Mata Atlantica rainforest to plant sugarcane instead. Meaning “parrot of the forest” in Portuguese, Arara da Mata is a firm that buys unused land in rural communities and plants native Brazilian trees to replace the lost Mata Atlantica.

Why Hult International Business School?

Location

I chose Hult International Business School for a myriad of reasons. First, I loved the local location. As a Bay Area native, I didn’t want to move away from my local commitments for school. I also didn’t want the additional expense, especially since I wasn’t working to focus on school. Moreover, the 1-year full-time MBA program minimized my break from the job market.

Flavor

Secondly, I was attracted to the international flavor of the school. I love meeting new people and learning about other cultures, so what better place to go to school? At the San Francisco campus, the MBA class had about 210 students. Of those, maybe 15 were US citizens. The vast majority of my classmates were from all over the world. Some of my closest relationships were with classmates from Nigeria, Italy, Brazil, Iran, Peru, India and Russia. I made lifelong friendships with many great global citizens, and in exchange, I became their unofficial American ambassador. I loved learning about the world from so many different perspectives. On the reverse, I helped explain the intricacies and eccentricities of American culture to my newfound friends.

Travel

Thirdly, I was interested in the ability to rotate to another of Hult’s 5 global campuses. In the beginning, I thought I might attend the San Francisco campus for the first 3 terms, then rotate to the Shanghai campus for a term before finishing my studies at the London campus. I planned to work while going to school at the foreign campuses in order to get international work experience. Unfortunately, I discovered that my student visa wouldn’t allow me to work overseas. That, and my dwindling finances, caused me to rethink my plans and I stayed for the entire academic year at the San Francisco campus.

Lastly, during my academic year the Hult curriculum included the mass graduation of all 800 MBA candidates across the 5 global campuses at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. I had to choose Hult!

How does this benefit your organization?

Most organizations will appreciate employees with Management training, Leadership experience, big-picture Strategic Planning with consummate attention-to-detail.

In conclusion, give me a call today! Let’s discuss how, together, we can make your organization thrive!

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