Mark Nesci

Can you tell us a little any challenges or setbacks that you may have encountered on your MBA journey?

Yes, working full-time. It’s a tough course; don’t get it wrong, it’s not an easy path. You’ve got to spend the time. As with all students, you always sometimes have too much work on and you have to leave your assignments to the last minute and it gets rushed, so it is working full-time. As you get older, study gets harder. How would I know? I’m just a spring chicken!

But truly, it’s time, time, time. It’s spending the time to do the work. Once you get into it, because of your work experience and your time in the workforce, it’s actually quite amazing. You can write your assignments around your work experience. That was the whole intent of the AIB MBA. It was a practical MBA course.

What did you get out of the MBA?

I’ve been doing a lot of this management, strategic, governance, sales and leadership for a long time but I never had the qualifications for it. What it does now is you actually recognise what you do right and what you don’t do so right. Before that you would think you’re always right.

This gives you some better ideas of how you could do it better. That’s the one thing I got out of it. You’re now recognised with the knowledge written in front of you, what you could be doing, how you could be doing it better, and what you have been doing really well and how you can improve on that. It was good for me that way.

How do you feel today here at your graduation?

How I feel about finishing my MBA? On cloud nine. It’s a great feeling. I’m getting a lot of support from my colleagues, my friends. They’ve indicated to me, “Congratulations. It’s a masterful feat.” It’s has been a journey. It’s exciting. I’m not finished yet.

How did you find the support at AIB throughout your MBA journey?

The support from AIB, the student support, was fantastic. Whenever I had an issue, they resolved it fairly quickly. They communicated by email. When I had a couple of personal issues at home, they were there. They were able to delay the subject course and we slot it in to another time. When there were delays in getting assignments in (it happens), asking for an extension, they were supportive and organised that for us. They were there all the time, always in the background. Someone always answered the phone and someone always took responsibility. It was a great support network from AIB student support.

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