Samantha Austin

Why did you decide to study an MBA?

At the time that I was looking to study some kind of post-grad to try and get ahead in my career – that was probably about five years ago that I realised that I really needed to do something a bit more. At that time my job role had led me into working in more management-type positions and away from the laboratory. I started looking at management-type courses and the MBA seemed the most relevant to the types of job roles that I was likely to be working in in the future.

When I decided to study an MBA with AIB, I was looking for career progression mostly. I was being offered acting positions in operations-manager-type roles anyway, so it really made a lot of sense for me to study something that was going to be relevant to moving in that direction.

Could you tell us about your challenges or setbacks and how you overcame those?

When I first started studying my MBA I became pregnant soon after. It was planned but it made things quite difficult moving forward. I didn’t realise how difficult it would be to study post-grad whilst working and whilst pregnant and having a newborn. I did have to put my MBA on hold for about four months. That was fine but it meant that when I came back to it, it was quite a challenge to continue studying. I continued through and managed to get everything done without too many setbacks.

Would you touch on any of the best aspects of being able to study online with AIB?

Studying an AIB MBA online was probably the only way I would have been able to complete an MBA at this stage in my life because I have a young family. Being online, it was much more flexible. I was able to work my study times around my work and family commitments.

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