Sue Ellen Mackintosh

We recently had the opportunity to sit down with Sue Ellen, the Managing Director of Hairy Pill, and AIB MBA graduate. Sue Ellen has over 20 years experience with much of that in senior level executive roles. Her career has typically focused on retail which as evolved into ecommerce and retail. 

For Sue Ellen, taking on an MBA was much more than a means for a promotion or pay rise – it was about investing in her own knowledge and continuous growth, a crucial element in her overall wellbeing. In this interview, we were very excited to explore Sue Ellen’s motivations to start her MBA and her journey as an AIB MBA student.

What was you motivation to start an MBA?

My main motivation was, when I sort of reflect and particularly pre-COVID, I was starting to think about, personal fitness, so physical fitness, mental fitness, and taking a greater interest in my whole health. And I think part of that was that I thought that I’d overlooked was knowledge and pushing yourself to learn more. So the motivation for me was to increase my learning and push myself into a space that was maybe a little bit uncomfortable. And I’d been thinking about doing something like an MBA for some time and just thought, right, now’s the time to do it.

Did you feel supported at AIB?

I thought the support was excellent. I probably didn’t lock into it as early as I could have, but I was certainly using the Learning Support. In fact, I ended up, engaging with the Learning Support Team, pretty much on every assessment. And even though the feedback I got was “Sue Ellen, you know, I don’t know whether you really need us” but I always found something in that half an hour to hour slot that I’d learned whether it was linking sentences, paragraph structure, structure of academic writing. So I really found that, even though I was doing it sort of twice a subject, I still kept learning, right way through the through to project. And the library services, I found Barbara, and the team really helpful as well. 

How does it feel to finish?

It feels fantastic. I feel really grateful for the people around me that supported me the whole way through the journey. I mean, it wasn’t easy. It was a massive commitment and I just I feel really proud of myself. 

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