27.01.21

By Isaac Ismaila
The Esslingen MBA was an excellent career move and one of the best choices I have ever made. Growing up in a low-income Nigerian family, I could not understand why there was such a big economic disparity between different people and regions of the world. I decided that I was going to “make a difference”. I wanted to create value for humanity and make peoples’ lives better. I knew that in order to achieve this with success, I needed to not only get good education and career, but also understand how value creation works.

The Esslingen MBA taught me that. Despite my strong passion for science and engineering, I always wanted to get a business degree; and when I came across the MBA in
International Industrial Management at Esslingen University of Applied Sciences on the DAAD webpage, I knew immediately that it was the
perfect program for me.

Today, I am glad that I took that step to send in my application for the program. Even before graduation from the MBA program, I received a job offer for a role as a 'Technology Scout' within the R&D Department at PERI GmbH, a leading global engineering and technology company – thanks to the immense support from the MBA staff and coordinator. I will never forget how the director of the MBA program at the time thoroughly followed up on us to send out applications for industrial thesis placement and jobs. It fascinated me that the program did not just focus on imparting academic knowledge, but also supported and pushed the program participants to achieve their goals and aims of participating in the program in the first place. The program supported me right from my arrival and settling in Germany to my transition into the labour market – and even to today still follows up on my career progress as an Alumnus of the Esslingen MBA program.
The MBA program was very intensive and challenging – the daily classes from mornings until evenings, personal home assignments, team assignments, teamwork presentations that made us sometimes stay in class until late nights, weekly examinations and more, played a huge role in my career progress and success today. The role of Technology Scout, which I assumed immediately after the program, was the first time the role had existed at the company and my task was to scout for technology trends, explore the possibilities to integrate them to current products or make entirely new products, and oversee collaboration projects with unique and untraditional partners. The role requires one to have in-depth knowledge of market trends, be able to cultivate network of contacts and resources, be able to maximise a firm’s capabilities and work toward its strategic goals, and to be entrepreneurial – to mention but a few. The Esslingen MBA prepared and gave me the flexibility to be able to fill this role and other roles that might cross my path in the future.
In addition, I can also say that the Esslingen MBA has better positioned me to realising my childhood dreams. During the program, I developed a strong mindset for passive income thanks to the finance modules of the program, this made me pick up with enthusiasm one of my childhood interests - investing in the stock market; and to start social media coaching programs, which I work on during my free time. Sometimes, I brainstorm ideas and solutions to problems in my home country and how to bring them to life based on concepts, which I learnt from the MBA program.
In conclusion, I would say that The MBA program pushed me out of my comfort zone and equipped me with the necessary tools to succeed in my career and in achieving my goals of creating value for humanity and making peoples’ lives better. I saw and still see The Esslingen MBA as my family away from home.

 - Isaac Ismaila graduated with his MBA from The Esslingen Graduate School in 2018 and now works as a Technology Scout at PERI in Ulm.