Starting this October, the newest Sustainability MBA (sMBA) program cohort began their first hands-on consulting project. This year the sMBA program has partnered with Cisco Systems Inc. under the guidance of Duquesne alumnus Ken Trombetta, Vice President Cisco’s Global Partner Organization. The cohort started the project with a design systems simulation with Dr. Ciletti and another faculty member to hone our analytical skills, before going to meet with Ken and other Cisco executives. The week following the design system simulation the cohort attended a meeting brief at Cisco System offices in the North Shore of Pittsburgh where the cohort learned the details of the consulting project.
The consulting project entails performing an analysis of several different companies that Cisco pre-picked for the cohort, and we were to perform a SWOT analysis on each company to order the attractiveness of each company in terms of a possible partnership. On November 11, 2016 the cohort had their first check in with Ken, where he seemed impressed with our analysis and ranking of the different companies they had chosen. The cohort is now tasked with providing a more in depth analysis of the top four companies that came out of the cohort’s initial rankings of the pre-picked companies. After the in-depth analysis of the top four companies, the cohort will then present to Ken and other Cisco executives on the findings produced by the analysis. The hopes are then for Cisco to use our recommendations in the future as they seek to form new partnerships.
This project is critical to the success of the cohort as we develop our analysis and critical thinking skills as it pertains to consulting and the possible tasks consultants in the workplace may be asked to perform. This hands on experience, as well as the other two consulting projects during the program, are what makes the sMBA program stand out from other sustainability focused MBA programs, as it better prepares our cohort to be more productive and comfortable as soon as we enter the workforce following graduation.
