Duke Weekend Executive MBA Student Blog
My Fuqua Learnings are Already Helping Me at Work
I sought out Fuqua’s Weekend Executive MBA program because it was the best fit for where I currently am in my career.
I sought out Fuqua’s Weekend Executive MBA program because it was the best fit for where I currently am in my career. There were a few reasons. First, I wanted to continue on my current career path at The Home Depot and successfully transition into a leadership role.
Currently, I lead an agile business team within our Home Depot Pro business unit, focusing on driving sales growth by improving the customer experience for professional contractors, such as remodelers and plumbers. The Fuqua Weekend Executive program has the most comprehensive leadership training, and during my time in the program, I have gained invaluable insights on leadership.
Specifically, the team-based approach and the myriad of style assessments have helped me gain a better understanding of my personal style and strengths and weaknesses, and how I can best show up in different team-based dynamics. My entire career has been and will continue to be team-based work, so this has been extremely valuable.
Additionally, Dr. Angelica Leigh’s Leadership and Development course has been my favorite and has helped me grow leaps and bounds as a leader. She taught us a leadership framework called the, “Six Domains of Leadership” and each module of the class explored a deep dive of each of the critical leadership domains, (e.g., contextual, supportive) as well as special modules on topics such as change management.
I was able to immediately begin to apply these learnings in my current role where I am participating in a significant initiative to change our business and will draw on these topics and lessons for years to come.
While being a full-time working professional and graduate student, (all virtually) for the past year has been a very challenging time, I have been so thankful for Team Fuqua. Practically all the students, professors, and administration worked together to support each other and ensure everyone made it through the various ups and downs we all experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic.