When Senior Performance Consultant Trafford Judd decided he wanted to change lanes in his career, it was the skills and knowledge he acquired from his Master of Business Administration studies that led him on a path to success in New York City.
Judd is a Senior Performance Consultant for LinkedIn, working from the professional social networking site’s New York office. Prior to this he spent the better part of a decade working in human resources in Australia after earning an undergraduate degree, despite a growing eagerness to see what more the business world could offer.
“I guess I felt like a little bit of rut career-wise and I was at a cross-roads trying to figure out how to use all of the skills I had gained outside of all of the industries I had been working with,” he said.
“I felt like I had a lot more to offer and that I’d like to flex my muscles in other areas to see where it would lead.
“So I decided to move out of a HR role and into a role at LinkedIn, which was much more client-based. Then I went on to complement that with some study that would support the role.”
Intent on gaining a greater understanding on the aspect of business past HR, Judd landed on the University of Canberra-accredited MBA (Innovation and Leadership) program delivered by Ducere, drawn to the program’s flexible delivery structure and the practical applications to its projects. The flexible delivery of Ducere’s courses, in particular, were extremely beneficial to Judd’s situation as he was in the process of moving to New York for work while studying his MBA.
“Ducere also appealed to me because I would be able to work on real world assignments that were outside of the field of experience that I’d had,” he said.
Judd’s MBA projects gave him expertise in several areas including stakeholder management, client collaboration, research and putting together a proposal.
“We were also presenting to such a high level executive audience – that was something I didn’t really have much experience with and the practice we had with clients was really useful,” Judd said.
So useful were the skills Ducere’s MBA projects instilled in Judd, that they helped him in earning a promotion in New York.
“The degree itself was definitely useful in having discussions with American employers because MBAs are really highly regarded here. Especially in New York, there’s a bit of an expectation that you would have some form of postgraduate education,” Judd said.
“The interview process for this particular role was pretty intense and I found the MBA helped me through a lot of that.
“I think it’s a big part of why I got the job – the interview required putting together a one-and-a-half-hour pitch for what I would do in the role, including an action plan. I pulled a lot of experience from the practical projects I did during my MBA studies, where we learned how to communicate with executives and deliver projects and presentations in an easily digestible format.”
Judd’s current role as LinkedIn’s Senior Performance Consultant sees him developing long term skills and strategies for his division, and supporting a global client group to find success in the scope of tens of thousands of dollars.
Even before his promotion, Judd was using the lessons he took from Ducere’s MBA to succeed.
“For the year prior to my current role, I was in a program manager role which focused on designing a new customer management model for identifying larger and more high-risk accounts,” he said.
“I was challenged in finding ways to find those accounts using data and analytics, and then putting together actions plans to get ahead of those risks. I think a lot of that stuff came from the projects we were doing in the MBA, but also the management and risk analysis theory which taught me about different decision making and risk assessment models.”
Despite his MBA helping his career so much already, Judd’s sights are set on a future in leadership and is confident his knowledge will help him get there.
“In this new role I see it as a pathway to taking on more responsibility for a larger group of people and contributing to a broader people strategy.
“I think having the experience and confidence through an MBA makes you stand out.”
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