After a COVID-forced hiatus, the Graduate Management Awards were hosted live and in-person by MBA Australasia for the first time in a few years, in Brisbane on 30 September.
The 2022 Awards ceremony was a celebration of four outstanding members of the MBA community, who were celebrated for their actions and career achievements.
This year’s winners were celebrated based on four key categories by a community of talented fellow alumni, universities and colleges from around Australasia.
Most Outstanding MBA Graduate
Kaitlyn Rafter took home the flagship award in recognition of her multifaceted success across her academic, professional and extracurricular pursuits.
Kaitlyn graduated from QUT with a Master of Business Administration with Honours, and received the Dean’s Award for Excellence as well as the Colin Brain Governance Prize for Ethics.
But it was her extracurricular passion for gender justice and women’s rights in roles that saw her supporting women through advocacy, mentoring and creating networking opportunities, as well as her transformative career journey from practising solicitor into a leadership role at global resources giant, BHP, that made her the perfect fit for this award.
Also read: 2023 QS World University Rankings Released For Global MBA and Business Masters
Innovation and Entrepreneurship
QUT Executive MBA graduates Mikael Heinonen and Andreas Ramm, who also co-founded Collabaloop Pty Ltd, took home this award for what began as an idea for an entrepreneurial venture during a final year module, and quickly emerged as a viable business during various accelerator programs.
Today, Collabaloop is addressing some of the construction industry’s biggest challenges through technology, including high rates of suicide, low rates of diversity and stagnant productivity plagued, with a particular focus on apprentices. The platform sends automated, targeted, and regular messages to apprentices via SMS, providing businesses a real-time dashboard for support when it matters most. Both Mikael and Andreas were recognised for their efforts to date and their vision of being a leader in driving positive culture change within the global construction industry.
Community Impact
This year’s winner, Tyrone Bean is a Junior Associate at McKinsey & Company and the first permanent employee recognised as a member of Australia’s First Nations people.
His dedication to his community is closely linked to his love and commitment to education. Despite his own struggles with literacy and numeracy, Tyrone was the first in his family to complete Year 10, graduate Year 12 from a prestigious high school on a sports scholarship, and graduate with not just a Bachelor of Arts or a Master of Teaching (Secondary), but also an MBA from the University of Queensland.
Tyrone realised that he wanted to be active in education as a pathway to overcoming disadvantages. His journey as one of Australia’s most promising young Aboriginal educators is paved with innumerable mentoring, volunteering, and teaching firsts, awards and international recognition, the creation of Australia’s first First Nation school curriculum and so much more.
Tyrone unfortunately was unable to be there in person to accept his award but sent through a video acceptance.
Most Inspirational MBA Lecturer
Noal Atkinson, walked away with the Most Inspirational MBA Lecturer award for his contribution as Head of Course for CQUniversity Australia’s Master of Business Administration (Leadership).
His innovative approaches to student engagement, personalised support and peer-to-peer networking, has contributed to almost halving the disengagement rate for this MBA course at CQUniversity.
Despite responsibility for the study success of over 1,000 students, his novel approaches include personal phone calls to disengaged students, one-on-one mentoring to build student confidence, weekly student support workshops on broader topics, and the novel approach of encouraging students to break-out into their own smaller groups based on units of study, for more specialised support.
Students supported Noal’s nomination for this award, by highlighting his ability to inspire through anecdotes and stories that give colour to theoretical concepts, non-judgemental, inclusive support, and his ability to create meaningful conversations that both challenge and motivate.
The Graduate Management Awards celebrate the best and brightest in the MBA community, and this year was no exception.
MBA News Australia was once again proud to sponsor these awards and congratulate all of this year’s winners, finalists and nominees and wish them all the best in their future endeavours.
