I was recently featured in an article by the University of Illinois, Gies College of Business, highlighting what I learned as a student in the school’s Master of Business Administration (MBA) degree program and while attending global immersions in Germany and Brazil with my fellow MBA students. Here’s an excerpt from the article titled “Blanchard Uses MBA Experience to Explore near-Shore Tech Options.” ^{1, 2, 3}

Gies College of Business MBA student Wylie Blanchard’s love of technology runs deep. The founder of Chicago-based Great Tech Pros grew up taking apart everything from toasters to his first word processor to see how they worked. His company advises clients primarily in the healthcare and insurance services industries how to design tech solutions that create value for their customers.

Blanchard said the iMBA experience has also taught him to think more globally about how to grow Great Tech Pros, founded in 2013.

Blanchard is exploring setting up near-shore database operations with fellow iMBA student Paul Taylor in his Jamaica home base. He turned to Taylor to create a solution that had a US-friendly time zone when Great Tech Pros couldn’t meet a client’s price point with a US-based solution.

The Gies iMBA program isn’t Blanchard’s first experience with online learning. He received a BS degree in business administration and management from Walden University. Blanchard said interacting with more marketing, strategy and finance decision makers is what prompted him to consider getting a master’s degree.

Visit the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Gies College of Business, website to read the full article that includes my quoted statements.

“Blanchard Uses MBA Experience to Explore Near-Shore Tech Options.” Gies College of Business, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 9 Oct. 2020, https://giesbusiness.illinois.edu/news/2020/10/09/blanchard-uses-mba-experience-to-explore-near-shore-tech-options.

“Blanchard Uses MBA Experience to Explore Near-Shore Tech Options.” IMBA, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 18 May 2021, https://onlinemba.illinois.edu/blanchard-uses-mba-experience-to-explore-near-shore-tech-options/.

“Blanchard Uses MBA Experience To Explore Near-Shore Tech Options.” Poets&Quants. 24 Feb. 2021, https://poetsandquants.com/2021/02/04/blanchard-uses-mba-experience-to-explore-near-shore-tech-options/

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I just returned from a 9 day immersion trip in Germany learning about their economy and business practices with a group of MBA graduate students from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

My initial interest in visiting Germany was to revisit a country I briefly lived in as a child with my parents. Overall, I feel that the trip gave me a better understanding of German economics, though I must admit that my prior understanding and interest in the German economy was extremely low. Globally, my interests have typically focused on countries in the Central American region of North America, South America and Africa. I realize now that there is a value in researching the Euro Zone countries and after meeting with Gerlinde Sinn, lecturer at the University of Munich, I’ve taken an interest in researching German economic recent events.

Here’s a list of businesses that we visited.

• Ms. Gerlinde Sinn, university lecturer at the University of Munich, for a guest lecture on “Business in Germany” (Munich, Germany).
• BMW (Munich, Germany).
• Oracle (Munich, Germany).
• KPMG (Munich, Germany).
• Spaten-Franziskaner-Bräu brewery (Munich, Germany).
• Heidelberg Startup Partners (Heidelberg, Germany).
• Fraport AG Frankfurt Airport Services Worldwide (Frankfurt, Germany).
• European Central Bank (Frankfurt, Germany).

I enjoyed the conversation with Gerlinde Sinn of the University of Munich but I quickly realized that I was personally unprepared for the conversation, lacking any true knowledge of the companies challenges to establish itself globally. Sinn’s passionate and educational overview of the country’s challenges with expanding the European monetary union (EuroZone), its current/future impact on Germany as a world leader and her personal thoughts on what steps should be taken to ensure further success helped me see that US tariffs have a strong impact on European nations just as it does the nations that I normally follow – countries in the Central American region of North America, South America and Africa. I took a stronger interest in researching the German economy after this meeting – which turned out to be useful in discussions with the businesses I would meet with in the upcoming days. I also enjoyed Heidelberg Startup Partners who explained how they help local entrepreneurs develop business plans, find investors and gather technological and business knowledge needed to successfully launch a business. Lastly, I highly enjoyed visiting the European Central Bank, where we continued our discussion about the expansion of the EuroZone with banking leaders.

Overall, I highly enjoyed my 9 day visit in Germany.

As a tourist, I visited the Bavarian Alps, the Partnach Gorge (Partnach River), the BMW Museum, the Heidelberg castle and more. I even drove 140 miles per hour on Germany’s Autobahn highway system on my way to/from spending a day in Strasbourg France.

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