It’s Saturday night after a long week of classes and I decide to fight the
rain and head out on the town. That and my girlfriend is hosting a ‘book
club’ (wine club). A few texts later and a couple of my classmates and I are
sitting at a pub on Davie St unwinding over a beer. This is of course where
all great ideas are formed throughout history, e.g. Southwest Airlines,
quidditch and Buffalo Wings. As Yath (film & television), Pedro
(automotive), Eric (local government) and I (events) chat about our previous
jobs it begins to dawn on us that we should be sharing this information with
the rest of our cohort, and in turn learning from them. And thus Lunch ‘n’
Learn was born. Short presentations by current MBA students on their
respective industries, delivered in under 12 minutes.
To appreciate the immense value in all of this you first need to understand
the diversity of the Beedie full-time MBA cohort-
1:1 Male:Female
1:1 International:domestic
25+ industries represented
What began with 3 speakers in the month of March soon grew into a weekly
event. By the end of June almost 20 talks will have been delivered by
students, covering a range of fields including Engineering, Music, Finance
and Advertising.
Lunch ‘n’ Learn has the added benefit of providing a platform for classmates
to polish their public speaking skills in a safe and supportive environment.
This has shown to really takes the element of fear out of the equation and
dramatically improve the confidence of speakers. It is my hope that the next
cohort will continue this initiative.
Anil is a Event Operations Manager within the music and live entertainment industry. Having toured with Metallica and Coldplay, he has worked across 4 countries. He firmly believes in the power of community, culture and creativity. Contact Anil at anilp@sfu.ca or connect with him on LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/anil3