Originally from Canada, with Greek heritage, I grew up outside of Toronto and moved to Connecticut to go to Yale for my undergrad. I then spent the next 10 years back in Toronto working in startups and starting my solo consultancy before moving to Nova Scotia on the east coast, just outside of Halifax, where I purchased a seven-bedroom Victorian house to renovate with my partner.

Chateau architecture has always been my passion, thinking not just about rooms, but rearranging floor plans according to how people will use them. It’s about how a whole house fits together in a flow (or how an apartment building works to provide comfortable housing for multiple people in a single structure). So often, I would see plans with wasted space and tiny rooms despite being large in square footage. I found a hobby in rearranging those plans to maximize space, flow, and ease of use.
Why IMD?
Before coming to IMD, my main focus was on running my freelance consulting business helping startups grow, but I felt as if I’d hit a wall. I could see the future I wanted to build for myself and my business, but every step ended with a flop, falter, or failure. It’s not that I didn’t learn from those failures – in fact, I gained many skills and learned many lessons. One of these was that I needed more education to expand my horizons and to learn collaboratively from super smart people. When I started looking at my options, I prioritized a holistic learning experience, transformation potential, great people, and speed. While other options might have provided great learning and transformation potential, each path looked to be at least two or three years. An IMD MBA, on the other hand, could deliver that in just one year.
During my research, a few top schools stood out as able to provide everything on my list: I wanted to gain a global perspective and exposure, with a one-year program to minimize time away from my career and prioritize hands-on learning with real companies rather than solely case-focused education. I ultimately chose IMD because it’s one of the most practical MBAs available today in terms of hands-on learning (between the Singapore expedition, consulting projects, and startup embedded projects). I also had immense respect for how IMD professors work with real businesses outside of the classroom – when they share an insight, you can trust it’s market-relevant.

The first couple of weeks have admittedly been very intense! Shifting from my old routine into classes, meeting new people, and doing homework for the first time in years has been a bit of a challenge. However, every time I begin to feel overwhelmed, I have an amazing conversation over lunch (which is delicious, by the way) or learn some insight that is intellectually interesting and useful. The intensity is matched by quality, which is precisely what I wanted (and expected) when I chose IMD.
I’m looking forward to seeing what the next 11 months bring!