“I vividly remember all the lectures, dynamic discussions and eye-opening “aha!” moments.”

My COTRUGLU journey started with a thought of building up on my pharmaceutical background, especially in fields like finance and leadership, so I could perform better at work. Little did I know at the time that the thought would take me so much farther than I initially planned to go and bring me much more than a new set of skills. I applied for a scholarship one Spring day of 2011, late at night. After finally putting to sleep my 2-year old daughter, I saw an ad in a corner of a daily newspaper web site and said to myself “Let’s give it a try!”. When I actually won the scholarship, there was no turning back.

It has now been more than 7 years now since I finished the program, and when I think about it I first think of the people I got to know there. I truly enjoyed the environment which COTRUGLI has built for us. In my generation there were students from Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Slovenia, Serbia, Macedonia and Bulgaria, and all of us brought different ideas and different perspectives. I guess with time I almost forgot all about numerous reading materials, deadlines, tiredness, late night Skype meetings with my classmates and all the hard work and dedication which each and every one of us put in during those 15 months. On the other hand, I vividly remember all the lectures, dynamic discussions, eye-opening “aha!” moments (thank you Ivica Vrancic, Mike George and Nicolas Kfuri) and great parties in Belgrade, Rovinj and Zagreb.

Dealing with difficult people, structuring big projects, managing expectations, learning how to communicate with and align different pieces of an organization – the MBA prepared me for all of that through countless group projects, constant confrontation with unfamiliar subject matter (and having to make sense of it), and various sorts of work challenges.