Notre Dame MSBA Student Sunay Salievski on Career Development

“The MSBA program is preparing me for my career by taking a methodical, bottom-up approach to analytics — the fundamentals are rarely taught in isolation. Instead, the academic content is tied to real-world examples that help me build a connection and understand the value analytics bring to virtually any business situation.

While a number of techniques are taught in adequate depth, the program does not spend an exorbitant amount of time diving into the technical skills. The objective is to have a strong enough foundation within the different concepts to be well-versed and effective enough to manage with an understanding of what works. The MSBA accomplishes that.

That approach compounds throughout the year, as comfort and proficiency grows, enabling me to bring together multiple methods towards solving real-world problems. The Capstone [project] at the end of the year is a highly effective way to marry academia and business. We, as MSBA students, demonstrate the ability to manage a real project with professionals at highly reputable organizations, while showcasing unique abilities in increasingly high demand throughout a wide variety of industries and companies.

The MSBA degree is helping me in my career, where I work in banking on the leveraged finance side. I provide secured debt to finance acquisitions for private equity firms. There is a considerable amount of qualitative and quantitative analytical rigor that goes into underwriting each transaction. The banking industry is a laggard relative to other sectors in terms of using newer, faster and more unconventional methods of analytics. I plan on using my MSBA degree to create comfort around newer methods by leading and sponsoring the adoption of them. My hope is to not only create efficiencies across the organization operationally, but serve as a competitive advantage, as well.”