MBA Alumni Profile: Marco Duarte Mendes, IMD

Marco Duarte Mendes tells us how he chose his MBA program at IMD carefully after much research and what the dividends were.

1. What were you doing before your MBA?

I was Marketing Director for the Mass Market Segment at Optimus/Orange (the mobile coms company)

2. What were your main reasons for deciding to attend business school?

Boost my international career      

3. What research did you undertake in selecting your school?

- studied therankings
- did visits to main schools
- contacts with alumni      

4. What were the main criteria in your selection?

1) Maturity of students,
2) Reputation among recruiters
3) Level of international experience of faculty and student body
4) Classification on rankings      

5. Why did you decide to study either in your own country or overseas?

Overseas due to reputation of IMD + international experience       

6. Were you successful in obtaining a scholarship?

Yes, IMD Alumni      

7. Are there any well-known and/or successful entrepreneurs that are alumni of your school?

Just top of my mind Mr. Stanton (from Argentina), but surely there are many others and the IMD MBA is quite strong in providing a set of tools on entrepreneurship and lets you have a first-hand kind of contact with seasoned entrepreneurs.      

8. How easy or difficult do you expect it to be to achieve these objectives?

As difficult as any other high risk/high return kind of venture.