Dear Admissions Committee Member,
Thank you for considering my application for admission to the MBA program at the University of Ottawa. I am excited to have reached a point in my career at which I have the opportunity to combine my professional experience, academic background, and analytical and leadership skills to embark on a high-tech business management career.
I have been considering a business education since partway through my undergraduate degree in sociology, in which I concentrated on areas relevant to management, including organizations, labor markets, and the sociology of work. In my final year I considered applying to graduate programs in sociology to continue working in those areas. However, when I was personally recruited by e-smith Inc., an Ottawa dot-com, I decided to pursue a technical career with promises of rapid advancement in which I could apply those interests.
When e-smith was later acquired by Mitel I was one of a handful of e-smith employees retained, but I soon realized that I had to pursue leadership opportunities more aggressively. Now that my wife has begun to establish her career as a massage therapist, I want to apply the drive that brought me to Ottawa in the first place to gaining the skills, experience, and associations which can take me from being an expert in technology with an aptitude for leadership and strategy to being an expert in leading high-tech firms, and to develop as an advanced student of the science of management.My academic and professional background reflects a pattern of leadership. In university I represented the student body as a two-term student society councillor, a close advisor of the student society executive, and a fellow of the University Senate. Throughout my career I have similarly found myself leading my peers: at Concordia, I led the successful adoption of new Web technologies, mentored co-workers, and organized projects coordinating multiple departments. At e-smith I was the decision-maker of our six-person operations team and advised management on the features that our products - Internet servers for small businesses -- should offer and how we could best generate revenue from those services. At Mitel I am currently proposing adopting ITIL service delivery processes to address internal IT quality issues.
Outside of the workplace the same pattern appears: in 2001 I convinced the organizers of the "Yet Another Perl Conference" to have different cities host the conference each year, and coordinated the local facilities and marketing for the Montreal session. As a technical support volunteer for the weblog site LiveJournal.com, I was quickly promoted to coordinating a team of twenty young volunteers. Even in my rookies' curling league I was asked by my team to be skip, deciding our strategy and handling logistics, and bringing us to lead the league with a perfect winning record.
Additionally, I stand to offer a unique perspective to my fellow students. Having worked in the civil service, a university, and both small and large private companies, and with a background in music, the social sciences and IT, I can approach subjects comparatively. My technical background will allow me to master the math of quantitative analysis, and my extensive experience with small teams under tight deadlines will help my team of MBA students excel.
I believe I have the skills, experience and potential to establish myself as a great Canadian high-tech business leader, and I believe that the MBA program at the University of Ottawa is particularly suited to developing my abilities as a well-rounded professional manager. I believe I will be an asset to the program as a student and throughout my career, and I appreciate your consideration in granting me the opportunity to realize that potential.
Yours sincerely,
Richard Lafferty