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“The side effect: A reliable personal network that would have taken years to build up.” – Marc Erras on his Executive MBA journey

Marc Erras

Marc Erras

A program that changes your (professional) life: Marc Erras today is a communications expert-turned-tech entrepreneur. After earning an Executive MBA in Innovation & Business Creation in 2018, he left his job in corporate communications and started to work for various incubators. His focus now lies in communications and strategy in early-stage start-ups. Today, at the age of 36, he is living in Ingolstadt, and he serves as Head of Growth at Mirrads, a retail tech company.
In 2020, Marc launched STARTUP WATCHLIST, a platform for start-up experts. As a coach, he advises entrepreneurs on communications and speaks at events. It’s Marc’s passion to build bridges between innovation, strategic communications, and entrepreneurship. Seven years after starting his Executive MBA, we asked Marc to let us in on his experience. For us, he emphasized why all the work he put into it was so rewarding for him and his career.

“First of all: Earning an Executive MBA may not be suitable for everybody – for either personal or professional reasons. In my case, though, the program with its design, and the commitment it asked for, was the right thing to do. When I look back now, I can easily say that this program helped me get to where I am today. Ever since I graduated, I gave up my corporate career and ended up finding a new – and better – one in a field I hadn’t heard of before getting my EMBA. I work in multiple roles at once, all circling back to the two main pillars of this program: innovation & business creation.

Truth be told: getting an EMBA requires a severe degree of commitment – both financially and in terms of time, energy and effort. Keep in mind that the rest of your life (career, personal projects, and private obligations) will most likely not calm down while you earn your EMBA – and that being said, the program will challenge you, and it will do so in addition to the responsibilities you already have. I must admit: it was demanding and sometimes truly exhausting. You spend four days studying intensely in class – afternoons spent doing case studies, learning sessions, team debates, lectures, assignments, and field trips do keep quite you busy, followed by yet another full week at work. In other words: The months of the EMBA are a time of growth – AND hustle.

Yet, looking back now, it’s the combination of the content you picked up, the people you met, and the places you went, that made the program unique and of such great value. Both the lectures, as well as the practitioners and guest speakers, are on the highest professional level. In my opinion, you do get the insights you’d expect from a program like this. And in addition to that, I got to meet dozens of entrepreneurs, founders, experts, and investors, in Munich as well as in the Bay Area. Even today, I find myself using examples and insights I picked up back then, the occasional name-dropping included.

When you join the EMBA, you become part of a group of interesting people from various backgrounds, who all want to improve as professionals. Working side by side with these experienced and accomplished individuals has taught me things you could never put on a Power Point slide: new ways of approaching problems, paths of execution entirely different from mine, insights, and advice from sources I never had access to. The side effect: When I graduated, I found myself in the fortunate position of having a reliable personal network, that would have taken years to build up.

For all of these reasons and several more: May this program (if you choose to apply) do for you what it did for me!” (Marc Erras)

 

Executive MBA Programs

Do you want to know more about our Executive MBA Programs? The TUM offers an Executive MBA, an Executive MBA in Business & IT and an Executive MBA in Innovation & Business Creation.
Here you find an overview and more information.

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