04 April, 2017

Background

The Industry Expert Seminar Series was organised by CIT Department of Marketing and International Business lecturer, Michele McManus. She invited experts from a wide range of industries to speak to the 4th year Bachelor of Business in Marketing class, and also to the International Business Masters class. The seminar series ran for 9 weeks.

The Speakers

On February 10th Niall O’Callaghan of Everyday NFW informed the students about turning his life around to the point where he now runs a successful nutrition and fitness business. Positive thinking and maintaining a healthy mind and body was central to his talk.

The second speaker of the series was Brid Ryan of Queen B Athletics. She illuminated the struggles she endured at the beginning of her business venture and the valuable assistance she received from The Rubicon Centre.

Honor Cooper-Kovacs from www.tackt.com was the 3rd speaker in the series. Adopting an innovative presentation style, she engaged with the students about learning the importance of Leadership and Change Management.

The fourth speaker in the series was Brian Kelly of Schivo-Propel. He highlighted the importance of being culturally aware. Brian has experience of working in countries such as Japan, Germany and United States of America.

Mike Fahalee enlightened the International Business Masters students about sales in the Pharma sector. Mike is a past graduate of CIT and he colourfully detailed his journey from CIT to where he is now. His engagement with students led to an insightful experience for everyone.

Stephen O’Leary of Olytico was the next speaker to give the students insight into what it is like to start your own business. Olytico was set up in 2009 and has been providing a service to big ‘players’ ever since.

Conor Hyde of Bullseye Food Marketing, communicated to the Masters in International Business students about the importance of packaging in exporting goods to foreign countries. He explained to the students that investing in a good design would help with the success of exporting.

The final installment in the Industry Expert Seminar Series was a site visit to the Everyman Theatre on MacCurtain Street in Cork City.

Success

This seminar series was extremely successful, incorporating not only a strong collaborative element with industry, but a novel assessment methodology including a reflective learning log. “This seminar series proved to be immensely popular with the students. The range of industry speakers and the enthusiasm that they brought to the seminars, resulted in an engaged and motivated student body. Collaborations of this nature between CIT and Industry are essential in ensuring our graduates are work ready, and are able to carry with them, industry insight that they might not have attained in other ways” CIT Lecturer Michele McManus “Not only are the seminars a great idea for a module in general but they are also done at the best time in the course - at the very end. It is now, when we are just finishing up college that we need some inspiration, some guidance, a little advice, from people who have been there and done it. The choice of speakers was also incredible in my opinion, the speakers all touched on so many aspects of business and specifically marketing. In conclusion, these seminars have been a pleasure to attend and thoroughly enjoyable to write about” - Gerard Kirwan, Bachelor of Business (Hons) in Marketing, Year 4.

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