It’s a rare thing to find a group of people who push you past your comfort zone while making you feel utterly supported. Tejaswini Joshi says that’s what her Ivey MBA classmates and professors are for her.

“I emerged on the other side of my MBA more confident and put together,” says Joshi. “You can put me any place and I know I will survive. That’s because of Ivey.”

Yet Joshi – whose classmates voted to give her the program’s international student award – arrived in Canada from her hometown of Mumbai with considerable experience in navigating challenging situations. A nurse who used her on-the-ground knowledge in delivering health care to transition into hospital administration, Joshi co-founded a cancer care hospital in Bhopal, India and was instrumental in setting up a COVID centre in Mumbai.

But as the pandemic wore on, she longed to expand her expertise in health care operations management with a deeper understanding of finance, marketing and strategy.

“I didn’t want theories of management or models – I can find those on YouTube,” says Joshi. “I wanted engaging discussions with industry professionals trying to solve real problems.”

So when her husband took early retirement from the Indian Navy, she saw an opportunity to move their young family to Canada for a fresh challenge.

“I reached out to alum from different business schools and Ivey alum always made time for me. They went above and beyond,” recalls Joshi. “Even when I had rookie questions, they never made me feel stupid or silly. They helped me learn to polish myself even before the program began.”

Once in the program, she was finally able to fill in what she thought of as gaps in her education. Classes in finance, accounting, negotiating, and especially analytics set her up for her current role as a Leadership Development Program associate at RBC.

“Bigger dashboards don’t scare me anymore. I have the toolkit to know I’ll figure it out,” she says.

As a former nurse and hospital administrator, she already had good interpersonal skills, but Ivey showed her how to communicate in a different culture.

“In India, when you talk to leadership, you give facts and figures to establish your credibility,” says Joshi. “In Canada, storytelling is done differently. I don’t have to prove my expertise – I’m already at the table. What you do here is bring your audience along with you by explaining the situation and process and making sure everyone wins.”

Outside the classroom, classmates would hold their own unofficial lessons. Joshi fondly recalls one student who held regular sessions in his condo tutoring others in finance. “He made us feel like it’s easier than we thought and he would help the rest of us along,” she says. Joshi returned the favour with sessions on operations management.

“Everybody got their chance to be that person to lend a hand and no one ever shied away,” she says.

That bond continues to this day. “I still know I can count on my Ivey classmates and other Ivey alumni in my network as I continue to grow in my career,” she says.