Lindsay Liu, MM-A '23, was looking for a way to consolidate and deepen her knowledge about management and analytics in a way that would broaden her career options when she chose to embark on Ivey’s Master of Management: Analytics program.

“Math is one of my strengths, but I also have a passion for digital marketing – and the combination of the two led me to my programmatic role at GroupM,” says Liu, Director, Programmatic at GroupM Nexus.

“Our work is highly data-driven, so I realized that to advance in this industry, making data-driven decisions and being a subject matter expert was crucial. But I also wanted to advance my management and leadership skills, and to understand how the business runs as a whole.”

For Liu, Ivey’s Master of Management: Analytics provided the right mix of leadership and marketing essentials, as well as modeling courses that could help her become more efficient in leveraging data-driven tools.

Her plan paid off, as Liu moved into her current role three months after finishing the program.

It was a quick progression which she attributes in part to her managers’ trust and appreciation of her work – but also an opportunity she says she wouldn’t have felt as confident to take on without the knowledge she gained during the MM-A.

“I found the leadership and the strategy courses particularly inspiring, not only because of the framework and ideas they provided around how to manage a team but also because they helped me become more intrinsically motivated to be a good leader,” she says.

“I'm still using what I learned in my modelling course in my day-to-day to find campaign insights to drive clients’ business results. Those learnings are very relevant to what I do right now.”

Liu also found the varied perspectives of her classmates valuable, because they led to broad and multi-disciplinary discussions.

“I loved sitting in those class discussions and hearing about what people thought because they come from different perspectives and fields, and their points of view are not ones I usually would have in digital marketing,” she says.

“For example, my position is more involved in operations strategy, but not so much in finance. But I do talk to the finance team in my day-to-day, so post-MM-A, I feel like I understand the finance perspectives better, and I know how to work with them more efficiently.”

For anyone thinking of joining the MM-A, Liu recommends making sure they inform their bosses and secure support since her managers were among her best support systems during her Ivey journey.

“The program is intense, but it's just one year – and it will be worth it.”