RRU helped me build the critical thinking, confidence, and leadership skills to launch my own consulting practice.
The most impactful learning outcome that I received from my RRU MBA program is the ability to think critically. I remember how, at the start of the program, it was so challenging for me to understand how best to write in the academic style of the program. While I was fairly confident in my ability to communicate in a corporate environment, it was clear I was initially out of my depth within this program.
But with practice, eventually I was able to produce high-quality academic work that my instructors came to expect. This ability to think critically and produce academic work impacts me today. The way I think about things is different, and my search for evidence to back up my claims is a skill that will never leave me.
Choosing Leadership as my specialization was a deliberate bet on myself. I was in an operations leadership role in a corporate environment when I enrolled, and I had a clear sense of where I wanted to go — I just needed the framework and the confidence to get there.
That bet paid off. Since completing the program, I have launched Brightpoint Operations, my own fractional COO and operational turnaround practice serving founders and CEOs of mid-market manufacturing and retail companies across Canada and the United States. Going out on my own is not a small thing. The MBA gave me the language, the analytical tools, and the executive credibility to make that move with confidence.
The residencies were unlike anything I had encountered in a professional development context before. They compressed learning, relationship-building, and real problem-solving into an intensity that is difficult to replicate in a traditional classroom.
The second residency stands out. It brought everything together — the frameworks, the research methods, the strategic thinking — and applied it in a live consultative engagement with a client. Working through that process as a cohort, with real stakes and real deliverables, mirrored exactly what I now do in my practice.
The faculty were incredibly supportive throughout this process and throughout the entire program.
Sarah Wilson
Fractional COO | Brightpoint Operations | brightpointoperations.com