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Senior Product Marketing Manager at Initiate Systems
Discover how Michael Moran’s MBA program helped in his career transition from the U.S. Navy to the civilian workforce.
By Katie Ford
Michael Moran had spent nearly a decade in the U.S. Navy when he realized that his future lay somewhere in the civilian world. As Moran saw it, his opportunities in the military were limited. But in the corporate sector, the sky was the limit. Though he was an officer who had gained a wide breadth of experience and respect, Moran knew that the road to corporate America would be a difficult one.
“If you were a lawyer, physician, or dentist in the military, then you had skills that were directly transferable to civilian life,” Moran explains. “But I was a warfighter, and those skills, in the eyes of hiring managers, weren’t transferable. In my discussions with recruitment agencies, I made the observation that I needed an MBA to gain credibility in the corporate sector.”
At the time Moran decided to go back to school, he was stationed in Oahu, HI. He worked 55 to 65 hours a week, leading a staff of 22 at the Naval Computer and Telecommunications Area Master Station. His division oversaw programs that supported voice, video, and data communications for military operations in the Pacific area. The naval officer knew it would be a challenge to add graduate school to his calendar, but he didn’t see any way around it.
“You make a decision, you engage, and you just put one foot in front of the other,” says Moran, who earned an MBA with an emphasis in management information systems from the University of Hawaii. “What helped significantly was that my wife decided to pursue her master’s degree in accountancy at the same time. My spouse understood exactly what I was going through, so it minimized the friction there. We were like two ships passing in the night most of the time.”
For two and a half years, Moran took two courses a semester. Classes were held in the evenings on either a Tuesday-Thursday or a Monday-Wednesday-Friday schedule.
