Dalton Imwalle

University of Manchester’s Alliance Manchester Business School

Hometown: Columbus, OH

Fun Fact About Yourself: Two actually come immediately to mind! My family and I have held season tickets to our local soccer/football team Columbus Crew SC since the club’s inaugural season in 1996. I also once paid for a European vacation by winning a roulette bet at a casino.

Undergraduate School and Major: Xavier University – Cincinnati, Ohio; B.S.B.A. in Finance

Most Recent Employer and Job Title: NetJets Inc., Financial Analyst 

Aside from your classmates, what was the key part of Alliance Manchester’s MBA programming that led you to choose this business school? Why was it so important to you? One of the key aspects that led me to choose Alliance Manchester MBA was the three live consultancy projects that are offered to students. These three consultancy projects give individuals the opportunity to work with real-life organisations on impactful projects. This was important to me because I wanted to combine my academic experience along with some practical experience as I work on further developing my leadership skills.

What club or extracurricular activity excites you most at this school? As a VP in the Consulting Club, I’ve found having the opportunity to network with different individuals in the industry to be a great value-add for myself and other members as we explore different paths to take upon finishing the MBA next year.

What makes Manchester such a great place to earn an MBA? How have you taken advantage of Manchester to further your business education? Starting the program in the middle of another U.K. lockdown wasn’t ideal; however, I have found the not-for-profit and commercial business consulting projects to be the highlight of my MBA experience so far. I’ve learned a lot through these projects as I’ve had the opportunity to work with various classmates that come from different industries and backgrounds.

A program I’m taking advantage of here at Manchester to further develop some of my business education, is through our schools Guest Speaker Series. We routinely have two to three speakers a month come to talk to us and share their experiences in executive leadership roles. After that, a small networking session is held to learn and understand the skills it takes to succeed in leadership roles.

Describe your biggest accomplishment in your career so far? One of my biggest career accomplishments so far occurred at my previous employer, NetJets. Being an airline, the business was deeply impacted as a result of the Covid pandemic. A project I had the opportunity to support was the designing for NetJets to pick up over 130K masks in China that were then donated to the Mount Sinai Health System in New York City. With this project, we needed to get special clearance from both the U.S. and Chinese governments to fly internationally as the pandemic outbreaks rose in March 2020.

What led you to pursue an MBA at this point in your career? After spending the last 4.5 years at NetJets, I thought it would be a good opportunity to pursue my MBA and it would be beneficial for me to learn about other areas besides aviation. Additionally, I wanted to further develop my business acumen and learn about strategic management that will allow me to be a successful manager in the future.

What was your defining moment and how did it prepare you for business school? I think my defining moment came as a result of supporting my previous organisation’s Asset Management team. Supporting this team for two-plus years, I had the opportunity to present ad hoc projects to members of the executive leadership team. These presentations were crucial to my career development as they taught me the importance of knowing your audience and being clear and concise.

DON’T MISS: MEET ALLIANCE MANCHESTER’S MBA CLASS OF 2022