Coffee, Komi, Rotman: 2nd Term In B-School — How I Learned To Stop Panicking

It has been a while since you last heard from me. Summer had other plans for me; I spent four months as a summer intern with Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment as a Global Partnership Marketer. If you’re not familiar with MLSE, they’re the powerhouse behind the Toronto Raptors, Toronto FC, the Toronto Maple Leafs, and the Toronto Argonauts.

The work was everything I’d hoped it would be. I worked on partnerships with brands like Google, IBM, Canadian Tire, and Molson. I helped craft and execute campaigns, some of which were alongside NBA players and soccer players. This included Federico Bernardeschi, who once played at Juventus with Christiano Ronaldo — my football GOAT.

The best part? I got a firsthand look at the planning for the FIFA World Cup, which is coming to Toronto next summer. Watching how a global event of that scale is built from the inside—the partnerships, logistics, and strategy—was like watching everything we’d learned in our first-year MBA classes come to life in real time.

That internship did something for me I didn’t fully expect: it made me more confident. Not just in my marketing and leadership abilities, but in how the MBA had actually prepared me for this role. The strategy frameworks from class? I used them to analyze partnership opportunities. The finance concepts I’d struggled with? They showed up when evaluating sponsorship ROI. The data models? They helped me make the case for campaign decisions.

But here’s what surprised me most: after four months of that incredible work, I missed Rotman!

I know—some of you are probably thinking this is classic Stockholm syndrome. Four months of freedom – working an amazing and cool job with world-class brands and athletes – and I’m getting sentimental about brain-twisting exams and marathon study sessions? But I actually missed it. I missed the energy of the third-floor study rooms. I missed the conversations that start about case studies and end up spanning continents and cultures. I even missed that temperamental coffee machine in the Masters Lounge—the one that’s taught me patience in ways no course ever could.

Most of all, I missed the people. The study team who got me through the first term. The classmates who’ve become friends. The professors who challenge you to think differently. The career advisors who show up when you need them most. Most importantly: the academic directors who really make you feel like you have superheroes positioned to make you succeed.

When I walked back onto campus in September, it felt different. Not like returning to school. It was more like coming home.

BRIDGING FROM FIRST TERM

When I last wrote to you, I’d just survived the first term. And I mean survived. But that term taught me something crucial: Rotman gives you everything you need to succeed if you’re willing to ask for it. The study teams. The academic support. The career services. The community that forms around shared struggle and shared victory.

Take networking, for example. Coming to a new country where networking is such an integral part of advancing your career, I thought I had a solid approach. However, the stakes were higher now, and I needed guidance to ensure I was doing it right. That’s where Robert Woon Fat came in. My career advisor didn’t just give me generic advice—we had regular check-ins where he helped me refine my story and taught me best practices for coffee chats and informational interviews. Then he went a step further: he connected me directly with industry leaders, setting up meetings himself.

One of those connections eventually led to an opportunity I’ll never forget: leading brand and marketing efforts for AFRIFURSA at the G7 summit in Alberta. That kind of trust, that kind of door-opening, doesn’t happen by accident. It happens because Rotman’s career services (and other units) are truly there to support and facilitate our success.

So when the second term started last October, I came in with a different strategy. I wasn’t going to wait until I was struggling to build my support system. I was going to set it up before I needed it.

And I was going to need it because the second term brought the challenge I’d been watching from a distance since day one: Finance.

THE CHALLENGE AHEAD

Right after first-term exams ended, we all got an email from the world-famous Finance professor, Mikhail Simutin. His opening line read, “Congratulations on getting the first term under your belt. I’m sure all of you are eagerly looking forward to Finance I, which will begin on October 28/29.”

I gasped, and, I am sure, I muttered loudly on the Toronto metro on my way home for some much-needed rest and recharge: “No, I am not looking forward to seeing you, I need some sleep.” But in that burst of mixed emotions, I was comforted by the knowledge that the School had systems to help us succeed. So I made a decision right there: I wasn’t going to wait until I hit a wall. I was going to build my support system before I needed it.

That’s one of the first lessons Rotman teaches you if you’re paying attention: the smart move isn’t to struggle alone—it’s to leverage every resource the school offers before you need rescuing.

BUILDING MY FOUNDATION

First term taught me the value of strategic collaboration. My study team’s focus was on building a knowledge-sharing ecosystem. There were five of us from diverse backgrounds: Hardik Kalia, an investment banker; Faisal Fakhani, a versatile banking and marketing professional; Kewei Ruan, a creative heavyweight; and Rita Bian, an exceptional banker and finance expert.

We’d meet in the study rooms every other day, not because we were desperate, but because we’d figured out early that five brains working together beat one brain working alone. Always.

TACKLING FINANCE STRATEGICALLY

When Simutin’s Finance email arrived, I knew exactly what to do. I’d watched my classmates navigate the first term, and the pattern was clear: the ones who struggled waited until they were lost. The ones who thrived built their support networks early.

I reached out to AJ, a second-year student I’d met at one of the club events. Over coffee, I laid out my goal: I wanted to understand Finance not just well enough to pass, but well enough to actually to use it in my career.

“Walk me through how you think about this,” I said. “I need to connect it to what I already know.”

She asked me about my work before Rotman—how I evaluated marketing campaigns, how I assessed deals, and how I made strategic decisions about resource allocation.

That conversation reframed everything. When Professor Simutin started talking about bond valuation in the first class, I wasn’t trying to memorize formulas—I was connecting them to decisions I’d actually made. What’s this asset worth? What’s the risk? What’s the return? I’d been asking those questions my whole career.

By the third week, I was contributing to class discussions. By midterm, Finance had become one of my stronger subjects. It was not by some miracle, but through strategic preparation and leveraging the resources that Rotman had built for precisely this purpose.

STRATEGY: PLAYING TO MY STRENGTHS

Strategic Management felt like returning to familiar territory…but at a higher elevation. I’d spent years in brand strategy, but Professor Kevin Bryan taught me to think bigger—not just how to execute strategy, but how to architect it from the ground up.

Why does this business exist? What makes it defensible? Where are the vulnerabilities competitors will exploit? These weren’t academic questions—they were the frameworks I’d use in every role I’d take after Rotman.

The class discussions were exceptional. We’d analyze why Uber succeeded where others failed, and the room would light up with perspectives shaped by different markets, cultures, and business contexts. My classmate from Vietnam would offer insights about building competitive moats. Someone from Ghana would discuss market entry in emerging economies, while another from Mumbai would speak about the strategy behind India’s formidable start-up ecosystem. Every discussion was a masterclass in how global businesses actually work.

Through this class, I learned to think in systems, to see patterns across industries and geographies, and to understand that the best strategic decisions emerge from synthesizing multiple viewpoints.

DATA: SHARPENING MY EDGE

Decision-Making with Models and Data humbled me in the best way. Professor Regina Seibel opened the first class with a statement that made everyone sit up: “Intuition is valuable. But most business decisions made on gut instinct fail. This course will teach you why.”

She wasn’t being dramatic. She was being honest.

I’ve always trusted my instincts—they’ve served me well in crafting narratives and building brand strategies. But this course taught me something crucial: correlation is not causation. It sounds obvious until you realize how many companies—and how many of my own past decisions—confused the two.

We learned to distinguish real patterns from noise in data. We explored how machine learning algorithms work in business applications, and more importantly, where they fail and how biases creep into the mix. We studied probability theory, not as abstract math but as the language of decision-making under uncertainty.

One class session stuck with me: we analyzed a case where a company saw a correlation between social media engagement and sales, assumed causation, and invested millions in the wrong strategy. The data was right. Their interpretation was wrong. That distinction—between what the data says and what it means—became the foundation of everything we learned.

By the end of the term, I could build models, interpret data sets, run basic machine learning analyses, and most importantly, know when to trust my gut and when to listen to what the numbers were actually saying.

LEADERSHIP IN PRACTICE

In my second term, I took on roles as a first-year representative for the Rotman African and Caribbean Business Club and the Rotman Christian Association. I wasn’t running these organizations—not yet. But I was close enough to the executive teams to see how leadership actually works when you’re building something that matters.

The biggest learning came from planning a high-level speaker series for the African and Caribbean Business Club. The executive team tasked us with creating a lineup that would accomplish two objectives: reflect the club’s mission of showcasing Black excellence in business, and drive membership sign-ups from first-year students who were still deciding which clubs to commit to.

Those two goals sound simple until you’re actually building the list. Do you invite the alumnus working at McKinsey who’ll draw the consulting-focused crowd but might not resonate with students interested in entrepreneurship? Or the startup founder doing incredible work in Fintech but who doesn’t have the “brand name” that pulls people into a room?

The executives pushed us to think strategically: Who are we serving? What do new members need to see to understand what this club stands for? How do we build a series that educates and inspires?

We landed on a mix—an executive from an established firm paired with entrepreneurs building the next wave of Black-owned businesses in Toronto. The first event drew more sign-ups than anticipated. But more importantly, it set a tone: this club wasn’t just a ‘social club,’ but a club about representation, helping members see themselves in rooms they had daydreamed of being a part.

Working alongside those executives taught me something I couldn’t have learned in a classroom: leadership isn’t always about being in charge. Sometimes, it’s about contributing to a vision bigger than yourself, learning the strategy behind the decisions, and preparing yourself for when it’s your turn to lead.

By the end of the second term, I had a clear idea of the kind of leader I wanted to become when I stepped into those executive roles in my upper years.

THE GROWTH I DIDN’T SEE COMING

Here’s what’s interesting: the second term felt different than the first term. Not easier—Finance alone proves that wrong—but more manageable. I drank less coffee. I slept better. I had more clarity about what I was building here.

The difference wasn’t the workload. It was my approach. In my first term, I was learning the system. Second term, I was working the system. I knew which resources to tap, which relationships to build, and which frameworks to apply to which problems.

The second term also brought something I hadn’t fully anticipated: case competitions.

I teamed up with classmates who became more than competition partners—they became friends I still break bread with today. Together, we won the P&G Marketing Case Competition and placed in the top three at a consulting case competition. But what mattered more than the placements was what happened in those late-night prep sessions: the debates over strategy, the arguments about positioning, the moments when someone would flip the entire approach and we’d realize they were absolutely right.

Those competitions were where everything we’d been learning—Finance, Strategy, Data—collided in real time under pressure. You had 24 hours to analyze a business problem, build a strategy, and present it like your career depended on it. No textbooks. No professors. Just your team, your frameworks, and your ability to think clearly when exhausted.

The friendships forged in those pressure-cooker moments lasted beyond the competitions. We celebrated wins over drinks, dissected our losses over coffee, and built the kind of trust that only comes from solving hard problems together when the clock is running out.

Rotman has established a comprehensive support structure. The smart play wasn’t to tough it out alone. It was to use every advantage the school offered. Maybe that’s why I actually missed it during those four months away. Not Stockholm syndrome after all—just recognition that I’d found a place that was actively making me better.

Second term taught me that success here isn’t about having no doubts—it’s about knowing exactly where to turn when you do. And it taught me something even more important: when you get the chance to apply what you’ve learned at a place like Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment – working with brands and athletes you’ve admired your whole life – everything you struggled through in those classrooms suddenly makes perfect sense.

About Komi

Komi is a second-year MBA student at the Rotman School of Management and author of the “Coffee, Komi, Rotman” column. Before joining Rotman, he led strategic marketing communications at global platforms, including COP28, New York Climate Week, and the World Economic Forum, reaching audiences across multiple continents. Most recently, he worked as a Global Partnership Marketer at Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment with the Toronto Raptors (NBA), Toronto Maple Leafs (NHL), and Toronto FC (MLS), managing and executing partnership marketing campaigns for brands like Google, IBM, and Molson alongside NBA and international soccer players. At Rotman, he’s sharpening his expertise in strategy, leadership, and business development while building the kind of network and skills that turn ambitious ideas into enduring impact. Connect with him on LinkedIn.

DON’T MISS: COFFEE, KOMI, ROTMAN: THE LANGUAGE OF TRANSFORMATION and COFFEE, KOMI, ROTMAN: QUEST FOR ENDURING IMPACT

© Copyright 2025 Poets & Quants. All rights reserved. This article may not be republished, rewritten or otherwise distributed without written permission. To reprint or license this article or any content from Poets & Quants, please submit your request HERE.