Alex Kuznetsov

 

Alex Kuznetsov

MITIM-2015 (CEMS)
Google
Co-founder of MadPaws

 

Right after graduating from “Business Informatics” Bachelor’s at ITMO university and Metropolia UAS (Finland) I was lucky enough to join the Master’s program at GSOM. I hada strong desire to continue international lifestyle, get a business education and at thesame time continue improving IT-related skills.After entering GSOM I got intoa double degree program with CEMS which gave me anunique opportunity to spend a semester abroad in Australia, studying at University ofSydney Business School. Sydney was a place where we could study, surf, work andtravel at the same time. It was a place where we started a currently rapidly growingcompany with Alexis Soulopoulos (madpaws.com.au). Furthermore, thereupon, togetherwith Alina Verbenchuk (who was in Hong Kong at that time) we won a marketing case competition (Travellenge) by momondo, having impressed a judging committee from Google and momondo at the international finals in Copenhagen where 14 (outof 800) teams from all over Europe presented their solutions. And this would not happenwithout strong presentation & communication skills which GSOM lets (and forces!) you topractice multiple times a week.

And my bet on mixing business acumen (nurtured by GSOM and USYD) with technical skills proves itself working over and over again. For instance, while finishing atechnical consultancy project for KONE in USA this summer, I already had competing offers for fulltimepositions at Adidas (in Germany) and Google (in Ireland). In theend I decided to joinGoogle - company where many dozens of GSOM and CEMSgraduates work right now.During two fairly challenging years of the Master’s program GSOM gave me a strongtheoretical and practical skill set. And it is a sheer pleasure to witness how highly arethese skills valued both in Russia and abroad.