Driven to Lead

It doesn’t come as a surprise when Brenda Katwesigye Baganzi introduces herself as a huge Formula One fan: The engineer, entrepreneur, consultant and all-around strategy pro thrives in fast-paced, intense and competitive situations.

But Brenda is no solo driver: She fully gets the value of community in professional pursuits—and she credits her time in the Smith Full-time MBA program with giving her that perspective.

Brenda came to the program with impressive business chops. She’d founded Wazi, a premium eyewear manufacturer, in her native Uganda and within a few years had grown it into a category leader in East Africa. She’d done strategy and advisory consulting with a range of businesses. She’d been written up in Forbes and Quartz.

Yet for all her successes, Brenda was feeling her wheels start to spin. “I was using the same playbook I had been all along, but I wasn’t getting the kind of returns I was expecting,” she explains. “I realized: If I wanted to do something bigger than what I had already accomplished in Uganda, I needed to invest more in who I was as a person.” An MBA seemed just the ticket.

Brenda considered several schools, but the Smith Full-time MBA stood out for a few reasons: Her inner adrenaline junkie was drawn to the immersive, full-time structure of the program. Canada held a lot of opportunities, home to many of the corporations she was eyeing for employment in her next career era. And the stacked alumni network and diverse student body offered ample opportunities to connect with professionals with different industrial, geographical and career backgrounds. She applied to the program and was accepted in the fall of 2020.

Still, enrolling was a big decision. Like many entrepreneurs, Brenda had poured almost all of her individual wealth into her ventures, meaning that while the businesses were thriving, her personal finances were tight. The program would mean depleting her reserves while simultaneously halting her earnings. She was contemplating deferring, even selling some possessions, when she learned she had earned the Stephen J. R. Smith MBA Scholarship. “That made all the difference to me,” she reflects.

The educational experience itself contained a few unexpected twists and turns. Brenda arrived in Toronto in January 2021, amid a deep freeze (which quickly rendered the light jacket she'd brought irrelevant) and in the middle of rolling Covid lockdowns. Instead of lecture halls and campus cafes, most of her study time took place in front of her screen. But Brenda intentionally sought out opportunities to connect. She began asking classmates to go for walks (after upgrading to a winter-appropriate parka) and, when restrictions started to lift, arranging meet-ups. She started weekly sessions with a Career Advancement Centre coach, where she learned how to polish her professional story, among other things. She got involved with Smith’s Women in Leadership Club and helped to organize the school’s Scale Up Summit. In the process, her professional network began to swell. “I really did make the most of it,” she says, “And I found that the more intentional I was about reaching out, and the more effort I put in, the more those relationships grew.”

This mentality helped Brenda to land a job she loves at Mastercard, where she was recently promoted into a role consulting with businesses on strategy and transformation. “I help them turn things around,” she says with a laugh. And she’s certain it will help her with whatever the future holds. “There are things I’m quite confident I’m good at, but my MBA taught me that no one is an island,” she explains. When you put in the work to develop real connections, she adds, the benefits quickly compound: “People advocate for you in the rooms you’re not in. People help you with challenges. People tell you about the next good projects where you should be focusing your energy. The pieces really start to come together.”

Established in October 2015 by Stephen Smith, the Stephen J.R. Smith MBA Scholarship is awarded based on merit on the basis of academic excellence to students like Brenda entering the Full-time MBA program at Smith School of Business.