Meet the Graduates
Tom Huppert
MAOL Graduate - IBM Director, WW Services Sales Operations, Professional Services and Education
Tom Huppert has been in the high tech world for 25 years, working in facets of organizations that range from operations management and marketing to field service, sales and business management. He has been with Cognos, which was last year acquired by IBM, for seven years now and serves as Director of Worldwide Services Sales Operations.
Huppert knew of the MAOL through graduates Nick Falkingham, Alan Chapman and Carol Martin, and had seen them grow as they worked toward their MAOL degrees. In Chapman in particular Huppert saw a creative attitude toward solving business challenges that especially resonated with him. Working through his MAOL, Huppert is taking his business and process oriented skills and using them to move initiatives along by giving people their own level of responsibility and ownership, diving deep into the entire process.
“How I view my relationships with people has changed. I have a greater authenticity,” says Huppert. “I know how to be myself and share in an authentic way what I am and my ideas. This has given me a whole new level of confidence in my leadership.”
Huppert’s breakthrough initiative entails quadrupling the services and global services pipeline. He is exploring new relationships within IBM/Cognos, and finding new ways to leverage those brands to drive mutual success. He is also working with a team to change cultural history, bringing people into collaboration in order to approach problems in a new, creative way.
Having been through standard MBA programs, Huppert attests that the Master’s in Organizational Leadership is nothing like them. The program focuses on the drawing out of the person, rather than on memorizing specific theories or models. It stirs thought processes in such a way that the candidate is invited to use things that have been locked inside of his or her head for years that might never have been drawn on. Huppert notes that his thought process has become more unfettered and creative and he frequently finds himself drawing upon acquired knowledge he’d never suspected he had acquired.
“Perception is reality is the lazy man’s way—I’m suggesting that people need to go a little bit deeper. That’s what this is about,” Huppert says. “The MAOL arms you with the ability to think about perceptions and see them as that, then go below the surface, and dive a little bit deeper.”