Mastering Academics and Athletics with Melanie Judges
After completing an undergraduate degree in kinesiology at Queen’s University, Melanie Judges, MBA/17, jumped right into Sprott’s MBA program. Melanie said that since she did not have a background in business, it was the internship opportunities offered by Sprott that attracted her to the MBA program.
“I came into Sprott not knowing anything about business and so quickly they taught me all the tools and strategies to use to figure things out myself,” Melanie shared.
It was through her Sprott MBA internship at Statistics Canada that she landed a full-time job in her concentration of management and change. After working there for two years she was promoted to the human resources transformation agent at Public Services and Procurement Canada.
“A lot of [Sprott] professors highly recommended for everybody, but especially for people who didn’t have experience in business, to participate in the MBA Games,” Melanie explained. “Once I realized how fun and beneficial it was to my development and growth as a business student, it started snowballing, and I got more involved with the MBA Society and started giving back more and more.”
She got involved with the MBA Games in her first year and was part of the four person marketing team. The MBA Games is a national competition between universities’ MBA programs where they compete in academic, athletic and spirit contests. Melanie said she learned a lot from Professor Robin Ritchie about marketing before attending the MBA Games in Toronto. She had such a great experience that she volunteered to be captain the following year, when the Games were held in Vancouver. Now she helps out as an MBA Games coach when the category is in her areas of expertise like marketing, HR and strategy.
“I still benefit from helping out as a coach, from the idea generation,” said Melanie. “The creative ways [students] can crack cases and the ideas they come up with, not always super feasible, but really good thought processes and analytical capabilities.”
During her first year as an MBA student, Melanie was focused on the transition to studying business and getting involved in the Sprott community. Once that was established, in her second year she decided to play her last eligible year of varsity sports with the women’s rugby team at Carleton.
“We had training every single day, and games on weekends. So it was very tough to balance everything, but it was worthwhile because it forces you to manage your time better,” Melanie said. “People have this myth about varsity athletics, that if you’re in a tough program you can’t balance varsity athletics. But there’s so much academic support, at any school but at Carleton specifically.”
Melanie said she made some great friends, spent more time on campus and became more proactive with her time after joining the rugby team.
After university, Melanie has continued playing rugby for a local team and at the provincial level. This is her fourth year playing for the Ontario women’s rugby team. She was part of the team that brought home gold last year, and bronze this July at the Canadian Rugby Championships in Saskatoon.
“It was a great tournament and we got to connect with all of the high level rugby players from across the country,” said Melanie. “The girls on my team are A: the best rugby players in the country, and B: such good down to earth people. We’re all in the same boat, we’re all devoting our time to rugby.”
Her passion for rugby has brought her back to Carleton as a coach for the women’s rugby team. Last fall she started as an assistant coach for the team, and will be back at Carleton again this fall to help coach nearly every day of the week.
Melanie has also stayed involved at Carleton by being a dedicated member of the Sprott MBA Alumni Society.
“I want to make sure I’m staying involved going forward because of how much Sprott has given me,” Melanie expressed, “and how important I think it is for the alumni to give back, not necessarily in a numbers value of money but in experience, in advice, in guidance, in connections.”