MBA Connections with Sebastian Kwasiborski

Sebastian Kwasiborski, MBA/17, gained important tools and experiences in his MBA that have helped him navigate his dynamic career.

After studying political science and history at McGill University, Sebastian went right into Sprott’s MBA program. Sebastian initially started the program with international business as his concentration, but that changed when he took Professor Linda Duxbury’s organizational behaviour class. The subject matter captured his interest and he switched his concentration to management and change.

An internship with Raymond Chabot Grant Thornton through Sprott led to a full time job offer after graduation. Eight months later he was head-hunted by a cyber-security firm, Darktrace, for a sales position.

“I took the opportunity to do that because sales is a really good experience no matter what you’re going to do afterwards,” said Sebastian. “I got to travel a lot—eastern Canada, New York, San Francisco—so it was really cool.”

He said this job had the steepest learning curve because he had to learn a whole new industry in order to sell enterprise level cyber security software to companies.

When Sebastian heard about a position at Canada Post, he talked with Mike Price, a Sprott MBA student who worked there, before deciding that it was the right opportunity for him. Now Sebastian has been working as the assistant product manager for Canada Post since June. Sebastian is on the team for domestic parcels and his portfolio includes regulated products like shipments of tobacco, alcohol and cannabis.

“Canada Post has 70,000 people. It’s a very big organization. But because I work on the parcel side as opposed to the letter mail, we don’t have a monopoly of parcels. Canada Post is the only carrier who can deliver mail, but anybody can deliver parcels, UPS, FedEx, IntelCom delivers for Amazon. We are competing against other businesses, so it is run more privately than typically what you’d see in the letter mail sector,” explained Sebastian. He said he enjoys how interesting and interactive the position is every day.

“Coming from a non-business background, the MBA definitely laid all of that foundational work—accounting, finance, all the way through to the change management stuff,” said Sebastian about how his time at Carleton prepared him for his job.

During his MBA, Sebastian became very involved in Sprott. He was VP Social for the MBA Society, MBA representative on the Building Committee and VP Logistics of the MBA Games.

“Anytime anyone said ‘we need a student to do this, or we need a student to do that,’ I always put my hand up and got involved,” Sebastian shared. His advice to Sprott students is to get involved, take advantage of the resources at Sprott and make connections.

More than a year after graduation and Sebastian is still involved in the Sprott community. He is on the MBA Alumni Society and is running for co-president with Melanie Judges.

“To maintain a network of connections is really important. It doesn’t have to be people you know from your own personal experience in the MBA. If you have a tight knit alumni group, it could really help other people.”