I’d like to say that with the studies I actually became a better leader, and I would not have been able to do this without the education that I received from IU.
My name is Stela Koleva, and at the moment I am the Vice President for EMEA Services and Support at SAP Concur and the country director for our Concur Czech office.
The reason I started studying at IU... I wanted to do a Master's degree for some time, and in 2012, I was first promoted to my first leadership role, as a supervisor of 3 people, and then 4 years later I already had 300 people within 9 departments within SAP Concur services.
Around that time, I realised I really needed to invest more in my education, and I had to understand better what I was doing. I was one of the very first IU students in Prague, most of the other students at that time when I started time were primarily in Germany or the US and other countries, but not really in the Czech Republic.
Whenever I would have questions, and how flexible IU has been when it comes to just organising my schedule, the opportunity to do the exams from home, for example, has been really really really helpful for me. And yes, I have done exams from hotel rooms. That’s not as much fun, but it’s also possible, so the fact that that IU is making so much of it possible, for anybody, no matter what your schedule is, has been really helpful.
You have to be as flexible as IU, and you can always lean on and ask others for help, if you need advice or a little bit of guidance from your professors. Never hesitate to ask the other students or the teacher.
Studying at IU for me was a great opportunity to get comprehensive, solid education from the convenience of my home, or my office, or a lot of hotel rooms, and any other places I could study.