Bruno Rossetto Machado waited more than 10 years to take a course from MIT Sloan Executive Education.
A São Paulo, Brazil-based technical support leader and solutions architect working in the Latin American division of software development firm Red Hat, Machado had a conversation with a friend back in 2006 and learned about the program. He decided to research it and realized that he could participate and pursue an Executive Certificate in Strategy and Innovation while living and working outside of the United States far from MIT’s Cambridge campus. However, with the amount of travel his job required, he never found the time to register and begin classes. By mid-2020, though, he not only was well on his way to earning that certificate in Strategy and Innovation, but he also had decided to go even further and pursue his Advanced Certificate for Executives in Management, Innovation, and Technology (ACE).
“I had a talk with my manager and told him that I wanted to move my career towards a managerial path,” recalls Machado, who tapped into Red Hat’s tuition reimbursement program to begin his journey with Executive Education. “The ACE is so unique because it offers a mix of innovation, leadership, strategy, business, and everything I need for my career path. As a manager, I knew I would have to innovate for customers and find solutions for their problems. I also would be leading a team, be part of product development, and more. The ACE covers all of that and would allow me to fully develop my career.”
An Unexpected Opportunity
Several months after Machado took his first Executive Education course, Mastering Design Thinking, he actually had an opportunity to assume a managerial role with Red Hat, restructuring the Specialist Solution Architecture in the South, Andean, and Caribbean sub-region of the Latin America Office of Technology. It was July of 2020; the Covid pandemic had essentially stopped his travel and allowed him to focus on his new position. It was then that he decided to lean in completely to Executive Education and take advantage of the fact that MIT had transitioned many in-person courses to live online offerings. It was exactly what he needed.
“In this position, I had to build a new team of specialist solution architects, but they all had to work locally from their own countries. I had to find a way to scale their knowledge and their collaboration from around the entire Latin region,” he explains. “I needed courses that would give me the frameworks to ask the right questions, figure out the culture I wanted to implement, and reinvent the performance metrics and goals with each of the members of my team.”
“The ACE is so unique because it offers a mix of innovation, leadership, strategy, business, and everything I need for my career path.”
Machado settled on a number of classes, including Building Game-Changing Organizations: Aligning Purpose, Performance, and People. This course in particular changed how he and everyone on his newly formed team related to each other. He observes, “When I talked to my team, so many of them said, ‘We have a prepared leader who is studying and helping us to understand what the strategy of our company is and how we are aligned with those goals.’ I could use the methodology from that class right away, and I still use it often today.”
On the Way to ACE
Over the next couple of years, Machado added to his roster of courses with offerings like Inquiry-Driven Leadership, Neuroscience for Business, Digital Business Strategy: Harnessing Our Digital Future, Communication and Persuasion in the Digital Age, Data-Driven Teams: The Art and Science of Winning, Managing Complex Technical Projects, and Managing Product Platforms: Delivering Variety and Realizing Synergies. He simultaneously evolved in his role with Red Hat; in mid-2022, he became the manager responsible for App Platform Specialists and Cloud Services Black Belts, two teams of experts in hybrid cloud technologies, and cloud-native application architecture working closely with key partners like IBM, AWS, Microsoft, and Google. He is only a couple of courses away from achieving his ACE, with in-person, on-campus options like Systematic Innovation of Products, Processes, and Services and Innovating in Existing Markets: Reviving Mature Products and Services coming down the pipeline. Furthermore, he plans to complete the program by the end of 2023.
Since the beginning of his Executive Education journey, Machado has been strategic in his course selections, choosing classes that would benefit him as he moves toward his overall professional goals. “Everything starts with my career path and my aspirations for the future,” he says, adding that he is fully dedicated to becoming a technology sales director soon and even one day teach in an academic setting. Wherever his career journey takes him, though, he is proud of his newfound affiliation with one of the most renowned educational institutions in the world. “It’s an honor to talk with my family, who acknowledges that I am doing something unique. That’s one of the most rewarding parts of this process,” he concludes. “I hope others know that it’s possible for them to do something similar too. This really is a unique growth and learning opportunity.”
Learn more about MIT Sloan Executive Certificates.