Beth O’Rorke had been working as Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer for Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts for five years when she decided that it was time to take a big leap, stepping out on her own as an independent consultant focusing on technology strategy development, digital transformation implementation, and technology initiative execution. As she made that transition, though, she paused and realized that there was something else she had interest in doing as well.
“I’ve always enjoyed solving business problems and using technology to do achieve better results. Technology changes so fast that you have to keep up, keep learning,” she says. “Enrolling in Executive Education at MIT Sloan was critical for me because I was so deep into healthcare in Massachusetts that I wanted to pick my head up, look across industries and globally, and further my understanding of how technology has helped others in business. I wanted to focus on classes that I knew would strengthen my skill set and help me be aware of what I needed to do as a leader. And it was the right moment in time in my life where I could balance learning with trying something new.”
Initially, in July of 2020, O’Rorke began selecting courses from the Executive Certificate in Strategy and Innovation track that were intriguing. She never intended to go as far as she did with this particular professional education experience. “I was looking at the types of courses first, and then I backed into a certificate,” she muses. “My goal wasn’t a certificate. I just thought that the courses looked amazing. So I took a few of them and quickly realized that I could work towards a certificate. Then I ended up with two certificates.”
In fact, over a span of only seven months between July 2020 and February 2021, O’Rorke not only secured her Executive Certificate in Strategy and Innovation, but she also completed the Executive Certificate in Management and Leadership.
Connecting the Dots
Courses such as Accelerating Corporate Innovation: The Competitive Advantage of Ecosystem Engagement, Organizational Design for Digital Transformation, and Implementing Enterprise-Wide Transformation were a perfect fit for O’Rorke as she built the toolkit she needed to support clients of her new consulting business. However, other courses from outside of the Strategy and Innovation track intrigued her as well. Soon, she felt that courses like Artificial Intelligence: Implications for Business Strategy, Questions are the Answer: A Breakthrough Approach to Creative Problem Solving, Innovation, and Change, and Reimagining Leadership: A Playbook for the Digital Economy were ones that she simply could not pass up.
"You need to learn so you don’t get stale and you can help others succeed and meet company goals. Continuous learning has to be a part of who you are. Fortunately, MIT Sloan Executive Education gives you a really easy way to do just that."
“I took the enterprise-wide transformation and organizational design for digital transformation courses because every company I work with needs to go through that process right now, and I wanted to be able to help them be successful. Then I dipped into Artificial Intelligence so I could understand all of the applicability of AI across industries—what’s real and what’s farther out—and I found it be fascinating,” she explains. “Moving between Strategy and Innovation and Management and Leadership allowed me to focus on technology, transformation, and change while giving me the practical knowledge and leadership skills I need to help others solve complex business problems. All of the courses complemented each other, and they really helped me enhance my leadership style.”
A Broader Perspective
Today, O’Rorke considers herself to be in another phase of her career, having worked in corporate roles in a variety of industries, from insurance to retail to healthcare. She has taken on a number of roles, leading up to her experience as a CIO, as well as an advisory board member. Since 2020, after establishing herself as a CIO-as-a-Service professional and digital transformation executive consultant, she has leveraged her background, as well as industry and technology best practices, to serve her clients as they tackle problems to advance their companies and also work to build out entirely new digital companies. She attributes her ability to do that effectively by being curious and placing an emphasis on continuous learning, particularly in the technology arena.
“Technology used to be an enabler in business. Now, technology is a driver of business,” she observes. “You need to learn so you don’t get stale and you can help others succeed and meet company goals. Continuous learning has to be a part of who you are. Fortunately, MIT Sloan Executive Education gives you a really easy way to do just that.”
While O’Rorke lives in the Boston area, attending in-person courses was not possible because of the COVID pandemic. However, she found a unique silver lining to going the virtual route with her classes, many of which were live online while others were self-paced. “You’re in a smaller setting with the live online courses, but it brings a broader perspective with so many students participating from all over the world,” she says. “So many of the participants probably would not have been able to make the trip to Cambridge for the live classes, but the online option allowed them to join. It brought more people together with diverse backgrounds, and we were all able to learn from each other. It really gave me a broader audience to engage with. We had a variety of people collaborating and sharing, which was very helpful.”
According to O’Rorke, who reveals that she might transition back into the corporate world in the near future, she will take all of the information and insight she has garnered through her Executive Education experience with her wherever she goes. The practical knowledge she gained from her professors and colleagues remains very relevant. “The courses I took for both certificates have given me a broader and deeper skill set,” she concludes. “And the certificates are a great acknowledgement to the profession in which you’re building your career. It’s an outcome one can really be proud of.”
Learn more about MIT Sloan Executive Certificates.