Posted on 13/04/2017

Enjoying life and the semester abroad in Madrid: Oliver and Eva Vaquero (far right) who later came for a semester to Olten.

“Due to personal challenges I didn’t expect to be going on a semester abroad. But then the situation changed and everyone at the school helped me still organise an exchange in Madrid.  So I left, having had a very tough time for over a year without any high expectations. However, this exchange had a very positive influence and helped me to recover. I began to meet great people from many different cultures who despite speaking different languages somehow all understood each other. I am still in contact with some of them. Suddenly I was living a different life, I was getting back to normal and regaining my motivation.  This semester was life-changing for me.”

Oliver Ivisic

Graduated BSc IM 2010

Now  Finance Project Lead at Hirslanden

“Hirslanden is a big company with 16 hospitals – I’d known it for a long time as my mother worked as a nurse for them. I’m in the corporate office and am part of the finance project team in a multi-million project to centralise parts of these unique, independent hospitalsI love it as it enables me to network with many people, develop my project management skills and deepen my knowledge of financial business topics.  Beforehand, as a management consultant, I was an external and I really appreciate having an internal position.  There are similarities but now all my clients are within the same organisation and we’re all in transition together. I want to develop my own USP’s within the next few years and even in the short time I’ve been here, and with great team support I’ve already managed to move this project forward which is very rewarding.”#

How did studying IM help? “Basically it gave me a great education – I didn’t realise the full value of such an education until much later.  We all got amazing opportunities.  For me one of the stand-outs was going to India for my Bachelor thesis.  FAIRMED wanted a cost analysis and a breakdown of funds sent to India.  A relatively easy task technically – the challenge lay in obtaining the information from the many different people in India.  I spent six weeks in a fairly rural area in India which was quite isolated and then travelled to Mumbai to meet with a friend and fellow student: suddenly I was surrounded by more people than you can imagine.”

After graduation Oliver followed his Bachelor with an MA in Banking and Finance at the University of St Gallen and then worked for over three years as a Management Consultant for Vectoris AG before starting with Hirslanden last December.