"It was a great experience for me, helping me grow as a manager and leader."

Alumnus Profile - Benoît Cotnoir
• Marketing Manager, Lafarge North America
• MBA, Georgia Tech, 2006
• BA, Economics, University of Notre Dame, 1999

After enduring scores of stitches, several broken bones, and reconstructive knee surgery during his five-year hockey career, Benoît Cotnoir knew his mind and body demanded a change of pace. Recognizing that an MBA would help him "speed" skate from the hockey rink into a corporate career, Cotnoir enrolled at the College of Management in fall 2004. "As a career changer, this program was a perfect fit," he says.

He played as a defenseman for the Mobile Mystics in Alabama and Basingstoke Bisons in England after graduating with All-American honors from Notre Dame. "The lifestyle behind minor-league sports gets old pretty quickly, with cheap hotels, cheap meals, and long bus rides," says Cotnoir. "I wanted more out of life, and the business school at Georgia Tech offered me that. It was always my dream to get my MBA."

Thanks to his education, his professional dreams are starting to come true. After graduation, he went to work as a marketing manager for Lafarge North America, the largest diversified construction materials company in the U.S. and Canada. "I will use many skills and concepts learned at Georgia Tech, such as Six Sigma, operations, service operations, and customer segmentation."

Cotnoir moved from hockey-team captain to president of Tech's Graduate Students in Management during the 2005-06 academic year. "It was a great experience for me, helping me grow as a manager and leader," says Cotnoir, whose duties included representing students' interests to school administrators, working with the career development office, and organizing town-hall meetings, community service projects, social events, and networking opportunities.

He particularly enjoyed helping build relationships between students and young alumni at periodic dinner events. "It's good to see what people can do with their degrees one to three years out of school," says Cotnoir, who was named 2006 MBA Student of the Year by faculty.

"For me, this business school has been great. The program's small size meant that I wasn't just a number here, and that was very important to me. As a Georgia Tech MBA student, you get personalized service and attention because of the smaller class sizes, yet you have access to all the resources of a top ten public university."