ABS gave me a great opportunity to develop my areas of expertise and expand my knowledge in other subjects.

I came from Ukraine and obtained my master’s degree in Japanese language at Kiev National Taras Shevchenko University. During my education I won a scholarship from the Ministry of Education of Japan and have studied Japanese language and culture for one year in Tokyo Gakugei University. I was impressed by the efficiency of Japanese education system and started dreaming about obtaining a second degree in Japan.

My career started as interpreter of Japanese and English languages. Later on, I was fond of marketing communications and within next 3 years I worked in this area. While I was working as a PR specialist, I had impression that the level of internal and external communications, promotion and CSR activities in Ukraine is quite low. At the same time, having working for Japanese companies, I have experienced a high efficiency of management style and high quality of projects made by Japanese managers. Also after coming to Japan I noticed many interesting features of Japanese market and marketing strategies of Japanese companies that Ukraine does not have. For example, deep understanding of consumers' needs, unique ways of attracting and accessing customers, non-branded goods, innovative promotion tools and diverse CSR activities.

Many of these features are typical only for Japanese market, so I have ensured that studying of Japanese management and marketing would be really useful for my career. To develop my professional knowledge and skills I decided to enter Japanese university.

I am often asked why being a marketing specialist I chose MBA. Working in marketing areas I felt that knowledge of marketing itself is not enough for successful implementation of the projects. Whatever I was doing: planning of marketing strategy, conducting advertising campaign or implementing internal PR projects, I lacked the knowledge in finance, statistics, strategy and human resource management. In addition, MBA course gives an essential knowledge of how to start and develop your own business.

While I was searching for universities with MBA course I have discovered that most of the programs are offering only core subjects while I intended to focus on marketing. But significant hallmark of Aoyama Business School (ABS) was the existence of different majors. Moreover, by focusing mostly on marketing subjects, I still could easily choose other courses (e.g. finance or IT).

Professors of ABS have extensive experience in different areas of business, so besides the theoretical knowledge they share up-to-date practical information about the market and enterprises.

In many schools education system involves lectures and exams at the end of semester. In ABS group works as well as business cases analyses, market researches, class discussions and presentations are the integral part of academic activity.

More than 50% of our students are foreigners and it gives unique outlook to the business cases, helps to learn differences of foreign markets and management cultures.

Studying in ABS gave me countless number of benefits, but the most important is the opportunity to change my life and pave the way for the future.