The Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad (IIMA) held its 56th annual convocation virtually. Kumar Mangalam Birla, Chairperson, Board of Governors (BoGs), IIMA and Professor Errol D’Souza, Director, IIMA, and other members of the Board, faculty, staff, alumni, graduating students and their families joined the event virtually. .
Birla conferred PhD titles, MBA, MBA-FABM, and MBA-PGPX degree and awarded scholastic medals. A total of 605 graduating students were conferred titles, degrees and included students from IIMA’s full-time long duration programmes — the PhD Programme in Management, the Post Graduate Programme in Management (PGP), the Post Graduate Programme in Food and Agribusiness Management (FABM-MBA), and the Post Graduate Programme in Management for Executives (MBA-PGPX). The toppers from the two-year MBA programme Akhil Mangla, Arunabh Saxena, and Vikas Kumar.
Valuable lessons
Delivering the convocation address, Birla congratulated the graduates and said, “It is important that you have clarity on your North Star, but then be adventurous and experiment, use these experiences to build your flywheel and compliment your IQ with EQ. I don’t see IQ and EQ as binary qualities, but rather as complementary traits that make a wholesome personality. You need to add other dimensions to your thinking, most importantly — empathy and humility. When you look back in a few years you must ask yourself just one question: Did I make a difference? It doesn’t matter whether you are a marketer or a consultant, an entrepreneur or a techie. Have you advanced progress in your field and added to the cumulative repository of knowledge and wisdom? If the answer is yes, then you have done justice to the education you have received and lived up to the rich legacy of this iconic institution.”
In his concluding address, Prof Errol D’Souza, Director, IIMA, applauded the perseverance and hard work of the students and faculty in the face of the pandemic. Prof D’Souza said, “Doing what is fair is often in conflict with showing loyalty and good citizenship behaviour in organisations that the students will work in. However, in a VUCA world we require people who are just and fair.” He congratulated them for navigating choppy waters during the challenging year at the institute and encouraged them to go out and give the best they are capable of that will be beneficial not only to their careers but also to humankind.