Now, Steve Cote is a Canadian diplomat. He worked as the Canadian ambassador to the Dominican Republic, he was a consul in Madrid and took part in organising the 2010 Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver. He completed the postgraduate Executive MBA in Sports Management at the Real Madrid Graduate School.
Steve highlights his passion for sports, his professional experience and his background from his time at Universidad Europea in the following interview:
Question: For someone with an important career as a diplomat, what led you to study a master’s degree related to the world of sport?
Answer: I have a huge passion for sports. I practice cycling and have done so since I was 15, but before that I’d played football, baseball, tennis... American sports. Cycling became my passion when a friend took me to a race, and that’s where it all began.
I studied, I started university and I liked the international world. I joined the Canadian Foreign Ministry and there came a time when our country was going to host the Winter Olympics in 2010. Sports, international relations... everything I liked came together. I worked and found some responsibilities where I could manage a team in Vancouver and it was an incredible experience. I spent two years working with the International Olympic Committee and the Canadian Olympic Committee, with athletes and international institutions, combining sports with the field I had been working in.
Everything just fit together perfectly and in that moment I said: “this is what I want to do”. The Olympic Games finished and I was offered something that had nothing to do with sports, in Afghanistan. I was working on one of those priorities of my government, but every year I looked at master’s programmes to further train myself and advance. I always found a reason not to do it: I had to move, they lasted a long time, etc.
Q: What was it that you found at the School that made you decide to study this programme?
A: A year and a half ago I looked again, and in a ranking of the best institutions, the Real Madrid Graduate School featured. I had been in Madrid as a consul between 2002 and 2006. There I became a fan of football and Real Madrid. In my head this programme was centred around football, but I saw that it wasn’t actually just about football, but all sports. It offered what I was looking for and I was able to work at the same time, as it was online. They gave me an interview and everything went smoothly.
Q: How does someone with a professional background such as yours go through this experience and what were you looking for in your career?
A: It had been more than 20 years since I last studied, and I was studying alongside much younger people, which made me a little nervous but also gave me a lot of motivation and hope. The time difference meant I could take classes in the afternoon and everything fit together perfectly.
This master’s degree was a challenge for me, even if it wasn’t going to give me that step forward that it might give someone just starting out in their career. After 25 years in the world of diplomacy, I wanted a change and to focus myself more on the sports and management side of things. It was my chance to pursue this transition and to bring my experience to an organisation like the IOC, FIFA or clubs like Real Madrid. If I was going to change sectors, I needed that push and to expand my network, as offered by a programme of this kind.
Q: How important was the possibility of doing this programme online?
A: The technology for it existed already, but we hadn’t yet made the best use of it. The fact that my office for work and study was my laptop was a great advantage and provided flexibility. You can learn from anywhere, watch recorded classes if you can’t attend, and share the challenge with people from all over the world.
Q: What can someone learn who, in this case, could be teaching and sharing all that experience? What stood out in this learning experience?
A: There were professors from all around Europe, from the United States, etc. and all of them complemented each other well. The quality of professors was really high. There’s one that comes to mind who really left an impression on me: Robert Good, who taught General Management. They were all very good, but I felt like his class and the tools for analysis really opened my eyes to a new world. Today I still look back at his comments and what we learned from him.
Q: To round off, how would you describe your experience at the School?
This master’s degree gave me a better understanding of the international world of sports and provided me with tools I didn’t have before. Beyond the three letters of MBA is everything you learn. We aimed to reflect everything we studied and use it in the final thesis. You feel fulfilled when you see that you can shape what you’ve learned into something that can be useful for real life, which is more than just a project on paper that has no relevance to reality.
My experience studying the master’s degree was a dream come true. It gave me motivation and a passion. I woke up every day happy, and that's the most important thing in daily life. The Real Madrid Graduate School–Universidad Europea switched on that light in me. They were some incredible months full of happiness, motivation and meeting new people. I realised the importance of continuing to educate myself every day and to focus on what I want to do. Now I’m focused on searching for a career change and I’m confident that it’ll happen in a few months.
I finished two months ago and I’m happy. Now I feel a little empty after finishing, I feel like I still need to be living that experience.