Shawn Cordes: Change of Perspective
Shawn Cordes
Director, Development and Analysis, Priceline.com
M.S. in MIT ’06
“The program helped me to become a better leader. It helped me to better understand people, what they are looking for and what motivates them.”
During his 10 years in the IT industry, Shawn Cordes (M.S. in MIT ’06) became keenly aware of the impact of technology within the business world. “What I saw,” Cordes says, “was that some of the best businesspeople were those who understood technology, and some of the best IT people were those who understood the business side. I was looking for a program that would offer me the best of both worlds—and McIntire’s M.S. in MIT delivered.”
While he was enrolled in the program, Cordes was struck by the impact he was able to make at work based on what he’d just learned in class. “It seemed like every other class I was having an ‘aha’ moment, finding tools that I could take back and apply to a current or future project,” he says.
Cordes says that one of the biggest lessons he learned was how to frame proposals in terms of the business value of IT. “The program really enabled me to enhance my existing skills sets on both the business and IT side, and to take them to a deeper level,” he says. Cordes also reports that the program helped him to strengthen his skills in technology planning and project management, as well as his understanding of team dynamics. “The program helped me to become a better leader,” he says. “It helped me to better understand people, what they are looking for and what motives them.”
Cordes, like so many of his classmates, was quickly able to leverage his leadership abilities into a new role. “About two months into the program I was offered a job with Priceline.com in Connecticut—and it was a promotion to the director level,” he says. “The program helped me to earn that role and to raise my overall level of credibility.” Moreover, he says, “the M.S. in MIT Program has helped significantly on the compensation side, and I’m sure it will continue to do so in the future.”
Overall, Cordes says, “the M.S. in MIT Program was more than I expected. It brought out the best in everyone.” Indeed, Cordes says, he continues to benefit from the lessons learned while working in teams with his fellow students. “I got to see from so many different viewpoints,” he reflects. “It wasn’t just the perspective of publicly held companies—it was also the public sector, the private sector, different industries and projects, and varying backgrounds. I gained so much from being able to see the diverse ways that people look at the same type of project. You’ve got to learn to work with everyone and leverage all those different backgrounds.”