At first glance, Damian Blazy is not your typical participant on an Executive MBA programme – an MBA for working managers. He works at the Pentagon as an energy security analyst, but not long ago he was on active duty as a fighter pilot.
Yet every third Friday and Saturday he attends classes at the Sloan school at MIT in Boston. The first reason he gives for studying a management degree will resonate with any engineer or accountant on his course. “I need to translate between technical issues and writing policy.”
His second reason is learning to save energy. For Blazy this is a bigger problem than for most: the US military is the world’s largest user of petroleum and increasing the use of biofuels has dramatic consequences. “A lack of energy can result in casualties,” he says.