Próspero Filipe

Co-founder of NALU

“He won’t make it in secondary school, and neither will he be able to follow postgraduate studies”. Those were the words my primary school teacher said to my mother in 6th grade. He would never have expected that I would successfully complete a university postgraduate programme.

Most of my work colleagues cannot understand such a reaction. Looking back, however, I understand my primary school teacher’s position. I was extremely inquisitive as a child, however, in most school subjects, I counted more on a portion of luck (or destiny, as I called it at the time) and less on diligence and hard work. The lack of support from my main teachers led me to decide early on to go my own way. I invested a lot of my free time, other than in music, in learning web & graphic design and after a while earned a good pocket money with it. Accordingly, after secondary school I decided to start my own business as a service provider in the web sector and to focus on my areas of interest and strengths instead of getting a bachelor’s degree like most of my schoolmates. Since then, education has been a largely autodidactic path for me. I concentrated on acquiring the skills that were in demand and not very common and that coincided with my interests. Today, I successfully manage projects in the digital and marketing sector.

 But Socrates already said: “I know that I do not know”. I realized that without academic mentors and teachers, I had a blind spot in various areas. With the support of my supervisor at the time, and to further achieve my goals, I decided to embark on an accredited continuing education programme. This is how I became aware of the Executive Programmes offered by the iimt of the University of Fribourg. Flexible and tailor-made courses, which were also open to non-academics. This was the start of my journey, in which I illuminated my blind spots in the areas of finance, service design, digital business and global business management, together with other professionals and executives. I benefited not only from the experience of top professors in business and research, but also from the experience of my fellow students.

 I completed my study programme “Executive Diploma Digital Leadership” with my thesis in “Digital Services in Pregnancy Support” and the distinction “magna cum laude”. I am glad to have taken this path and can highly recommend continuous education to everyone, even after completing a first degree or earlier further education.

 A big thank you to my supervisor at the time and the entire team of the international institute of management in technology (iimt) at the University of Fribourg for this wonderful time!