Even before graduating with his MBA from Trevecca, Adolph Aguirre has been able to use the skills he’s gained in the program to succeed in a new executive role with the American Red Cross.
“I had a Master of Divinity so I wanted something totally different and I wanted to focus on leadership. From my 13 years with the Salvation Army, I understood there was an advantage to understanding business,” Aguirre said. “I knew if I ever wanted to change organizations, I could utilize the MBA to leverage that opportunity.”
Aguirre was recently named the executive director of the Red Cross Dallas Fort Worth Metro West Chapter, where he has a variety of different responsibilities that demand a range of skills.
“I am working to build a team and develop team members. I come alongside them and offer insight and strategies we can utilize to be more effective,” Aguirre said. “I am bringing brand awareness and working to build an advisory board as well as the donor and volunteer bases and cultivate these groups to thrive within the organization.”
His time at Trevecca has helped to shape him into the leader he wants to be, giving him the resources to navigate the new position with expertise and clarity.
“I am responsible for nine counties and it has really been an opportunity to showcase the skill set I have gained from the MBA program,” Aguirre said. “Some of the major skill sets that I learned are in leadership and managing individuals, managing conflict and working with teams. The most important thing I learned was how to be a strategic thinker.”
Aguirre has not been going through the program alone. His wife, Patricia, is also pursuing her MBA at Trevecca. It has set them both up for success and allowed them to help each other succeed through difficult classes and concepts.
“We are both completing the MBA program and we were both able to land director positions,” Aguirre said. “It has been phenomenal to do the program together because whenever there were challenges we were able to help each other out. In our business analytics course, she was able to help me with a few concepts and in our leadership course, I was able to help her. We could support one another.”
After starting at the American Red Cross at the end of September, he has encountered some challenges but feels capable of working through them thanks to a class that focused on some of the more difficult aspects of entering a new work environment.
“The most challenging part was just transitioning from one non profit organization to another and understanding the culture and the dynamics. But I think I was really well prepared for it,” Aguirre said. “The human resources course really helped me understand the corporate culture in this environment. There is a shift, a different strategy and a different mission.”
Overall, Aguirre feels prepared to tackle this new role, using his new found skills from the MBA to succeed and advance the mission of the American Red Cross: “to prevent and alleviate human suffering in the face of emergencies.”
