Makarand Parulkar, a veteran conference attendee and GMAC Advisory Group member, talks about his experience at this year's event.

I have enjoyed being a member of advisory group for the 2019 GMAC annual conference. The theme of the conference - to understand emerging trends in Graduate Management education; specifically, the impact of Artificial Intelligence in management education space and engaging with generation Z as they make their foray into management education and the workforce.

The opening keynote by Dr. Vivienne Ming discussed the impact of AI on education – both marketing & admissions as well as on engaging with gen z’s. The session also touched on how professionals can maintain their value in this rapidly changing technological climate.

Graduate Management Education is rapidly changing. The annual conference focused on a range of sessions to tease out how business schools are adapting to deliver programs to train the next generation of leaders. The conference has focused on the collective expertise of industry and business school representatives to learn about contemporary practices in Management education, while facilitating a forum to network with peers across the industry. New session formats were discussed during advisory group meetings to address feedback from previous conference attendees by introducing “flash sessions” to update the audience on current topics in the Graduate Management education space.

Representation on the advisory group came from a wide range of Business Schools from diverse regions to keep the agenda and topics relevant to attendees from a range of geographical locations. The concurrent sessions ranged across various topics covering admissions, content and digital marketing, recruitment, application trends across specialized masters and MBA programs.

A session on Friday morning on the reciprocity ring led by Wayne Baker, from the Ross School of Business brought the concept of “pay-it-forward” into action by bringing together the diverse group of conference attendees to help solve real business problems. This guided collaboration exercise was well-received by all attendees, who benefitted from the expertise of the diverse community attending the GMAC conference.

The closing session by Jodi Glickman explored the notion of searching for the job we love to shift our mindset (and steering our students) to making people love us! Using the GIFT framework (Generosity, Initiative, Forward momentum and Transparency), Jodi’s presentation focused on the tools & strategies to assist students to make the shift themselves.

Thank you to GMAC for the opportunity to network with experts from around the world during the conference and to work with a group of passionate individuals on the advisory group to plan the 2019 annual conference. It was an incredible experience and I have truly cherished the networks I built during the lead-up to and at the conference.