[img_inline align=”right” src=”http://padnws01.mcmaster.ca/images/Nick-Owen.jpg” caption=”Nick Owen is a senior facilitator for the ALTITUDE program as well as a wilderness guide for the McMaster Outdoor Club. “]Nick Owen lives by a simple motto-do what you have fun with.

The MBA candidate at the DeGroote School of Business is not your average business student-he has a background in sociology and has opted to forgo the corporate route to make his degree and career exactly what he wants them to be.

“I can't see myself working in an office job in downtown Toronto,” he says. “I want to really leverage my MBA, not to stay away from the corporate world, but to engage the corporate world in a different way.”

A lover of all things outdoors, Owen is a senior facilitator for the ALTITUDE program (Achieving Leadership Through Integrating Teamwork Unity Dedication and Empowerment) run through the Athletics & Recreation department. The program is designed to offer leadership and team building experiences in order to educate participants about communication, group dynamics, the role and expectations of a leader, and how members of a team can function effectively. In addition, he is a wilderness guide for McMaster's Outdoor Club, leading groups on various backcountry adventures, including canoeing and backpacking.

Owen believes in the benefits of adventure programming so much that he incorporated it into his own business, OwenMason Management Consulting.

“I started my company with the idea of facilitation, which has now crystallized into something that is one part management consulting, one part professional and outdoor facilitation, and one part wilderness guide,” he begins. “The connection lies in the power of adventure programming and experiential education as mechanisms for developing skill sets, changing behaviours and introducing people to aspects of their personality they didn't know they had.”

With the business skills Owen is gaining from his MBA training, he will not only be able to manage his own business, but successfully interact with clients as well.

“Doing an MBA was never about having letters after my name,” says Owen, “but about learning to speak the language of the business world, gaining professional credibility and learning how to effectively engage business professionals, indoors or outdoors.”