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.