In the Business of Sports Medicine

Current Asper Masters of Business Administration (MBA) student Elliot Wong may not have become who he is now if it wasn’t for a sprained ankle. 

At the time of the sprain, he was an ultimate frisbee player on his way to representing Team Canada at a world championship. “I was devastated,” he said. “The impact that had on me as an athlete…it was colossal.”

A sports medicine doctor helped him realize this wasn’t, in fact, the end of the world. This moment inspired him to take many, many years of medical school (at University of Manitoba) and residency (at McGill in Montreal) so he could do the same things for athletes in similar situations. 

He undertakes his latest adventure, an Asper MBA, between patients. But this time around, he wasn’t inspired by an injury but a question: “why?”
 

Marrying Medicine and MBA

As Wong gained more experience in sports medicine, he started noticing patterns in the countless individual stories he would hear. 

“Some of the patients seemed to present with very similar issues, like, oh, I've seen this diagnosis a lot,” Wong says. 
As he kept asking “why?,” he found that the patterns were caused by things he didn’t cover in medical school. Flawed, society-wide systems. Governments. Businesses.

The MBA then became a way to understand a new layer of his critical thinking: “Businesses have the power to impact huge communities or societies as a whole.”

He felt that being a physician with an MBA is an unfulfilled niche in Winnipeg, and an important one, as there is a deep “business of medicine” that often goes underestimated.

“Specifically with medicine, there are so many things that are business-related,” he says. “There's actually quite a few things that go into things like running a clinic or a hospital.”

A tiny sampling of those things: hiring and employment practices. Management. Supply chain. 

“You don't want your clinic to run out of supplies,” he says. “That would be bad.”
 

More than just a classroom

Even with his veteran education status (which is probably putting it lightly), Wong was pleasantly surprised by the wealth of innovative experiential learning options offered by the Asper School of Business. 

In his first case competition, he was introduced to a completely new way of 360-degree-thinking…and he had to master it in about 3 hours. 

Case competitions present you with case study and a problem, force you to solve unique problems in a time crunch, and explain your solutions for a team of judges who definitely know what they’re talking about. 

Even to a seasoned asker of “why?,” the competition represented the ultimate collision of creativity, critical thinking and communication. 

“It’s the epitome of being presented with something new and then kind of applying everything that you know and coming up with the best solution possible,” he says.
 

Thinking with a global perspective

Wong, who’s a lifelong Winnipegger, will also be taking an upcoming opportunity to go on a study trip—conveniently, to go to Sri Lanka, which will mark the 50th country he has travelled to. 

“I get the opportunity to travel with some of my classmates that I've become good friends with. I get to learn business and I get this cultural immersive experience that's partially covered by the Asper School of Business,” he says. “It was a no-brainer.”

Travel, Wong says, is one of the most valuable experiences you can have if you have the privilege—another meaningful way to figure out the “why?” behind everything. 

“It really enhances your perception of the world,” he says. “You get to be uncomfortable, you get to see things from a totally different perspective, beyond just seeing cool sights and trying cool foods.”

“If everyone was given the opportunity to travel and experience something new, I wonder if we’d be more tolerant and just have a more global perspective,” says Wong. 
 

Investing in yourself

We may have solved the “why?” of Wong’s MBA origin story, but for anyone asking their own “why?” about enrolling in Asper’s MBA program, his advice is to make the choice to “invest in yourself.”

“This extra learning will make you more skilled. Even if you don’t have a business background, you’ll be more well-rounded,” he says. 

All the things he was worried about, like time and tuition, were worth it. 

“I’ve learned so many things. I’ve met so many really cool people. They think differently than I do. They come from different backgrounds. We synergize,” he says.

“All of these things, I probably would not have gained if I hadn’t enrolled in the Asper MBA,” Wong says. “So take the leap.”