How Minerva’s MDA Program Builds Confidence for Any Role

When professionals consider graduate school, they often ask a simple question: Will this actually change how I work?

For one Minerva Master’s in Decision Analysis (MDA) graduate now working at LEGO® Education, the answer is a clear yes — as it fundamentally reshaped how he approaches problems, leadership, and learning itself.

Today, David serves as a Senior Sales Manager at LEGO® Education, leading a mid-market U.S. sales team responsible for supporting school districts, expanding implementations, and aligning educational solutions with classroom needs. 

His path, from studying music performance to classroom teacher, Harvard graduate student, and eventually leadership roles across education and technology organizations, has been anything but linear. It’s exactly this kind of career journey where Minerva’s MDA made the biggest difference, giving David a structured way to approach problems even in unfamiliar settings. 

Defining the Right Problems

In his current role, David manages six account managers across U.S. territories, guiding everything from district engagement strategies to pipeline development from national conferences. But the biggest challenge is prioritization.

“Everyone’s busy. Everyone loves LEGO. But the real question is… what are the actual drivers that move sales forward?”

Rather than jumping straight to solutions, David now starts by clarifying the underlying problem and framing it in a way stakeholders across marketing, curriculum, and product teams can act on, an approach he credits directly to the program. That ability to slow down, structure the question, and align teams around what actually matters has become central to how he leads.

Structured Thinking Under Ambiguity

Before Minerva, David assumed decision analysis meant choosing between clearly defined options. Instead, he discovered something more fundamental.

“I thought the MDA program would help when you’re deciding between A, B, or C. But the bigger challenge is figuring out whether there’s even a decision to make at all.”

The program trained him to define messy problem spaces, identify missing information, and separate signal from noise. More importantly, it gave him a repeatable way to move forward even when he didn’t already have the answers.

That shift changed how he evaluated his own career. Roles that once felt out of reach began to feel navigable, because he knew he could build a structured plan to close any knowledge gaps and learn what he needed on the job.

A Learning Experience That “Rewired” How He Thinks

When asked to describe Minerva’s impact, David didn’t hesitate:

“It feels like it rewired my brain… the most positive learning experience of my life.”

He credits Minerva’s Habits of Mind framework with shaping how he approaches decisions and discussions at work. Where he once focused on how to contribute in meetings, he now often leads conversations by stepping back and defining what the group is actually trying to solve.

Why He Chose Minerva — Even After Harvard

With a Master’s in Education from Harvard and prior experience in teaching, choosing another graduate program required careful consideration. He first heard about Minerva while studying at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education, where early discussions of the university’s model were already circulating.

What ultimately stood out was how immediately practical the learning felt. Instead of focusing only on theory, the program emphasized applying concepts across real-world contexts — something David felt was often missing from traditional programs.

“It felt like everything I’d learned theoretically could actually be implemented tomorrow,” said David. 

A Classroom Designed for Engagement, Not Passive Learning

Minerva’s participation model reinforced this approach. Every session required active contribution, meaning students consistently arrived prepared and discussions connected directly to real-world challenges.

This means David and his Minerva peers unpacked ideas together and connected them directly to real-world situations, creating a much more engaged learning environment.

Advice for Prospective Students

If you want a degree that simply adds credentials, there are many options. But for David, the value of Minerva was how fundamentally it changed his approach to work and decision-making.

He admits enrolling initially felt “a bit of a trust fall,” unsure whether he’d keep up with the workload. Instead, he quickly found himself looking forward to every session, even the 7:30 a.m. ones. 

More importantly, the MDA experience gave him something far more durable than a credential, as it gave him the confidence to step into unfamiliar roles or industries, structure the problem, identify what matters, and build a path forward.

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Graduate school shouldn’t just prepare you for your next job — it should prepare you for the ones you don’t even know you can do yet.

Build the skills and confidence to navigate new roles and real-world ambiguity with Minerva’s Master’s in Decision Analysis. Start your application here.