Ian Burke: 'No regrets at all. I'll be the first man up to shake Pádraic Joyce's hand if they win'
NO REGRETS: Ian Burke pictured with Irish Ambassador to France, Niall Burgess
THE value of an opportunity is what must be sacrificed to make said opportunity happen.
For 2024, there were two opportunities in front of Ian Burke. Continue as a Galway footballer or accept his MBA offer from INSEAD Business School in the French town of Fontainebleau.
The offer to attend a university ranked second on the 'Financial Times MBA' list arrived to his inbox in January 2023. Burke was just back in the door with Galway after two seasons away. He didn’t tell a soul about the offer, or his acceptance of it, until Galway’s season was no more.
Missing out on the winter-long slog at Loughgeorge doesn’t seem like much of a sacrifice in order to take your place at a global-leading business school. Neither does missing out on a difficult League campaign that only just stayed above the waterline.
The real sacrifice is a week like this. All-Ireland final week. Galway are there. Burke is not. And if Sunday goes as he desperately hopes it does, he’ll have missed out on the medal every footballer wants.
His 10 months at INSEAD finished up three weeks ago. Since then, there’s been time spent in Madrid, Lisbon, Albufeira, and Vilamoura. Decompressing after an intense academic year.
The 31-year-old arrived home to Corofin on Monday. Just in time to get stuck into the Tuam Herald’s big match supplement. Just in time to head up the road to the big match itself.
On this week of weeks, he rests easy within a county restless for Sam. There is not a single regret over the path chosen.
Work logistics and a temporary lull in his love of football meant he missed out on a 2022 campaign that went right to the last day. A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity means he is missing out on a 2024 campaign that has again gone to the last day.
“The value of an opportunity is the other thing you sacrificed for it,” Burke begins. “So if I sacrificed INSEAD to be in an All-Ireland, or if I sacrificed the All-Ireland to go to INSEAD, they are both great years no matter what you do. But for me, I'd never have any regrets in terms of that. I make my bed and I lie in it.
“It is very easy and very egotistical to say right now, ‘yeah, I'd love to be involved with Galway’, but I don't think I'd have done October, November, December, January, February, the slog. I just didn't have the interest or drive to do it, whereas to go to INSEAD was something that was really driving me and got me really excited. It was one of the best years I ever had, and all the personal growth that came with it.
“No regrets at all. And I'll be the first man up to shake Pádraic Joyce's hand if they win. Given the age-profile and talent, to get one over the line could open the floodgates for a couple of successful years.”
Most lads in Corofin grow up dreaming of All-Irelands, be that in the local yellow and green or maroon of Galway. In their northern patch of the county, it is realistic to aspire to both.
Burke has his four club All-Irelands. A key attacking and distributing cog in the greatest club football team of all time.
Alongside that in later years, he dreamt of doing an MBA at one of the most globally recognised business schools. He doesn’t know where the dream originated. What he does know is where such top shelf ambition originated.
The attitude forged on the local field of never being afraid to take your shot took him, over the past 12 months, to Lebanon, Singapore, a private Indonesian island, and about as far away from Corofin as you can imagine.
“What we managed to achieve with Corofin, every year we adapted. We were always at the forefront of what was new in Gaelic football. What we did in 2018 we didn't do in 2020. Continuous evolvement and pushing ourselves to try and see what we could achieve.
“So when I was in that Corofin environment, I was trying to see how can I transfer this to trying to go to Business school. I went on LinkedIn and looked at the guys in Harvard, Stanford and INSEAD, and just dropped them messages, dropped them my CV, and said, ‘look, this is my CV, this is me, what chance do you think I'd have of getting in?’
“The Irish over there, all super responsive, super helpful, super encouraging, and that fed into my belief that it was possible.”
The 2018 All-Star corner-forward would have taken aim at the INSEAD posts earlier than the end of 2022 was it not for covid. He wanted the full in-person immersive experience. He didn’t want an MBA via Zoom.
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The school’s acceptance rate is below 30%. The application process is beyond rigorous. CV, letters of recommendation, motivational essays, why an MBA, why INSEAD, future plans, three-year plans, five-year plans, and an Executive Management Aptitude Test (EMAT) exam.
Mayo in MacHale Park and the Dubs in Croker began to seem like a dawdle. The same for negotiating mass defences.
Having worked as a trader and banker in Dublin for the four years previous, Burke knew that alone would not make him stand out among the thousands hoping to make the cut. Gaelic football was his unique selling point. What he had underplayed in his own head came in his favour when the admissions team were sizing up his profile for diversity.
Once he learned in January of last year that he was in, he put his full focus into Galway knowing it was a “last hurrah” in maroon. Having not played championship in three years, he started all bar one of their six summer outings. Mayo edged them in the preliminary quarter-final and he said goodbye.
“We had 70 nationalities in a class of 450. They came from all industries, all sectors, all backgrounds. As diverse a classroom experience as you could get,” Burke explained.
“I loved experiencing other cultures, learning from other people, and seeing what way someone from Pakistan or Argentina looks at the world versus what way I look at the world having grown up in the west of Ireland.”
Whereas the Ivy League MBA programs are two years, INSEAD gets the job done in 10 months. That lends itself to a demanding schedule. Time was still found, though, to make the most of the opportunity at hand.
He spent a section of the academic year at the school’s Singapore campus and explored south-east Asia from there. Within Europe alone, there must have been at least a dozen trips.
“It was a phenomenal experience of people from all over the world bringing you to their home countries and showing you the most authentic hidden gems of where they are from. Sixty of us did five days in Lebanon where we were brought in off the beaten track. Really, really cool.
“I don't think there's a place in the world I could go where I wouldn't be able to ask into the INSEAD WhatsApp, ‘lads, any recommendations for Timbuktu’, and they'd be able to tell me a restaurant or nightclub to go to.
“Part of the MBA program is building your network professionally and personally. Going on trips and making friends with all these random, diverse people, and the personal growth that comes along with it, I'd find it very tough to find that environment anywhere else.
“Like in football, if you don't shoot, you don't score. I took my shot and managed to get in. A phenomenal experience.”
Home in Corofin, he’s currently plotting his next step. The consulting strategy path has his eye. Home is likely to be a short stay and so, right now, the reigning county champions will have to go another summer without him.
“Hoping to use the MBA as a pivot piece to merge my professional experience to date, as well as all I learned in football, which is not to be underestimated in terms of soft skills and leadership, and come with a very comprehensive background of education in terms of hard skills, soft skills, and then bringing that to the consulting strategy world to try break in that way.”
Always aiming high. A Corofin skillset serving him well out in the world.
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