Fourteen years into a demanding career in oil and gas, Kathryn Byron had done everything right – and was running on empty.
After graduating with a chemical engineering degree in 2009, she had built a strong track record in major operations, climbed into leadership roles, and raised a young family alongside it all. From the outside, the picture looked successful. On the inside, something had shifted.
Burnout, she believes, is not sudden. It builds slowly. And as a mid-career professional in middle management, work had become all-consuming.
Choosing herself: the decision to pursue an MBA full-time
In 2023, Kathryn enrolled in the full-time MBA programme at the Alberta School of Business – a goal she had put aside for the better part of fifteen years while work took priority.
“An MBA started to feel like both an escape and a pause point,” she says. “It was a way to, for the first time in years, put myself first and reimagine what I wanted from my career.”
With support from her family, she completed the programme in under eighteen months, graduating with a clearer sense of direction and, by her own account, a fundamentally different relationship with work.
“I’m leaving this programme not only more professionally capable,” she says. “But a happier and healthier human.”
A key part of that transformation came through a series of introspective assessments conducted with career coach Paul Taylor, focused on identifying core values and using them as a framework for decision-making. In her early sessions, one value kept surfacing: achievement.
“I wanted to be a highly respected senior leader – someone others look up to – in an organisation I felt truly connected with. At first, I treated my MBA like just another checkmark on that path. I was focused on finishing as fast as possible and getting back to work and leadership.”
As the programme progressed, so did her thinking.
A new definition of success
Stepping out of the pace of corporate life and into an environment built on new connections and shared experience gave Kathryn room to reconsider what fulfilment actually looked like for her.
“I started doing things my old self never would have,” she says. “I found myself at Earls on campus every Thursday night with my new MBA friends, and I now routinely take dance, flexibility and strength classes. None of this would have transpired if I had been in my old work environment.”
The shift extended beyond personal habits. A wellbeing module with strategy professor Vern Glaser on trade-offs and essentialism left a lasting impression.
“Focus your time and energy where you feel like you can make a meaningful impact, and become comfortable saying no to opportunities. Time is this incredibly precious, non-renewable resource. For me, that meant dedicating time to inclusion and diversity work,” referring to her involvement in the MBA Inclusion and Diversity Club. “I leaned in where it mattered most to me, rather than trying to do it all.”
Kathryn now sees the two things – professional ambition and personal wellbeing – not as competing priorities but as mutually reinforcing ones.
“I still want to succeed professionally and become the best leader I can be,” she says. “But now, I’ll show up as a stronger, more grounded version of myself if my life also includes connection and creativity.”
She begins her next chapter as a Maintenance Leader at Dow Chemical, where she is contributing to the company’s decarbonisation project – a climate-focused initiative that aligns closely with the values she spent her MBA rediscovering.
“I’m incredibly grateful to my MBA experience for giving me the space to step back and rediscover my direction. And, for the amazing network of relationships and new experiences it brought into my life.”
