It’s Just Passion and Stevens

If you ask Bupe Bwalya what she’s most passionate about in life, you’ll get a response quicker than a referee can yell “Goal!”

“It’s sports,” shared Bupe, who is earning a dual degree in information systems and sports technology and digital transformation. Whether it was playing soccer after school with friends in her native Africa, watching sports with her family or juggling the demands of competitive track and field, football and volleyball in school, her passion never wavered.

Sports were also something that bonded Bupe and her late father, who worked security for the local football team. “He loved football, and Formula 1 too. It was a sport that I started to love while I was in high school because my dad and I would watch it together.”

When Technology Leads the Way

On the rare occasion she wasn’t playing or watching sports, Bupe also developed a love of technology, a passion that would help her find her way to Stevens Institute of Technology when she saw first-hand gaps in her job that the right technology could fill.

“I had recently graduated and was thinking about what I truly wanted to do. I was thinking how I could put technology and business together. I was working in accounts for a mining company, and there are times when I felt a certain type of technology would help the things I was doing manually.”

Not one to wait around for opportunity, Bupe had a conversation with a peer who encouraged her to consider a degree in information systems. When it came to finding the right program, unsurprisingly, Bupe decided to leverage technology in her search.

“I actually went to ChatGPT and asked, Can you give me some schools that offer information systems in the U.S.?Stevens happened to be one of them, but I didn’t look at it right then. One day, I went to TikTok and just typed in information systems and found a girl who was discussing her experience at Stevens. Then I went to their TikTok page, and I just liked that it had this community. So, I started to look into it more, applied and they accepted me.”

A New Journey and a New Degree

Bupe packed her bags and soon found herself embarking on a journey to Stevens’ campus in Hoboken, New Jersey. During graduate student orientation, she began to think more directly about what she would do with her degree and the courses she would select, and realized it was a different experience from navigating the education system in her own country.

“The education system in Africa is a bit different,” she described. “When you pick a program, they select the courses for you and then you run through the whole program without selecting what you want to do.”

“Michael [Frank], the Information Systems Program Director, was asking me and my friend what we wanted to do with our careers, and I had no idea to be honest,” she continued. “I just thought I’ll get my master’s degree. He said ‘Okay, tell me what you like?’ Well, I like sports. I didn’t know that I could have a career in sports. That wasn’t something I thought about because where I’m from, you don’t say you want to do sports as your career. It’s just a far-fetched dream.”

At Stevens, dreams are rarely limitations. Frank knew the right person for Bupe to speak with and asked her to come with him to meet Brian Rothschild, Assistant Dean for Graduate Studies and Senior Director of Management Programs.

“We went to Brian’s office and Michael said ‘Oh, she likes sports, talk to her!’” Bupe recalled. “Brian and I had a conversation [about the sports technologies and digital transformations dual master’s program]. I didn’t know that Stevens had the program with Real Madrid Graduate School Universidad Europea. They are actually one of my favorite football teams!”

In collaboration with Real Madrid Graduate School Universidad Europea, Rothschild explained the benefits of the program, including spending a summer studying in Spain, a guaranteed internship to work on a business project with Real Madrid Next and networking with industry professionals. “I didn’t think twice. I wanted to be in the program,” she said

Once her decision was made, Frank worked with her in adjusting her schedule. He included several innovation courses, including digital innovation, service innovation and process innovation, that would prepare her for success during her internship.

Speaking the Language of Business and Sports

Those courses did their job. When she arrived in Madrid earlier this summer, she hit the ground running on taking what she learned in the classroom at Stevens to apply it in her project with Real Madrid Next.

“On one of the first days, we met with the head of Innovation for Real Madrid Next, and he was speaking about applications and wanting to dive into different businesses,” Bupe said. “He gave us a rundown of how their digital transformation came about. He and I had a conversation where I was able to argue that sometimes you don’t have to jump onto every technology that comes in. Does it fit your business process? I said that sometimes you end up changing a business process to fit a technology that isn’t meant for your business. He was really impressed by that. We started to talk about other companies. He asked how long I had done this work.”

To his surprise, Bupe revealed she was only just beginning to explore the career path, while giving a nod to her time at Stevens. “It’s because I had these courses at Stevens, and we had these conversations in our classes.”

As Bupe continued to have more of these conversations on a new continent with new peers, others commented on her knowledge and ability to apply it to different problems. During one of these conversations, a professor remarked that Bupe spoke with such authority and understanding of the topics, carrying herself as if she had worked in sports for a long time. She told him, “No, it’s just passion and Stevens.”

Applying Her Knowledge

Bupe applied her passion and knowledge gained from her Stevens courses to a final internship project. Tasked with choosing between fan engagement or player performance, she and her group chose the latter. Before selecting a specific topic, Bupe knew she needed some data.

“The Head of Innovation at Real Madrid Next asked us what we would we like to do in player performance for our project and because I had just gone through my classes, I told him I needed to understand the problem by speaking to the coach in order for us to know what it is that we’re fixing,” she explained. “We can’t just throw technologies at things that don’t even need it. We went to training facilities. We had a meeting with the academy coach, and he gave us a lot of plans and from there we were able to know. We were also able to speak to different companies that work with the team and with a few other individuals in Real Madrid to help us have a clear understanding of how player scouting works, how the transfer window works and how the wearable technology operates.”

“We had so many ideas,” she continued. “But one of the key problems that stood out to me was the coach had said there’s just too much technology now. It’s becoming too much data. Sometimes people don’t understand what they’re even using.”

The team pitched ways to create a unified system that could act as the team’s own customized athlete management system that could be integrated with new and existing technologies the team uses or might develop in the future.

A Dream Come True

Outside of her time with Real Madrid Next, Bupe took advantage of living in a new city, country and continent to further fuel her passion for sports by accessing different sporting events, like sitting front row at a Manchester United match and attending the UEFA Women’s Champion League final in Lisbon, Portugal.

An event that really made an impact on her was a trip she took with a classmate to Barcelona to watch the Formula 1 Spanish Grand Prix. Seeing the event come to life after growing up watching it on TV with her father was a dream come true.

“I nearly cried,” she explained. “I knew I was going to do it one day, but I didn’t expect to do it so soon. It’s different from the TV experience. The cars are really fast. If you blink, you won’t see them. We got to sit in the pit lane exit, so you’d actually see them when they’re coming in slowly before they do the lap.”

It’s an experience she soon won’t forget and the importance of chasing after the things you want in life. “Sometimes all you need is just you and your dream.”