My Story: From Wall Street To A Duke MBA

In business school, you have to make a decision. You have social activities, you have networking and you have school, and you can’t do all three at the same time. It’s all about deciding what kind of experience you want to have. I was able to learn a lot about marketing and management from the different student clubs and organizations. During my first year, I ran around like a chicken with my head cut off. Thankfully, most of the big events didn’t coincide, and if they did, other people in leadership positions were there to help.

If I had gone somewhere else, I know I would have been very happy, but I am so grateful to have experienced Duke with my classmates. The community at Duke made it possible to have tricky conversations in a very comfortable environment. In one of my sections, we did something called Diversity Download, where students from different backgrounds talked about what it meant for them to go to business school. Four or five of our Mormon students also held a discussion on what religion meant to them. Seeing students so vulnerable and so willing to talk about something that was important to them was really touching. These are conversations that need to happen more often.

Business school gave me the opportunity to reevaluate my career plans. I interned with Citi in the summer between my first and second year. It was a phenomenal experience, but after the summer, I had to ask myself: “Is this what you wanted to do? Remember why you came to business school. You wanted a change from financial services. Can you do that from this company? If someone were to look at your resume and see that you’re employed with Citi, what is that going to say to them?”

There are certain kinds of marketing that I thought would make me exceptionally happy—that would excite me every day. I wanted to make sure I wasn’t getting caught up in what everyone else was doing. My dad, who worked in marketing and sales at IBM, gave me some things to think about. He helped me look beyond consumer packaged goods (CPG) marketing to retail marketing or nontraditional marketing.

I’ll be entering Sears’ Senior Leadership Program in August. The thing that really appealed to me about the Sears program is its rotational nature. They’re very invested in hiring candidates who are also invested in helping to grow the company, and the experience will be easily transferable to other industries.

I have an idea of where I want to be in five years, but I don’t know what my perfect dream job looks like. I’m still trying to figure out what I’m going to be when I grow up. I know I want to work at a company that is invested in growth strategies. I know I want to work with people who are just as invested in those growth strategies as I am. I also want to gain experience in digital marketing, because that’s where companies are putting a lot of time and energy.

Everyone questions why they’re at business school at one point or another. “What did I do? I quit my job. What am I doing?” My MLT coach told me to imagine a foundation where a house is being built. You get inside and look at a corner and it’s cracking. From that one perspective, things look really bad. But if you’re at another corner of that house, and everything else is strong—those other strong corners could be your friends, or your family, or your faith—things suddenly don’t look as bad anymore.

I’m excited about this new chapter. I’m excited about moving to Chicago. I’m going to explore the city for a month before I start and just kind of relax. It’s been a very long time since I’ve had nowhere to be and nothing to do.

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