Meet The Rochester Simon MBA Class Of 2018

Alyssa Rinck

Simon Business School, University of Rochester

Describe yourself in 15 words or less: Plucky risk-taker, ready to shake up the retail industry. Shamelessly addicted to spin class.

Hometown: Rochester, NY

Fun Fact About Yourself: I’ve met the “real” Macy’s Santa.

Undergraduate School and Major: Jay and Patty Baker School of Business and Technology, Fashion Institute of Technology; Bachelor of Science, Merchandising Management – Minor in Mathematics

Employers and Job Titles Since Graduation: I started my career at Macy’s Inc. in the e-commerce executive development program. After the “EDP” program, I spent four years working for the company in various roles. These included stints in supply chain (Allocation Analyst), demand planning (Assistant Merchandise Planner/ Associate Merchandise Planner), finance (Associate Financial Planner), and most recently, business development, where I owned a $400M+ P&L and the client relationship with all of our partnership brands, like Sunglass Hut and Louis Vuitton (Omni-channel Leased Business Manager).

Describe your biggest accomplishment in your career so far: During the time where lines were blurred between online and in-store shopping experiences, I was part of a group that led the change to omni-channel retail best practices. As a member of the e-commerce team, I worked tirelessly with my counterparts from the store team to manage our pricing, promotion and product assortment together as one (I even made the trip to the store buyer’s office, six blocks away, in the dead of winter, a few times a day for key meetings).  We ended the season with sales and margin above plan and the previous year, when the corporation as a total saw decline. In the long run, our efforts to pilot this partnership led to adoption of this more effective omni-channel model by all business units in the company. I feel incredibly proud to leave this legacy behind.

Looking back on your experience, what advice would you give to future business school applicants? Map out your path, but don’t be afraid to take a detour. That’s when you’ll learn the most.

What led you to choose this program for your full-time MBA? When I started looking for b-School programs that would suit my personality and vision, I wrote Simon off immediately. Why? Because I’m from Rochester. I didn’t want to “move home.” My Mom wasn’t shy about her motive to see me more frequently than just once each year around the Thanksgiving dinner table, but she was also relentless to remind me what a great program I was ruling out. Eventually, I caved and attended a Simon recruiting event in New York City. Right then and there, I knew Simon was the place for me. I know when my Deb reads this, she will smile… Moms are always right. Simon is a small school (in terms of class size), where you can make a big impact. I was looking for a program to challenge my quantitative skill set, and I also wanted to study at a school where you could learn a lot from your classmates. Let me tell you, there are some really incredible, quanty geniuses navigating the hallways here at Simon.

Tell us about your dream job or dream employer at this point in your life? My dream is to join a management consulting firm that has a strong focus on their retail, or consumer products practice. There is such vast opportunity for innovation in these sectors. The way that the customer consciously shops is ever-changing, causing many challenges in the supply chain, digital and marketing space. I hope to draw upon the variety of experience I was afforded at Macy’s to help inspire disruptive innovation in the consumer/ retail sectors.

What would you like your business school peers to say about you after you graduate from this program?  I cherish every single second here at school as an opportunity to learn, network, or just plain have fun with my classmates. I hope my peers think of me as someone who never skipped a beat.