Meet Indiana Kelley’s MBA Class Of 2019

Chad Johnson 

Indiana University, Kelley School of Business 

Describe yourself in 15 words or less: Industrious and continuously curious professional working to make positive impact on the world.  Also, guacamole.

Hometown: Phoenix, Arizona

Fun Fact About Yourself: Over the summer, I rode my bike 545 miles from San Francisco to Los Angeles to raise money for the San Francisco AIDS Foundation.

Undergraduate School and Major: Santa Clara University, BS Mechanical Engineering

Employers and Job Titles Since Graduation: 

  • Salesforcecom : Account Executive
  • NetSuite : Regional Director of Account Management, Sales Enablement Manager, Account Manager

Describe your biggest accomplishment in your career so far: I had the opportunity to develop, refine, and deliver a sales training program for new hires at NetSuite. I delivered comprehensive onboarding for both junior and senior hires from all over the world leveraging my experiences and expertise as an account manager. Results of the program were tracked and reported to senior leadership adding strategic visibility to the project. My biggest challenge was to ensure that the content was detailed enough for the most experienced hires, but also comprehensive enough for more junior hires to still hit the ground running and begin producing results within their first 30 days at the company. This accomplishment forced me outside of my comfort zone, allowed me to learn from extremely talented mentors and leaders, and enabled me to help accelerate productivity of nearly 100 new hires from over five countries over the course of a year.  I see this as my biggest accomplishment so far because of the financial results that we saw and the impact that it had on new employees.

Looking back on your experience, what one piece of advice would you give to future business school applicants? It’s easy to get wrapped up in the amount of information coming from schools, friends, message boards, etc. I’d recommend putting a framework in place for researching and deciding on a school to help make the right decision for you. It’s an important decision and everyone has different factors that are driving their decision to go to business school. I spent time identifying the unique aspects about each school to determine if those qualities aligned with my goals and values. Once I had my hypothesis figured out, I went to visit each one to see if my research lined up with the experience that I had on campus. Visiting schools is extremely important so that you can distinguish what you read in blogs and on school websites from face to face interactions with current students, alumni, professors, and staff. It’s reassuring and makes the decision much easier when you can look back at a consistent process to make sure you got it right.

What was the key factor that led you to choose this program for your full-time MBA and why was it so important to you? Kelley takes a hands-on approach to the professional development and personal growth of each student. There is a big focus on meeting the student where they are and working collaboratively to really flesh out the path that is going to produce results. Further, Kelley puts a lot of thought into aligning each student with a dedicated team of peers, career coaches, mentors, and professors within a tight-knit community to make this process successful.  This approach and thoughtfulness resonated with me in my research and I was really pumped to see it in action on campus.  Kelley has a heart and a support system that produces results.

What would success look like to you after your first year of business school? My goals for my first year are to hone my professional story and build strong relationships with my peers and professors. I think my first year will have been a success if I know something unique about each person in my class and am able to translate my story into a successful summer internship.