2018 Best MBAs: Emory A. Boyland, Rutgers University

Emory A.L. Boyland

Rutgers Business School

“Intelligent, resourceful, principled, witty, strong-willed, and god-fearing.”

Age: 29

Hometown: Memphis, TN

Fun fact about yourself: Over the course of the last 10 years, I have lived in two countries, seven states, and 12 cities. (The locations are as follows: Los Angeles, Moreno Valley, Montebello, and Castro Valley, California; Memphis, Tennessee; Exeter, New Hampshire; Brunswick, Maine; Miami, Florida; Newark, New Jersey; East Lansing and Shelby Township, Michigan; and Kyoto, Japan.)

Undergraduate School and Degree:

Michigan State University, College of Law, JD (2014)

Bowdoin College, BA (2010)

Where did you work before enrolling in business school? During the two years immediately preceding my enrollment in business school, I had the pleasure of serving as program manager for the Jenesse Center’s IMPACT LA Legal Program, providing survivors of domestic violence with access to free legal consultations.

Where did you intern during the summer of 2017?

Global Purchasing & Supply Chain EXCEL Intern

General Motors, Warren, MI

Where will you be working after graduation?

Global Purchasing & Supply Chain TRACK Buyer     (2018)

General Motors, Warren, MI

Community Work and Leadership Roles in Business School:

1. Recipient, Sood and Singh MBA Scholarship – I was awarded the scholarship for an essay I wrote on the value of gene therapies and resulting implications on healthcare budgets. (2018)
2. President & vice president of communications for the RBS Black & Hispanic MBA Association – I executed and promoted the creation of a supportive community for the Black and Hispanic student body, encouraging professional networking and exposure to events geared toward career advancement and skill development. (2016-2017)
3. Co-organizer, RBS Case Competition Workshop – I helped to spearhead the creation of a 10-week case competition workshop in order to better prepare students for various annual case competitions. (2017-2018)
4. Organizer & host, Operations Analysis Refresher Workshop — I selected an operations analysis professor to teach a refresher course for supply chain management students to prepare students for summer internships. (2017)
5. NBMBAA Career Expo Advocate – I hold sessions for incoming minority MBA students, emphasizing the tremendous benefits that this career expo may afford them. (2016-2017)
6. Recipient, RBS Scholarship (2016-2018)

 Which academic or extracurricular achievement are you most proud of during business school?  I have accrued several accomplishments over the course of my time at Rutgers, but my proudest achievement surrounds my ongoing involvement with a retail discrimination study, which explores how and to what extent racial composition of a jury impacts its decision-making in retail discrimination trials. I co-authored related publications with Jerome D. Williams, Rutgers University-Newark’s executive vice chancellor and provost, and three Salem State University personnel – Anne-Marie Hakstian, Sophie Everett, and James Hoffman.

Our analyses of the jury verdicts showed that racially diverse juries were more than twice as likely to find for the plaintiff compared to all-White juries, and that all-White juries were four times more likely than diverse juries to find for the defendant. We also found that racially diverse juries awarded more than double the amount of punitive damages and more than six times the amount of compensatory damages compared to all-White juries. As one could imagine, this type of empirical data is critical especially in today’s political climate to ensuring that conversations regarding U.S. race relations are honest, productive, and solution-oriented. We are continuing to analyze other aspects of the data, and I look forward to following it wherever it takes us.

What achievement are you most proud of in your professional career? One of my biggest concerns is to make sure that I add significant value to any company that provides me with an opportunity to gain much-needed experience in my newly chosen career path. Thankfully, I exceeded even my own expectations during my recent summer internship with General Motors in Warren, Michigan. In my role as a global purchasing and Supply Chain EXCEL Intern, I managed a small portfolio of procurement cost-reduction projects. Near the end of my internship, my supervisors reviewed and accepted my cost-reduction proposal, which highlighted potential points of negotiation. The proposal projected multimillion-dollar savings. My presentation of this proposal afforded me visibility within the company, which I am sure contributed to my being offered a full-time position with General Motors shortly after the conclusion of my internship.

Who was your favorite MBA professor? My favorite MBA professor would have to be Professor David Dobrzykowski. He was my operations analysis professor during my first year at Rutgers. His teaching style was energetic and engaging, making each class enjoyable. He also went the extra mile to apply the concepts to real world examples to make sure we truly digested the concepts discussed in each class. Professor Dobrzykowski has since accepted a position as associate professor and director of the Supply Chain Management Institute at Bowling Green State University. I am thankful to have had him as a professor.

What was your favorite MBA Course? Marketing research has been my favorite course thus far. In that course, we learned how to properly conduct market research, which involves asking the right questions to the right people in the right order and using the right software to make empirically sound conclusions from the data. There is a great deal of thought that goes into drafting survey questionnaires and making sure that the survey takers are representative of the population you wish to study. I found the intricate level of detail that goes into each stage of the process fascinating.

Why did you choose this business school? I chose the Rutgers Business School for a number of reasons. While researching MBA programs with supply chain management concentrations, I discovered that U.S. News & World Report ranked RBS’s graduate SCM program eleventh nationwide, which I found particularly impressive. However, what really sold me on the institution was its rankings as first and third in the nation for job placement and employment, titles respectively given by Bloomberg Businessweek and U.S. News & World Report. Rutgers knows what it takes to prepare students to compete for highly sought after positions in multiple industries. My personal journey can attest to that fact.

What is your best piece of advice to an applicant hoping to get into your school’s MBA program?  As I have told several prospective students in the past, dedicate time to understanding not only what RBS has to offer, but also how it can assist you in reaching your professional goals while and after you obtain your degree. In order to do this effectively, the prospect must first have, to some degree, an idea of the professional goals he or she would like to achieve. The more specific and focused a prospect is, the more likely he or she will pique the interest of RBS, provided that the prospect has met or surpassed all applicable prerequisites and qualifications.

What is the biggest myth about your school? I think the high job placement rate can cause some students to believe that the school does all of the work for you. While it is the Office of Career Management’s job to present students with ample employment opportunities, each student has the responsibility of finding and making the most out of all available opportunities – not just those presented by RBS. OCM works hard, but part of their hard work is teaching students how to identify and secure opportunities independently.

What was your biggest regret in business school? Honestly, I do not have many. However, if I could go back, it is likely that I would have taken advantage of one of our courses that infuses trips abroad into its curriculum.

Which MBA classmate do you most admire? Aditya Patel is, simply put, a phenomenal student, educator, and rising star in the pharmaceutical industry. He holds an MBBS from Sri Ramachandra Medical College and Research Institution and is a published co-author of a book concerning gastrointestinal endoscopy. He is also a rock star when it comes to MBA-level case competitions. He and his respective teams won first place in two case competitions, the Prudential Blockchain Case Competition and the Yale Healthcare Case Competition. If that weren’t enough, he is also a Kaplan faculty instructor for the USMLE Clinical Skills Examination. He was a Bristol-Myers Squibb Strategy and Operations Intern, and is currently weighing his options for full-time employment. I have come to realize there is not much he cannot do, and I wish him tremendous success.

Who most influenced your decision to pursue business in college? Interestingly enough, there is no one person I can point to that influenced my decision to go to business school. My mother has always stressed the importance of getting an education, but my specific interest in business school developed from my personal desire to empower myself with a business mind just as I have done by obtaining knowledge of the law at Michigan State University College of Law. These fields touch just about every aspect of our lives, yet when I was growing up not many people around me knew much about them. That realization then piqued my interest in both areas.

“If I hadn’t gone to business school, I would be…living in or near Miami, Florida, practicing law.”

If you were a dean for a day, what one thing would you change about the MBA experience? If I were dean for a day, I would arrange for an annual information session, open to all incoming MBA students, on noteworthy career expos taking place throughout the year. These large events provide students with a tremendous bang for their buck. In some cases, hundreds of employers recruit from these events, giving students the opportunity to meet with several of their top choices in a single day. While this may slightly reduce attendance of events taking place on RBS campuses, the students would broaden their access to potential employers and maximize their earning potential by possibly receiving multiple offers and accurately assessing their worth in the markets of choice.

What are the top two items on your bucket list? I think skydiving would be exhilarating. Also, I would like to own multiple apartment complexes with sixteen-or-more units.

In one sentence, how would you like your peers to remember you? When it is all said and done, I would like my peers to remember me as a lively, principled leader with great communication skills, solid professional skills, and an excellent work ethic.

What is your favorite movie about business?  I have two. I would say John Landis’s Trading Places and Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf on Wall Street.

What would your theme song be? “Champion” – Kanye West

Favorite vacation spot: Miami, FL

Hobbies? In my spare time, I enjoy working out, traveling, attending live concerts, and exploring potential opportunities for entrepreneurship.

What made Emory such an invaluable addition to the class of 2018?

“Emory Boyland received the Sood Singh Scholarship as a result of his academic performance and his level of involvement during his first year in the MBA program. He has been exemplary with respect to his co-presidency in the National Black & Hispanic MBA student club organization, where he has worked to mentor and provide feedback to those students who needed assistance in navigating the rigors of graduate school. Emory has also served as mentor to incoming freshmen students at Rutgers through a program called Higher Living Learning Center. The center was developed to help diverse candidates attain a college education by providing them with a full scholarship. Emory has also aided senior faculty in their research projects by crafting documentation that has been used by them to attain data that benefited the research. The research has provided useful information to the city of Newark at large.”

Al Turner

Assistant director, Graduate Admissions

Rutgers Business School

DON’T MISS: THE ENTIRE LIST OF THE BEST & BRIGHTEST: CLASS OF 2018