Salvador Sanchez Jimenez

The Desautels Faculty of Management at McGill University

“An incorrigible daydreamer who is always thinking about how to make things better.”

Hometown: Guadalajara, Mexico

Fun Fact About Yourself: I traveled to Montreal together with my wife, my son, two dogs and a cat. Our other two dogs will join us in December.

Undergraduate School and Major: ITESM B.A. in Marketing

Most Recent Employer and Job Title: Tanttemenne, Operations Manager.

Describe your biggest accomplishment in your career so far: My biggest accomplishment was opening a swimsuit store in Cabo. Being able to create a brand from the ground up, designing a store, telling a story and surpassing our sales expectations year-to-year. I accomplished this together with my wife, in spite of great obstacles and difficulties, such as a hurricane which forced us to close for a month.

What quality best describes the MBA classmates you’ve met so far and why? All of the classmates I have met so far share a sense of optimism and cooperation; I was greatly surprised noticing how everybody is always trying to help.

The second thing that caught my attention was the internationally diverse group and how a lot of my classmates have professional experience in more than one country.

Aside from your classmates, 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? There are many reasons to choose McGill’s MBA program but ultimately the university’s support network for entrepreneurial ventures was the decisive factor for me. Most MBAs focus on building a curriculum and really stress “hireability” as one of their main selling points. As an entrepreneur, however, I had to make sure that my MBA program offered the best chance to succeed at planning, launching and growing a business. McGill offers the perfect mix of tools to achieve my goal. Montreal is a cosmopolitan and multilingual city which provides countless markets and niches to cater. McGill offers numerous networking opportunities, both in and outside of the program. After 197 years, McGill University has consolidated its position as one of the most renowned schools in the world, and this prestige and reputation translates into credibility for its graduates and their projects. Finally, I am very excited about approaching the new Bensadoun School of Retail Management, where I seek to mature my business idea and get it ready to market. In conclusion, more than just the curricula, I wanted to choose the place that would provide me with the best chance of starting a successful business. I think I found that place in McGill.

What club or activity are you looking most forward to in business school? I am very interested in the Entrepreneurship Club to get to know other like-minded students that wish to start their own business. I would also love to become a teaching assistant to keep being involved in education as I did in Mexico.

What led you to pursue an MBA at this point in your career? During my career as a marketer, I had the opportunity to work on a wide array of retail settings, creating and implementing commercial strategies in the US and Mexico for many types of establishments, including supermarkets and department stores to street markets and moms and pop shops. All this experience gave me the confidence to open up a small swimwear boutique in Cabo. As the business grew, I was more and more interested in developing our own products. This made me realize that I was lacking certain expertise in production, finance, human resources and product development. After evaluating the various options out there, I decided that an MBA offered the best global understanding for the knowledge I was seeking.

How did you decide if an MBA was worth the investment? I had to consider what my best and worst case scenarios were after finishing the program. I made an estimate of potential earnings for both scenarios, five years after graduation and compared this cost with the investment.

What other MBA programs did you apply to? University of Toronto and University of Alberta.

How did you determine your fit at various schools? I started two years ago looking into all the top 200 business programs from the QS ranking. I was looking for a program that would not only teach me how to become a better business leader, but would allow me to launch my venture while studying. On this first filter I removed any program that was too specialized in just one area of business. I also dismissed all the programs that required me to travel often since I thought that would interfere with my main objective.

After my initial assessment, I came up with about 30 programs worldwide. As my business in Mexico matured, I saw there was a chance to keep it going. In order for my wife and I to keep the business running, she was going to be in charge of the day-to-day operation. The program I would choose needed to be relatively close to Mexico in case we needed to travel back-and-forth. We were also curious about expanding our business to this second country and that would have been complicated in Europe, Asia or Australia. After this realization I was only left with programs in Canada, since the political and social landscape of the US felt rather uncertain (especially for a Mexican). I looked into several world rankings and Canada always came on the top spots, be it for development, happiness or safety.

Originally, I was looking into five programs from five different universities all across Canada. At this point, I had to take into consideration the cost of living and tuition for each program as well as the cost of starting a business in each city. With this last filter I applied to the three remaining programs, certain that any of them offered great opportunities and an excellent education. After going through the selection process and talking to the admissions team of each university, I finally arrived to the conclusion that McGill was the best fit for me.

What was your defining moment and how did it shape who you are? Professionally, my defining moment was when I decided to start my own business. After working for national and international companies for 10 years, I was waiting, probably like a lot of people, for the perfect timing and opportunity to quit and start my own business. I was on a business trip in Vegas when I realized perfection never comes, decided to quit and started the next step of my life. After making that decision, I have had my ups and downs but have grown so much professionally and personally. Today I stand proud of what I accomplished and excited about the future.

What do you plan to do after you graduate? Apply everything I learned in the MBA and take full advantage of the resources offered by McGill to manage an international brand, focusing on innovation and sustainability. I have been looking into ways to reduce and reuse waste in the clothing manufacturing industry. I am confident that McGill´s network of experts can help me take this idea to market.

Where do you see yourself in five years? In five years, I see myself managing an international retail brand, making sure that our corporate goals are not only financially sound, but also socially responsible. I wish to create a workplace where the building blocks of success are customer understanding, innovation and employee appreciation. It really doesn’t matter if I end up working in a different industry or even if I work for somebody else; as long as I believe in the cause, I will happily wake up every day to go to work.