Yvonne Caroline Uduba

Vanderbilt University’s Owen Graduate School of Management

“A social introvert who loves traveling, animals, and standing up for people being taken advantage of.”

Hometown: Manila, Philippines; Lagos, Nigeria

Fun Fact About Yourself: I am a double board-certified pharmacist who loves pageantry and fashion. In college, I participated in a national pageant, and my runway pictures once made major headlines in a national newspaper.

Undergraduate School and Major: Manila Central University; B.Sc. Pharmacy

Most Recent Employer and Job Title: Tropical General Investments (TGI) group; Regulatory Affairs Manager

Describe your biggest accomplishment in your career so far: I was the regulatory consultant for the establishment of Africa’s largest rice mill. This is a $32.7M state-of-the-art rice mill with a capacity of 120,000 metric tonnes per annum. This provides revenue for 50,000 rice farmers. During this period, I advised management and the engineering team on factory layout and process flow to ensure compliance with the Nigerian regulation, and I also licensed the rice products with the Nigerian FDA.

What quality best describes the MBA classmates you’ve met so far and why? Diverse – I have a classmate who is a dance major and I have another classmate who is a seismologist. Collaborative – Everyone is willing to go out of their way to make sure we are all on the same page and achieve success collectively.

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? As a pharmacist, I worked for five years as a regulatory consultant representing multinational pharmaceutical companies, including Eli Lilly and Bayer, in Nigeria. Post-MBA, I want to go into healthcare consulting, and Vanderbilt MBA has healthcare and strategy concentrations. MBA students also participate in a consulting trek. This exposure will enable me to become attractive to companies with a strong healthcare consulting portfolio and who also facilitate on-campus recruitment processes. The Vanderbilt location in Nashville – a healthcare hub with over 700 healthcare companies in the city – was something I really considered because it allows interact with healthcare companies easily. The small class size was another major factor for me, because I wanted a personalized experience throughout my MBA program.

What club or activity are you looking most forward to in business school? There are too many to choose from! The Owen Strategy and Consulting Club, Vanderbilt Business Healthcare Association, the consulting trek, healthcare immersion week, Net Impact club activities, and the Israel trip, where we would analyze a business make recommendations for business expansion.

What was the most challenging question you were asked during the admissions process?  “Tell me how you handle conflict within the workplace?”

What led you to pursue an MBA at this point in your career? Over the last five years, I have worked in the regulatory space; I want to make a transition into a broader scope of management consulting in the healthcare industry. I have worked with CEOs and business owners to align business goals with healthcare regulations. In the process, I have interacted with brilliant minds. I have come to point in my career where I need to understand the factors that influence business decisions so that I could offer better healthcare solutions and impact healthcare systems across the world. To do this, I need a formal business education that will help me transition into management consulting and strategy.

What other MBA programs did you apply to? Duke, Fuqua School of Business

How did you determine your fit at various schools? I looked out for schools that had a healthcare concentration and a strategy concentration. I studied career paths of several Owen alums whose line of work is similar to, if not the same, as my short-to-medium term goal. I researched about recruiters that came on campus. I also considered the class size because I wanted to get to know my classmates from a personal and professional standpoint as well as build a very solid network throughout the MBA program. Lastly, I looked at school rankings.

What was your defining moment and how did it shape who you are? My defining moment was in strategy meetings, where I spoke the language of the healthcare professionals while others spoke the language of business. I realized that there was only so little that I could contribute since I had no prior business knowledge. Therefore, I decided to get an MBA from a top business school in order to be the bridge between number-driven business people and ethically-focused healthcare professionals.

Where do you see yourself in ten years? I see myself as head of strategy at a global pharmaceutical company in a role that improves business processes and enhances treatment outcomes for patients.