John O’Brien

IE Business School

“People-focused leader with a trained philosopher’s approach to problem-solving.“

Hometown: Washington, DC, USA

Fun Fact About Yourself: I’m passionate about art (I wrote my undergraduate thesis on political art and propaganda), and go to museums as often as I can – especially while traveling.

Undergraduate School and Major: Georgetown University – double major in Philosophy and Economics, minor in Business Administration

Most Recent Employer and Job Title: Penske Automotive Group, Sales Director at Mercedes-Benz Tysons Corner

Describe your biggest accomplishment in your career so far: Prior to the MBA, I worked for Penske Automotive Group as a Sales Director at a large Mercedes-Benz dealership in the metro-DC area. When I was initially promoted in November 2016 out of an eighteen-month management development program, it was for a more junior role. I was to be the Pre-Owned Sales Manager, working underneath a seasoned Pre-Owned Sales Director who had held the role for close to ten years. The goal was for me to learn as much as possible from his experience. Near the end of that November, he received a promotion of his own, and it became clear that I would be running the department alone beginning in December until a replacement could be found.

The following 46 days were among the hardest I had ever worked in my life. It was like drinking from a fire hose. As a 24-year-old with limited experience and an array of new responsibilities, I was leading a twenty-person team of salespeople, porters, technicians, and detailers – most of whom were more than twice my age. I remember calling a trusted mentor early that December to ask for his thoughts on a particular issue, and before getting off of the phone he gave me some advice I will never forget: ‘Look at the people above you, around you, and below you. Most of them work hard, and some of them work smart.  You need all of them to run a successful department and to put together a good finish for the year – and just because you’re in charge doesn’t mean that they can’t teach you a thing or two.’

I took that advice (some days I was better at it than others, of course) and that month my team set a new sales record for the store, with higher profitability than previous years.  My boss decided I’d take on the director’s role and hire a new manager to take my place. I can only take credit for that accomplishment, however, insofar as I took my mentor’s coaching to heart.

Every one of my business success has been a direct result of first ensuring collaboration and getting people to work towards a common goal.

What quality best describes the MBA classmates you’ve met so far and why? At the start of the MBA program, I found myself sitting at the kitchen table in my apartment with my two roommates, another American and a Colombian, discussing our impressions of Madrid and the people we’d met so far. All three of us have had different experiences from one another in terms of industries, countries and regions, and work cultures. However, we also found that we shared some striking similarities, such as values, work ethic, and attitude toward challenge. In fact, I’ve had a similar realization with all of my classmates. While the program is filled with individuals incredibly different from me in terms of culture, life experience, work style, knowledge, I find it easy to relate to each one of them because they bring a spirit of collaboration and openness to the community.

Aside from your classmates, what was the key part of the MBA programming that led you to choose this business school and why was it so important to you? Near the end of my undergraduate studies, I began thinking about pursuing a Master’s degree in either Philosophy or Economics. I worried that business school would be a stale and overly practical experience – after all, isn’t it the purpose of so many MBA programs to prepare young professionals for a handful of specific industries and roles? Going back to the classroom, not to mention making a significant financial investment in a graduate degree, I wanted to be at a school with a real intellectual edge and the accompanying attitude.

A former university classmate, who graduated from the International MBA in 2019, told me about his application experience and initial impressions of IE upon arriving in Madrid in September 2018. Having studied economics together and knowing how sharp he is, I was intrigued and began researching the program. My first real interaction with the school was my own application process later that year, one of two MBAs to which I ultimately applied. Impressed with both the rigor of IE’s application and the seriousness of the interview’s approach to assessing both intellectual and social intelligence, I reflected upon the striking differences I saw between the two. While the other school was friendly, easy to work with, and genuinely excited to offer me a letter of admission (not to say that IE was not), the members of IE’s admissions department made it clear that receiving an acceptance letter meant demonstrating in a real way that I would be an active member of a vibrant community. Most interactions between admissions departments and prospective students are reminiscent of a trade show or job fair: emails with perfunctory exclamation points are exchanged with inquiries about former GPAs and typical exit salaries. As a point of comparison, my interviewer (the US East Coast Admissions Director) and I exchanged books we had recently read, and IE sponsored a paella cooking contest at a restaurant in DC for prospective students during the application season.

The joie de vivre I felt in everyone I spoke to in the IE community was, ultimately, my reason for choosing to study an MBA here in Madrid.

IE Business School calls itself “An “MBA out of the ordinary.” How has IE’s curriculum and activities been out of the ordinary from what you expected or what you experienced in other educational institutions? Both my high school and university were affiliated with the Catholic order of Jesuits, and a major element of the instruction at both institutions was the concept of Cura Personalis, or ‘education of the whole person.’ I mentioned before that one of my major prerequisites for a graduate degree was enrolling at an institution with a real intellectual edge, and I have certainly been extremely impressed with the professors and curriculum at IE. However, I would argue that my classmates, and the knowledge they bring to the table, are of an equal or even greater caliber. In any given discussion inside or outside of the classroom, I continue to find that someone will offer an opinion or experience far outside my own. In this way, I have already absorbed much more in the first third of the program than I imagined learning in the entire degree.

What was the most challenging question you were asked during the admissions process? One of the final elements of the IE admissions process was a series of video-recorded responses on my personal computer (at home), with only a couple of minutes to think of an answer. I clicked ‘start’ expecting queries about my work experience or strengths and weaknesses and could not have been more surprised when I saw the first one: “Describe a recent dream you had.” I only had 30 seconds to formulate a response.  In this moment, I recalled the IE brochure and its slogan: An MBA out of the ordinary.

What do you see yourself doing in ten years? My primary goal in pursuing an MBA is to broaden my experience and awareness as much as possible, a task made easy thanks to the diversity of my classmates and the professors. One of the biggest problems I see in the world today is the difficulty experienced by people outside of urban areas in gaining access to better job markets and opportunities due to the rising costs and complications of transportation.  Thus, my long term plan is to start a business in mobility.