Adam Kuebler

Georgetown University, McDonough School of Business

“I’m an explorer, a beginner, and a nerd. I want to make great ideas reality.”

Hometown: Indianapolis, Indiana

Fun Fact About Yourself: In 2003, I started doing parkour after watching a documentary about it on TV that specifically told me not to try this at home. I taught myself by watching videos that others shared in online forums. I ended up traveling around the Southeast (I lived in Florida at the time) to meet up with other people and spend weekends doing parkour together. I even spoke at a film premiere in Miami that featured parkour.

Undergraduate School and Major: Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University – Air Transportation and Management

Most Recent Employer and Job Title: United Airlines – Sr. Manager Asia Pacific Pricing

Aside from your classmates and location, what was the key part of the school’s MBA programming that led you to choose this business school and why was it so important to you? Georgetown has a lot of unique programming that helps you see policy and international relations through a business lens. As you might expect, that was a selling point to me. However, it was important to me to be involved with entrepreneurial activity while in school, as I believe deeply that entrepreneurship is the path to prosperity for society. Several unique entrepreneurial programs at Georgetown sold me on the school, from the Venture Fellows program, an InSITE chapter, the Venture Capital Investment Competition, and more that I didn’t see elsewhere.

What excites you most about studying in Washington, DC? Outside of all the career opportunities it offers, DC has been one of my favorite cities to visit and so I am excited to get to know it as a local. Also, my brother lives here and so I’m looking forward to spending more time with him.

What quality best describes your MBA classmates and why? In some ways, starting virtually has made us have to be more intentional about getting to know our classmates. Everyone is passionate, engaged, and willing to help and support one another. This is what I expected at McDonough, so I’ve been pleased to see expectations match reality.

What club or activity excites you most at this school? There are so many interesting clubs that I know I am going to struggle with over-committing. In addition to the club experiences, I am looking forward to the global business experience in my second year. This is a consulting project where we work with an international company on a problem they are facing. After spending some time working on it remotely, we will fly to that country to spend a week presenting conclusions to company leadership. I am hoping that by the spring of 2022, COVID will largely be behind us and travel will not be a concern.

Describe your biggest accomplishment in your career so far: This question is always hard, but I’d have to say the work I did to support some innovative pricing automation solutions in my last role. Airline pricing is incredibly complex and interesting, but Asia Pacific pricing specifically has historically been even more difficult because few automation solutions could handle the unique complexities of the region. We euphemistically called it “bespoke” pricing.

When I joined the Asia Pacific Pricing team as Senior Manager, there was work going on between an analyst on my team and an analyst on our Data Science team that was revolutionary and would finally bring Pacific Pricing into the 21st century. Unfortunately, the project was at risk of being cut. I cannot take credit for any of the amazing work that was done to create the technology. But I was proud to have reprioritized some of the work to help others in the department understand the power of the technology. I ultimately took the work on a roadshow around the department and convinced leadership to include the technology in the long-term pricing automation road map.

What led you to pursue an MBA at this point in your career? During my undergrad, I started a web company and was super interested in the start-up space. However, I ultimately decided to pursue my childhood dream of working in the airline industry. After an eight-year career at United Airlines, I was ready for a new challenge and wanted to return to my more entrepreneurial roots.

What other MBA programs did you apply to? Sloan, Kellogg, Wharton, Stern, and Owen

What was the most challenging question you were asked during the admissions process? The most challenging question in an interview was probably “What’s your greatest accomplishment.” I’ve done a lot of things I’m proud of, but all of them I knew were really team accomplishments, so trying to pick my personal greatest accomplishment was a challenge. I think, additionally, we always have the voice in the back of our heads telling us, “What if my greatest accomplishment is insignificant compared to my fellow applicants.” Ultimately, I had a couple of different stories ready to use and picked the one that highlighted a facet of my application that I felt had not come out much in the interview yet.

How did you determine your fit at various schools? Each of the schools I applied to was very different in terms of size, location, programs, and student body. However, I had a very specific reason for applying to each school. I build an analytical framework that helped me narrow the list of schools, but ultimately fit was something that I could only understand by visiting campus. While the facilities and interactions with faculty and staff are important, the conversations I had with current and other prospective students helped a lot. Making campus visits is common advice, but I didn’t really understand it until I had done a couple.

What have you been doing to prepare yourself for business school? Georgetown has an extensive program of quantitative and career prep over the summer that has been helpful. Additionally, I have been working on my Spanish, participating in the Venture Deals course from The Kauffman Foundation and Techstars, and writing a lot. I have found that writing really helps me to clarify the jumble of thoughts in my head.

What was your defining moment and how did it prepare you for business school? I struggled with social anxiety growing up. I was really shy, and it took a long time to make friends. But when I started at Embry-Riddle, I decided that I was going to be a new person, I was going to be outgoing. It was scary, but I found a lot of super passionate, slightly awkward nerds like me and I realized other people were not so bad. While I still feel that pang of anxiety from time-to-time, I figured out how to manage it. As I have grown in my career and now prepare to enter business school, I’ve learned how much of a difference relationships can make. I would not be prepared for the business school experience without that defining moment.

DON’T MISS: MEET GEORGETOWN McDONOUGH’S MBA CLASS OF 2022