Meet the MBA Class of 2022: Jorge Nicolin, University of Chicago (Booth)

Jorge Nicolin

University of Chicago, Booth School of Business

“I aspire to do great things for my country, city, and community.”

Hometown: Mexico City, Mexico

Fun Fact About Yourself: My third favorite reptile is the Komodo Dragon

Undergraduate School and Major: Universidad Iberoamericana, Industrial Engineering

Most Recent Employer and Job Title: Bain & Company, Senior Associate Consultant

Aside from your classmates, 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? Academically I think Booth is the top school you attend. It has the most Nobel Prize winning professors of any business school. At the same time, Booth is one of the most quant heavy MBAs, which is important for me as I believe data is the present but more importantly the future. Originally I wanted to do a Business Analytics Master’s degree.  Thanks to Booth’s comprehensive analytical approach, I will be able to study that plus other MBA classes that are important for success (Finance, Marketing, Operations).

Describe your biggest accomplishment in your career so far? I would say that there are many Bain projects I have worked on that have been tremendously successful for the client. When working at Bain, you get to see important change happen in giant organizations. Bain works on a confidential basis with its clients, so I would rather not go into details.

However, a more public success was my externship at Klar (the top Mexican neobank), where I got to set up for their customer support function. When I joined the team, I got to build the area. Daniel Autrique (CFO) insisted we do the agents’ work of answering tickets manually to get a grasp of the job and erase that backlog. That was important because it made me exponentially more hands-on than what I would have been without it. In the months I was there, we implemented a customer obsession dashboard to understand what our clients were experiencing, improved average first response time from many hours to 60 minutes (including messages that are received at 3am), and grew our customer service NPS (Net Promoter Score) from -4% to 49%. It was an incredible experience working for that amazing management team (Stefan, Daniel, and Luis) and I am glad we got important lasting results.

What makes you most excited about getting your MBA at Booth? What makes you most nervous about starting business school? The most exciting part for me will be meeting all my classmates from all over the world and all different backgrounds. Thanks to modern technology, I have met some of them already, and I am honored to join them in learning about business. Everyone is super intelligent and knowledgeable. I would say I am most nervous about not being able to do all the things I want to try in these two years. There are many cool, fun, and interesting things to do at Booth and I have a feeling I will want to do them all. However, Booth is a choice-rich environment and part of life is choosing.

What club or activity excites you most at this school? There are several clubs I am interested in, joining.  Business-wise, I can’t wait to join the Real Estate Club and the Agriculture Club. I have always wanted to learn about those businesses as they are essential to our way of life. Socially, I am looking forward to playing tennis with all my classmates in the Tennis Club.

How did you determine your fit at various schools? I evaluated the academic focus that was most interesting to me. There are some schools that are more case-based, but I preferred Booth’s quant based approach. The other thing I evaluated was the number of electives I got to choose (which Booth has the most). I also wanted a school that had a big network in Mexico and Latin American (which Booth has).

What is your favorite company and what could business students learn from them? My favorite company is Bain & Company. The thing people could learn from them is how to set up employees for success. I have had more than five weeks of onsite training at Bain. They have a springboard site for learning new material and most importantly a great mentorship culture where supervisors are always teaching and showing how to improve. I will be forever grateful for what I have learned at Bain. Setting up people for success pays huge dividends in Bain’s success, it’s a thing I think any company should do to be successful.

DON’T MISS: MEET CHICAGO BOOTH’S MBA CLASS OF 2022

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