Luis Trejo

Georgia Institute of Technology, Scheller College of Business

“Data-driven, adaptable, dependable. 80’s music was the best. You read that right.”

Hometown: Mexico City, Mexico

Fun Fact About Yourself: The pandemic made me start watching The Office…..I am a fan now.

Undergraduate School and Major: Universidad Iberoamericana – Chemical Engineering

Most Recent Employer and Job Title: Sintec Consulting – Business 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? There were two key parts. Long before even taking the GMAT, I was considering getting a master’s degree related to data analytics. Scheller was a great fit because the MBA program is ranked in the top 3 for Business Analytics by the U.S. News & World Report. The other reason was that upon being accepted to the program, I was offered a full Graduate Research Assistantship (GRA). This provided me the opportunity to keep working and to grow professionally. Typically, being a Full-time MBA student would require me to stop work for two year (not considering the summer internship) so I am grateful for such opportunity.

The Scheller MBA ranks among the best for instilling innovation and creativity according to alumni and students surveyed by Bloomberg Businessweek. How have seen this in the programming so far? In my Managing Information Resources class, the topics that we studied were modern and highly relevant like digital networks, blockchain, cybersecurity, and crowdsourcing. It was definitely a creative and innovative class.

At Scheller, you are literally across the street from Tech Square and living in one of the dynamic business environments in the world. What makes Atlanta such a great place to live and learn for you? Coming from Mexico City, one of the biggest urban areas in the world, I really enjoy living in a “human-size” city such as Atlanta because everything is just ten minutes away. I appreciate how this saves me huge amounts of time and enables me to better organize my day. Thus, both people and places always feel close, and this is a basic requirement to better live and learn.

What quality best describes your MBA classmates you’ve met so far and why? Collaborative. People are willing to genuinely listen and discuss everyone’s ideas and work towards better results. While being highly restricted by the virtual environment, it was nevertheless fun to solve and compare assignments with team members as well as listen to other people’s points of view during classes. I have come to verify what many people say: a relevant part of the MBA value lies in our peers themselves.

Describe your biggest accomplishment in your career so far: During a project, the customer implemented one of our main recommendations before the project concluded. By the time the C-suite saw the final presentation, the main action item from that presentation was already in action for the customer. I remember feeling extremely happy and satisfied with the outcome, especially because I was directly in charge of running the numbers that backed up the recommendation.

Describe your biggest accomplishment as an MBA student so far? My biggest accomplishment was finding balance, especially when the pandemic forced everything to move to a virtual format. With the social component restrained, there were still a lot of things going on. It took me several weeks to understand how much time was worth dedicating to tasks like classes, team assignments, studying for exams, company info-sessions and applications, checking in with peers, and keeping up with exercises, which was more for mental than physical health.

What led you to pursue an MBA at this point in your career? I felt I needed more business-related knowledge. My four-and-a-half years in consulting taught me a lot, but I always thought I was missing a structured approach to better understand and tackle the daily challenges I faced. Derived from this, I firmly believed I needed an MBA to continue to keep growing in my professional career since the world just keeps getting more and more competitive.

What was your defining moment and how did it prepare you for business school? I believe there were several moments, but one that always sticks out to me is the day I received my performance feedback after my very first project at work. Despite having performed relatively well in the tasks I was assigned, I was lacked in communicating efficiently with the members of my own team. This resulted in not understanding the full scope of the project and I missed some of the insights and recommendations presented to the customer. This came as a hard truth, especially since I had always praised myself on being able to understand everything at school.

From that moment on, I always worked on improving my communication skills as well as trying to never lose sight of the big picture. This has taken discipline and a lot of practice. I still have room for improvement, but I feel comfortable enough to study for an MBA in a foreign country and not lose sight of all the details from visa and immigration requirements to job applications.

DON’T MISS: MEET GEORGIA TECH’S MBA CLASS OF 2022