Meet the MBA Class of 2023: Colton Williamson, University of Texas (McCombs)

Colton Williamson

The University of Texas at Austin, McCombs School of Business

“Empathetic, creative, and ambitious. I’m devoted to helping the world grow more beautiful and harmonious.”

Hometown: Austin, TX

Fun Fact About Yourself: I met my wife at the SXSW premiere of a movie (Song to Song) we both worked on for five years apart from each other.

Undergraduate School and Major: The University of Notre Dame, Major: Film, Television, and Theatre

Most Recent Employer and Job Title: Freelance Editor & Producer

What makes Austin such a great place to earn an MBA? I fell in love with Austin the moment I moved here in 2015. We all know this city is undergoing radical growth, and that is largely due to its lively culture. There is no shortage of excellence when it comes to music, food, and outdoor activities here. Austin offers all the benefits of urban living while still managing to live in communion with nature. These conditions attract talent in a diverse array of industries seeking an environment in which they can be productive, think creatively, collaborate freely, and enjoy life’s sunny pleasures.

Aside from your classmates and location, what was the key part of Texas McCombs’ MBA programming that led you to choose this business school and why was it so important to you? When selecting a school, I sought out opportunities to develop skills that weren’t necessarily utilized in the world of independent filmmaking. McCombs emphasizes experiential learning with programs like McCombs+. This is great for someone like me who is considering a more radical career shift from the creative to the business end of content creation and looking to build up muscles I may not have used in my pre-MBA experience.

What course, club or activity excites you the most at Texas McCombs? Coming from a background in entertainment, I’m particularly excited about SEMA (Sports, Entertainment, and Media Association). Austin has such incredible relationships with music, film, and sports, and I appreciate the opportunity to have a club devoted to fostering interest in the business dimension of those spaces.

I also look forward to taking advantage of McCombs’ global opportunities. There are several options available to students hoping to travel abroad during their MBA, and those programs are by all accounts exceedingly rewarding and enjoyable.

Describe your biggest accomplishment in your career so far: I will never forget what it felt like to see A Hidden Life (a film on which I served as Associate Producer) at its premiere at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival. I had spent the prior three years working on a project that I was passionate about and believed in, alongside an unbelievably creative team, and all under the guidance of a brilliant director. All the hard work of those years paid off instantly upon the close of the curtain. The project had been stressful, and I think I’d half-forgotten how emotionally impactful a great work of art could be (especially after having seen it 20+ times up to that point). Upon the credit scroll, I turned to my wife (then fiancée) who was crying along with much of the audience, and I naturally and finally started to tear up, too. I was not alone in feeling that way – that we’d been a part of a very special project that would be seen for many years to come.

How did COVID-19 change your perspective on your career and your life in general? COVID-19 hit film production especially hard. We saw so many delayed releases and production hiatuses over the course of the past year-and-a-half, and it was at times hard for all of us to roll with the punches. That said, it quickly became important to find the positives from opportunities to work from home. I spent much of the time between gigs in summer of last year working on a personal project that I’d been neglecting in favor of paid work. I also had extra time to study for the GMAT, which helped my position heading into the admissions cycle.

As it pertains to the professional world generally, I think many have woken up to how important a work-life balance is, that we must carve time out to savor life before it passes by too quickly. The “certainties” by which we live our lives are much more fragile than we’d like to think, and COVID-19 rather forcefully opened our eyes to that reality.

What led you to pursue an MBA at this point and what do you hope to do after graduation? I first became interested in the business end of entertainment during the premiere party of A Hidden Life, where I watched as representatives from several major distributors got into a bidding war at a table by the cocktail bar. After quick calculations and several hurried phone calls, the distribution rights to the picture were purchased by Fox Searchlight in an eight-figure deal. Fascinated by the process, but feeling decidedly lacking when it came to the skillset required for such work, I started to look into pursuing an MBA.

I’m currently exploring a few different paths, including management consulting, but long term I would like to enter the world of content distribution, especially as it relates to smaller independent films. The process of filmmaking has been democratized by digital production techniques, but getting any particular work seen has become extraordinarily difficult. I look forward to leveraging the network and skills I develop at McCombs to contribute to a media environment where talented and important artistic voices can be heard.

What other MBA programs did you apply to? Berkeley Haas, Stanford, Harvard, and Wharton

What advice would you give to help potential applicants gain admission into Texas McCombs’ MBA program? This is broad advice applicable to any school, but I took advantage of some lulls in work during the quarantine to be deliberate in studying for the GMAT. There are more resources out there than you might expect and you don’t always have to go for the expensive options. I got my practice books from Half-Price Books (a used bookstore) and many of them still had unused codes for online practice tests. I utilized those apps and treated GMAT practice, in particular the quant section (which involved skills with which I was long out of practice), almost as a daily crossword. I would just do a few problems on my phone or laptop if I had five minutes of idle time.

I also spent a lot of time crafting my narrative. That process in itself was valuable because I, like many, only had a sense of what I would like to do post-MBA, but it wasn’t until I began that process of serious self-interrogation that I could actually identify where my roadmap ought to lead me.

Of course, speaking with former students is always going to be a valuable way to get more experiential insight to the McCombs culture, and I think any sincere passion for a school’s culture will shine through in an application. I loved McCombs and I think they felt that.