Seth Hogle

HEC Paris

Hometown: Atlanta, Georgia

Fun Fact About Yourself: Outside of my job at IBM, I worked part time at a local distillery in Washington, DC.

Undergraduate School and Major: Lee University, BS, Mathematics; University of Virginia, McIntire School of Commerce, MS, Commerce

Most Recent Employer and Job Title: IBM, Senior Consultant; One Eight Distilling, Production Assistant

Aside from your classmates, what was the key part of HEC Paris’ MBA programming that led you to choose this business school and why was it so important to you? The HEC MBA program has a strong record of career transformation for candidates. The 16-month program is highly customizable and lets students explore a wide range of career interests or dive deep in a new area. Combined with a student body of more than 90% international candidates and the close proximity to a global business center, it’s not surprising that many HEC MBA graduates change industry, function, and location.

What course, club or activity excites you the most at HEC Paris? The Wine and Spirits Club! After working part time at a local distillery in DC, I’m very excited to learn about the wine, spirits and beer industry while in France. Given HEC’s deep ties and reputation in the luxury industry, I’d love to dive deep into this segment of the industry.

HEC Paris is just 17 kilometers from Paris. What do you see as the best part of earning your MBA so close to Paris? Like any other global commercial center, the proximity to Paris will be a huge advantage for networking with alumni, visiting firms, and attending recruiting events. However, Paris is unique in the magnitude of its cultural and historical significance. Moving to Paris from DC, I’m particularly looking forward to visiting historical sites of the French Revolution.

Historically, over 90% of HEC Paris’ MBA students hail from outside France. Why is exposure to global diversity so critical to business success? The world is increasingly interconnected, and this rate of change is only going to speed up, not slow down. To successfully navigate this change, business leaders must operate from a global perspective. For example, even if you’re leading a small, local business, odds are some facets, such as vendors in your supply chain or customers in your target market, are influenced by global diversity. In any case, exposure to this diversity of thought through an MBA program trains future business leaders how to work with diverse teams, and the benefits of diverse teams have been well researched.

Describe your biggest accomplishment in your career so far: As a consultant at IBM, I spearheaded the data and analytics initiative for the largest automation platform in the US federal government. We partnered with the US Department for Veterans Affairs to better manage the processing speed and accuracy of benefits claims. Our solution decreased overage response time from over a month to under 24 hours, and empowered VA employees to spend more time on high value tasks best suited for humans and less time on manual rules-based tasks better suited for automation technologies. This translates into US Veterans getting timely and appropriate access to the benefits they’ve earned.

What is one thing you have recently read, watched, or listened to that you would highly recommend to prospective MBAs? Why? I don’t typically care for self-help style business leadership books or content, though I could recommend Clayton Christensen’s How Will You Measure Your Life? One newsletter I can’t recommend highly enough for anyone even remotely interested in finance or corporate law is Matt Levine’s Money Stuff. Matt’s writing is incredibly witty and illuminates the key issues in whatever is in the financial news of the day.

What advice would you give to help potential applicants gain admission into HEC Paris’s\ MBA program? Take the time to research the program (you should do this for every school you apply to, anyway). Start by going through the program website, where you can share your background and profile before you begin the application process. Through this, I got connected with my regional MBA recruiter, which led to many more introductions to alumni and current students. Everyone I spoke with was very friendly and happy to give advice, which is the kind of insight you’ll need for application essays and admissions interviews. Ultimately, you need to be able to authentically answer “Why the HEC Paris MBA, and why now?”

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