Taylor Blanchard

Carnegie Mellon University, Tepper School of Business

“I’m a problem-solver who enjoys drawing on my wide experience to build creative solutions.”

Hometown: Rancho Santa Margarita, CA, USA

Fun Fact About Yourself: I’m fluent in German and interned there in undergrad at Germany’s oldest chocolate factory.

Undergraduate School and Major: Brigham Young University (BYU); Marketing

Most Recent Employer and Job Title: Shell; B2B Marketing Manager

Aside from your classmates, what was the key part of Carnegie Mellon’s MBA curriculum and programming that led you to choose this business school and why was it so important to you? CMU has a highly-flexible curriculum, with many tracks and concentrations to choose from, as well as the option to take courses in highly ranked CMU schools outside of Tepper. The freedom to focus where I want is important to me so I can expand the breadth of my learning and meet people I otherwise wouldn’t in a traditional career.

What course, club or activity excites you the most at Carnegie Mellon? I’m excited about the Outdoor Adventure Club! The Northeast is new territory for me so I’m ready to explore.

The Tepper MBA is known for intensive one-on-one coaching and personal development. What area do you hope to strengthen during your two years in business school and why? Negotiation was one of my favorite courses in undergrad. Improving your interpersonal communication and influencing abilities is a super power in-and-out of the office

The Tepper MBA is also known for being highly data-driven. Why does the program’s focus on quantitative analysis and decision-making appeal to you? How have you been able to leverage this approach in your career so far? During COVID, I used data to make recommendations to help us get through huge swings in supply and demand. Understanding the best ways to leverage data in decision-making is going to become increasingly important as business tools evolve, and Tepper is at the forefront of that change,

Describe your biggest accomplishment in your career so far: I launched multiple marketing programs from scratch in my last role at Shell. It was very fulfilling to research, test my hypothesis, run things tactically on my own, then leverage my learnings to hire agencies to execute on the strategies I developed.

What advice would you give to help potential applicants gain admission into Carnegie Mellon’s MBA program? Do your online research, but nothing beats first-hand conversations. Check out the Humans of Tepper podcast and reach out to current students and recent grads to ask about their experience. Then craft your story of how your profile will fit within Tepper’s culture and goals