Teyonna M. Jarman

Carnegie Mellon University, Tepper School of Business

“Creative storyteller with a passion for tech, entertainment, strategy, community, and all things Mariah Carey.”

Hometown: Barstow, CA

Fun Fact About Yourself: I was a paid performer in the 2024 Super Bowl Halftime Show.

Undergraduate School and Major: B.S., Mechanical Engineering, Product Design from Stanford University, Class of 2018

Most Recent Employer and Job Title: Blavity, Executive Assistant to the SVP of Digital; Xena Creative LLC, Business Owner and Freelance Creative Consultant.

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? Overall, the program at Tepper was the perfect balance for me, with broad offerings that spanned multiple career tracks to offer me a multitude of choices. It also offered a distinct STEM lens and cutting-edge AI focus that I felt would give me a leg up in my professional career. The flexibility of Tepper’s curriculum offers the opportunity to take advantage of classes outside of the business school to supplement the core MBA classes. The greater Carnegie Mellon community’s renowned interdisciplinary culture was a major draw for me. I wanted to be surrounded by people as multi-hyphenated as I am. Diverse backgrounds in my classmates are important. I also wanted to matriculate into a program that offered diverse experiences to build upon the diverse backgrounds in me and my classmates.

What course, club or activity excites you the most at Carnegie Mellon? I’m most excited to help build opportunities for and within the Media & Entertainment Club. My passions and professional interests lie at the intersection of creative industries, especially entertainment, technology, and corporate strategy. Carnegie Mellon has a renowned fine and performing arts program, and the surrounding Pittsburgh area is a strong sports hub. I’m energized by the possibilities for me to bring my experience and passion for entertainment to a community that has a thriving scene that I will also get to learn from and 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? I’m focused on strengthening my overall confidence and leadership presence. I’m intent on not just building skills in strategy and decision-making, but also in connecting with others and persuading and inspiring teams of collaborators to listen to my ideas. I understand this is vital to success as a leader in any capacity – but especially in a rapidly-changing business world.

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? My pre-MBA work experience focused more on operations and logistics, so I knew going into an MBA that I wanted to study within a program that could help fill the gaps in my skill set. Tepper’s STEM-designated program, with heavy focus on quantitative analysis, is the perfect complement to my undergraduate and professional background in design-thinking and creative output. While I’ve always prided myself on being generally well-rounded, I know that my quantitative skills have taken a backseat in my career post-undergrad. So far, even before the official start of class, the pre-MBA readiness assessments from Tepper have helped me orient myself. Even more, it has given me a head start on knowing what skills in particular I will give extra attention to, like coding and building Excel models.

Looking at your recruitment, what was the moment when you realized Tepper was the right program for you? Why? It was clear to me during Welcome Weekend. I really hit it off with current students, now second year MBAs, and also a lot of other admitted students. While most programs will make the most of their admit weekends, I really felt that Tepper was a genuine and authentic community. Almost everyone offered to connect me to people they knew at other schools I was considering! Faculty, staff, and students were open and honest about the journey through an MBA and also the ways they felt I could contribute to the broader school community. One of the questions you get asked a bunch during the admissions process is how you will contribute to the school and their culture. I turned that question back around to the schools and asked how they thought I could contribute. I really liked the answers I got back from the people at Tepper.

Describe your biggest accomplishment in your career so far: I was the founding Chief of Staff for a VC-backed startup called Cherry Technologies. I’m most proud of being on the front lines as we raised Series A and B funding, growing the company from 5 employees to over 150 in just 4 years. I wore many hats while we built out our operations and sales teams from scratch, and the company still continues to grow and thrive today. Pivoting from that organization to the entertainment industry and entrepreneurial space has had its own learnings and achievements to be proud of, but there’s nothing like looking back and realizing you were a part of launching a full-blown company. Not many people can say they’ve done that, and I’m proud to say I’ve done it more than once!

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