James (Jim) Kromka

Carnegie Mellon University, Tepper School of Business

“I am a positive, hardworking engineer who loves solving problems and having fun.”

Hometown: Monroeville, Pennsylvania

Fun Fact About Yourself: I am one of eight children.

Undergraduate School and Major: Carnegie Mellon University; Mechanical Engineering and Biomedical Engineering

Most Recent Employer and Job Title: Smith+Nephew – Senior Mechanical Engineer

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? Without a doubt, it was the emphasis on STEM. I have an engineering background, so I wanted an MBA that was more technical than most. The Tepper school has such great resources and connections with the rest of the university, and I’m excited to take advantage of them.

What course, club or activity excites you the most at Carnegie Mellon? Basketball Club! It’s a passion of mine, and I’m excited to play with my classmates as well as with MBAs from other business schools.

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? Intelligent risk-taking. In my life and in my career, I often take a conservative approach, but I recognize that real growth happens when you are willing to take risks, both personally and professionally.

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? The program’s quantitative focus appealed to me because of my engineering background, and because big data is the way of the future. Now that we are on the cusp of an AI boom, it’s more important than ever to utilize the data we have available to us. So far in my career, I have had success using and collecting data to drive robotic surgical tool development.

Looking at your recruitment, what was the moment when you realized Tepper was the right program for you? Why? I never really had the “Eureka” moment in my decision-making. Through a thoughtful, prayerful period of discernment, I ultimately came to the conclusion that the Tepper school was where I needed to be.

Describe your biggest accomplishment in your career so far: At Smith+Nephew, I developed an electromechanical product for gathering a new kind of data during knee replacement surgeries. Seeing the project through from start-to-finish was rewarding. This included early research & prototyping, development & validation, and manufacturing. Additionally, the uncertainty of COVID made this project especially challenging, and I traveled to Spain, Mexico, and numerous domestic facilities to keep the project on track. While it was difficult, the sense of ownership and accomplishment once we launched was incredibly fulfilling.

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