Wes Barlow

University of Texas at Austin McCombs School of Business

“I like to turn obstacles into opportunities and lead with resilience, curiosity, empathy, and an unyielding drive to create.”

Hometown: Weston, CT

Fun Fact About Yourself: When I was 15, I joined an international orchestra to play trumpet at the Forbidden City Music Hall in Beijing, China, for the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

Undergraduate School and Major: Loyola University of Maryland, Finance

Most Recent Employer and Job Title: Reggora Inc., Director of Finance

What makes Austin such a great place to earn an MBA? Austin stands out as a place to earn an MBA due to its vibrant, community-driven learning and networking environment. UT’s MBA program promotes a collaborative culture, where students, faculty, and alums are all invested in each other’s success, and they are willing to make introductions so MBA students can tap into Austin’s and UT’s business ecosystem.

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? I believe the vast resources and network of UT led me to choose McCombs. I did my undergraduate degree at a small liberal arts school, so being plugged into a top school like McCombs, with hundreds of thousands of alums and the feeling that an entire Texas community wants you to succeed, helped me decide to matriculate.

What course, club, or activity excites you the most at Texas McCombs? I’m biased; being the president of the Graduate Entrepreneurship Society and a liaison to the ETA club, I think entrepreneurship and entrepreneurship through acquisition is one of the most exciting areas to operate in. Whether you want to go 0 to 1 or 1 and beyond with ETA, Texas McCombs dedicates significant resources to students eager to build or buy their businesses. Building a company has never been easier, and there are so many opportunities to take an existing company and 3-5x it by implementing new technology and management frameworks. At the GES and the ETA club, we are committed to directing those resources towards our members.

Looking at your recruitment, what was the moment when you realized Texas McCombs was the right program for you? Why? I went to a McCombs interested students and accepted students networking event in Boston. After meeting about five accepted students, I realized McCombs was right for me. They were all down-to-earth, intelligent, extremely curious, and people I could see myself getting a beer with.

Describe your biggest accomplishment in your career so far: My biggest accomplishment was also one of my biggest failures. Between 2017 and 2020, I worked on a concept to bring temporary shared storage lockers to cities and event venues. Think bike sharing but for bag storage. I ended up building a 24-unit prototype and signing 7 locations in Nashville; however, when the pandemic hit, contracts were paused, and I couldn’t raise money for the pilot test, so I had to shut the company down. I was proud about how far I could take it but disappointed we couldn’t get it in front of customers before running out of money.

Looking ahead two years, what would make your MBA experience at McCombs successful? From one perspective, I would consider it a success if I could build and scale a company by leveraging the credibility and learnings I have gained through my McCombs MBA. From another point of view, since success isn’t binary (and here comes the MBA jargon), I would also consider it a success if I graduate feeling prepared to jump into leadership roles at almost any company with the skills and frameworks necessary to execute effectively.

DON’T MISS: MEET THE TEXAS MCCOMBS MBA CLASS OF 2026