Kellogg Chronicles: A Poet In The Age Of AI

From an early age, I was always fascinated by the social sciences and finding out what makes people tick – so in the classic business school divide, I have always been more of a ‘Poet’.

Despite this, I wanted to build a technical toolkit to start my career, so I chose a ‘Quant’ path. I built models in consulting and joined operations at Uber, leaning heavily on data analysis, metrics, and frameworks.

While the technical skills were necessary in the beginning, soft skills became increasingly important as I grew in my career. Soft skills are where poets shine and yet they were the ones where I had the least training: reflection, communication, negotiation, and selling.

This realization took me to the Kellogg One-Year MBA program.

WHY I CHOSE THE ONE-YEAR MBA PROGRAM

The Kellogg One-Year MBA matched my objectives for business school: I was looking for a world-class program renowned for its collaborative culture, and one that balanced corporate finance with personal development. Since I already had a business background – and wanted to remain in tech rather than pivoting – the One-Year MBA program allowed me to dive faster into electives and accelerate the return to my career.

At the same time, I knew that one year would go by fast – so the One-Year MBA rewards planning. I chose Finance courses early that opened VC internships and was selective in leadership roles that aligned with my career. That intentionality paid off. I was able to lead and attend the Tech and AI Treks to San Francisco and still had time to participate in events and meet amazing people.

Kellogg’s team-based DNA allowed for this balance of honing the skills learned and exploring new opportunities, despite the accelerated timeline. Whether it was KWEST in the Philippines, working through Tesla’s balance sheets, or learning Bollywood choreography, day in and day out we worked as a team, communicated, and negotiated (in my case doing simpler dance steps).

Given the program’s duration, I was also intentional about meeting incredible people with different backgrounds and interests from mine. The list is long, but includes the Green Beret fluent in Russian, the PM on Apple Vision Pro, the Navy veteran/VC raising a search fund, and the CrossFit fanatic masquerading as a consultant. And, of course, there was the investment banker specializing in fried chicken franchises.

USING AI…

I also chose Kellogg because, after my career in tech, I wanted a program that fully embraced AI and its applications in business.

I majored in marketing, where AI is being heavily adopted. In my Marketing Strategy for Growth and Defense course, we used NotebookLM to navigate the byzantine instructions of a product marketing simulation to find growth opportunities – because AI is not just about efficiency, growth matters too! This course in particular is taught by an amazing, former Google executive who actually wrote one of the must-read books on marketing in the age of AI (shoutout to Professor Jim Lecinski!).

The same focus on AI was true in Kellogg’s entrepreneurship and venture capital classes. In Entrepreneurship Through Acquisition, we discussed the fundamentals of AI-based sourcing and outreach – a topic that will surely be featured in this year’s Booth-Kellogg ETA Conference. In my Venture Lab internship with Angeles Ventures, I built my first n8n agent workflows, and in Early Stage Impact Investing my team used multiple LLMs to optimize due diligence. By using AI for initial go-to-market and financial reviews, we were able to spend more time with founders to learn about their motivations and challenges. Essentially, AI unlocked time to focus on what matters most at early-stage startups: founders and teams.

Outside class, I also had a front-row seat to AI. In the fall, I co-led Kellogg’s Technology Trek to San Francisco, organizing 40+ students to meet with companies including Adobe, Anthropic, Google, Meta, and NVIDIA. We saw the companies’ AI bets on hardware, like Meta’s glasses, and learned about their focus on enterprise beyond the consumer AI tech that we were more familiar with.

In the spring, I attended the AI Trek, where we met with OpenAI and Perplexity. In less than six months, the Studio Ghibli image generators had broken the internet and the use of ‘Agents’ to automate work had also gone viral. In the case of OpenAI, the number of ChatGPT weekly users exploded from nearly 300 million to 500 million in just six months!

I remain in awe of what’s being built and humbled by the people we met, who were kind enough to open their doors to students interested in applying AI in their careers.

…WITHOUT LOSING THE HUMAN EDGE

Before AI, B-school students shared the same case studies and books. With AI, we all have access to the same answers – delivered to us in 30 seconds or less.

As both access and speed become commoditized, what sets Kellogg apart is its focus on developing the human skills that can’t be automated, including self-awareness and grit.

Yes, using AI platforms can speed up the work and be used to consume knowledge fast, but deliberation is still needed for learning and growth.

This is what Kellogg taught me: real growth comes from practice.

You can ask Claude by Anthropic, “What do you know about me that I may not know about myself?” – or you can ask the same question to three people who know you well and be challenged by what you hear.

You can ask ChatGPT, “Why should Disney license its movies to Netflix?” – or you can think deeply about it, be cold-called by your professor in front of fifty classmates, and sharpen your case when someone pushes back. (Replying with, “Because Chat said so”, probably won’t get you far.)

You can also watch a TikTok about the Paperclip Challenge (a bartering game where people trade up from a paperclip to something extraordinary) – or you can try it yourself, navigate the negotiations, and experience the rejections and surprises that only come from doing it in real life.

Which scenario was more uncomfortable? Which one made you grow more? And which one was more fun?

To each of these questions, I’m thankful to Paul Corona’s Personal Leadership Insights for helping me understand my values more deeply, to Shana Carroll and Matt Levatich (former CEO of Harley-Davidson) for putting my communication skills to practice in classes, and to Craig Wortmann for, as he says, making all of us uncomfortable in every single class of Entrepreneurial Selling.

Both before and during the age of AI, Kellogg students stand out not just by knowing, but by doing – by turning learning into action and growth.

LIFE AFTER KELLOGG

I had to apply the skills learned sooner than I thought.

After an undisclosed number of applications tested my resilience, I followed Professor Wortmann’s advice to “pick up the phone!”

A few calls led me to a former Uber colleague. He’d just taken a senior management role and needed a trusted pair of hands during the transition. My response: “I’m in.”

With AI sending hundreds of applications a day that are also being read by AI, the real edge remains being human.

Bio
Eduardo Baudet is a Kellogg One-Year MBA graduate with distinction. He has eight years’ experience in consulting and at Uber, where he led product launches across Europe. He was born in Venezuela and studied at the London School of Economics.

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