Sam Hinojosa

Carnegie Mellon University, Tepper School of Business

“Perpetually curious engineer seeking to create technology with positive impacts. Also, aspiring Fantasy Football champion.”

Hometown: McAllen, Texas

Fun Fact About Yourself: I was the front man of a rock band for 5 years, both during and after college.

Undergraduate School and Major: Trinity University, Engineering Science

Most Recent Employer and Job Title: Manufacturing Engineer at Lockheed Martin

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? Amongst other things, I was very interested in the “mini-mester” course scheduling that CMU employs, dividing each semester into two 7-week blocks. The challenge of this faster paced scheduling was enticing to me, as well as the volume of classes I could take over my two-year experience. I chose to pursue business school to become a more well-rounded professional, and the mini-mesters present a fantastic opportunity to explore a wide range of topics, providing for far more exposure than a typical semester structure would allow.

What course, club or activity excites you the most at Carnegie Mellon? Technology and Future of Work is a course geared towards understanding how changes in technology will affect workers in the near future. It examines this issue quantitatively by assessing worker productivity data, while also theorizing qualitatively on the impacts of the changing nature of work on employees. Additionally, it explores policy options that could curtail some negative impacts to workers. This course interests me due to my experience implementing collaborative and industrial robotics into our manufacturing process. This integration forced the machine operators to adapt, both in their abilities and expectations. Managing this relationship was always a priority, and as I aim to shape technology, I believe it is vital to understand the potential downstream impacts. I seek to develop technology that respects workers, empowering them to excel, rather than be displaced.

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 have a wide range of interests, and love to try new things. However, in the past, I have spread myself too thin with over-involvement. With the endless amounts of opportunity, both professionally and personally over an MBA experience, it is easy to want to say yes to everything. I hope to strengthen my time management skills to allow myself to use my time as intentionally as I can, while still leaving room to take care of myself on a personal level. This skill will be just as vital in the workplace, maintaining proper prioritization to handle a new career with all the craziness of life.

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? As AI and other data processing systems become more ubiquitous in the workplace, the ability to identify valuable data sets and leverage the information in decision-making becomes even more essential. Working as an engineer, I oversaw CNC machining, implementing process improvements to reduce defects and run times. I viewed each machining issue through a cost perspective, allowing me to most appropriately prioritize my workload. Often, issues that seemed pressing had very little cost impact. For example, I found spending extensive analysis on a $150 part with a 5% defect rate was a misallocation of resources. Rather, I spent that effort to reduce run times of other parts. While causing defective parts may seem to be a more concerning issue, when looking through a cost perspective, the savings achieved from a process improvement can far outweigh the losses of a defect.

When you think of Carnegie Mellon University, what is the first word that comes to mind? Why? Innovative. CMU strives to stay ahead of current developments, both in course content and the implementation of new resources and technology available to students. This is additionally shown in the attitude of students I have encountered, holding tremendous interest in how the world is changing and a desire to shape that change. It truly is no surprise that CMU is a hub of entrepreneurship.

Describe your biggest accomplishment in your career so far: During my final year at Lockheed, I was tasked with developing a machining process for a new material in our shop, as it was to no longer be produced at another site. I became the expert on this new process, leaning on the information I received from the previous site, and integrating it into our infrastructure. For over a year, I had stretched far outside of my previous knowledge base to establish systems to produce this part, including quality requirements, inspection procedures, and packaging and procurement concerns. I worked cross-functionally with program management, shop supervisors, NC programmers, and others to get this process operational. In 6 months, we machined 18 months of required parts. Additionally, I leveraged my experience in tool engineering to improve upon the prior process by extending the life of the drill bits. This tool study will save the process over $500k in tooling costs over the next 2 years.

© Copyright 2026 Poets & Quants. All rights reserved. This article may not be republished, rewritten or otherwise distributed without written permission. To reprint or license this article or any content from Poets & Quants, please submit your request HERE.