Jewell Wilson

Arizona State University, W. P. Carey School of Business

“Analytical professional blending finance, AI, and supply chains. Curious builder, thoughtful leader, and girl dad.”

Hometown: Little Rock, AR

Fun fact about yourself: I spent two months after college graduation winter camping to ski as many different locations as possible. I started in Colorado and journeyed through Wyoming, Montana, British Columbia, Washington, Oregon, and Utah. The trip spanned roughly 4,000 miles, eight mountain resorts, and over 50 days of camping in a tent on the snow.

Undergraduate School and Degree: University of Denver – Bachelor of Science in Environmental Science and a minor in Business Administration.

Where was the last place you worked before enrolling in business school? I worked at Acertus as a Senior Commercial Business Implementation Analyst.

Where did you intern during the summer of 2025? I completed my internship at Lucid Motors in Casa Grande, AZ as a Transportation Finance Intern.

Where will you be working after graduation? I will be working at Lucid Motors as a Staff Financial Analyst.

Community Work and Leadership Roles in Business School: (Include school awards and honors)

• W. P. Carey Merit Scholarship
• The Challenge Foundation Advisory Board

Which academic or extracurricular achievement are you most proud of during business school? The extracurricular activity I am proudest of during my time at W. P. Carey is my work as a teaching assistant for my favorite professor, Dr. Reynold Byers. I was a teaching assistant for the Statistics for Business course three times. The same material, three times.

In my opinion, statistics has a reputation problem. Students come into the program convinced they cannot do it, and that belief is usually more of an obstacle than the actual math concepts they learn in the course. The formulas are not the difficult part. The difficult part is understanding what a problem is asking and what concept to apply to solve it. Once you figure that out, the math is a matter of mechanics.

That is what made the TA role interesting to me. It was not really about statistics. It was about finding the exact moment where someone’s understanding broke down and helping them fix it. A student would come into office hours stuck on confidence intervals, and nine times out of ten, they were not confused about the formula. They were confused about what a confidence interval was. I would slow them down, help them understand the concept itself, describe it in a real-world scenario, and then the formula would become obvious.

What kept me coming back was how immediate the feedback was – either a student made progress or did not. When Dr. Byers kept asking me to be his TA, I kept saying yes. I would watch a student go from being lost to solving the next problem easily and independently, sometimes in a single session. Most academic pursuits have a lag between effort and result, but for me, teaching did not. I could see other students learn in real time.

Each time I TA’d the course, I understood the material better. Attempting and failing to explain a concept to someone else revealed exactly what I did not understand myself. This forced me to break down a problem to its core to teach it to someone else. If I could do that, I knew I understood the concept. That process helped me as I took on more difficult coursework myself.

What achievement are you most proud of in your professional career? The professional achievement that I am proudest of is building a landed cost model during my internship at Lucid Motors. The goal of the project was to understand and model the true cost of sourcing all parts in Lucid’s global supply chain.

When building the model, I needed to bring together many variables that are usually looked at individually. These include transportation transit times and costs, duties and tariffs, container utilization, piece part cost, warehousing cost, and payment terms. I then had to model how these variables interacted. The finished model allowed teams to compare scenarios to inform future sourcing or resourcing decisions so they could see how decisions impacted total landed cost.

The project was meaningful to me because it combined analytics, finance, and operations. In previous roles, I had performed analytical tasks in isolation, but had not combined these skills to translate data into an operational and financial decision framework. The project reinforced the importance of a clear model structure and documented assumptions to make better decisions.

Why did you choose this business school? One of the reasons I chose the W. P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University is its strong connections to the growing business ecosystem in Phoenix. The school is in one of the fastest growing economic areas in the United States, which creates unique opportunities for MBA students in technology, supply chain, and even electric vehicles.

Throughout the admissions process, I connected with students in the program about the connections to local businesses through internships, company visits, applied projects, and guest speakers. Additionally, I have lived in the valley for almost ten years and have adopted Phoenix as my hometown. I have a growing family with strong connections to the valley, including a wife who loves her work here and three daughters who love their school and daycare. I knew that I wanted to stay in Phoenix long-term and grow my family and career here, so the local connections and opportunities to network with business leaders during the program were the main reasons I decided to attend W. P. Carey.

Who was your favorite MBA professor? Dr. Reynold Byers is my favorite professor in the program. What I value most about Dr. Byers’s approach is that he uses class time to ensure that students understand the core concepts and then pushes us to go beyond them through difficult assignments that he calls “challenge” problems. Class time is for building the foundation. Assignments are for going beyond it.

Dr. Byers gives us problems that require applying concepts in new ways, often under time pressure, without a clear template to follow. On one assignment, he asked us to solve a traveling salesman problem using linear programming instead of the more intuitive evolutionary algorithm approach. It was not obvious how to structure it, which was the point. That kind of problem forced us to fully understand the tools rather than just implement them.

I took all three of Dr. Byers’s available courses and would take any course he offered. The specific techniques I learned mattered less than how my thinking changed. That is a harder thing to teach and a rarer thing to find.

What made a lasting impression personally was that Dr. Byers generosity extended beyond the coursework. I went to his office hours not just for assignments but to discuss research I was reading on my own, like Roland Fryer’s field experiment on charter school strategies in Houston. Dr. Byers engaged with and encouraged all of it. That kind of openness, a professor willing to follow a student’s curiosity wherever it goes, isn’t something you forget.

What was your favorite course as an MBA? My favorite course was SCM 518: Analytical Decision Modeling. The course has a reputation at W. P. Carey for being one of the hardest in the program. I found out why pretty quickly.

The course forces students to translate business problems into quantitative models. It is not about strategy discussion. It requires students to model business problems, in Excel, in a way that produces a definitive answer.

The discipline the course teaches is structuring a problem before touching the model. The course introduced me to a framework that I now apply to any complex problem I encounter: define the objective, identify the constraints, and figure out which variables you can control. Once these are clear, the model almost builds itself.

That way of thinking impacted me in a way that most coursework does not. When something feels complicated, my first move is now to slow down and get clear on what I am actually trying to optimize for. This approach has made me a more rigorous and decisive problem solver, which is the most useful thing a business school course can do.

Dr. Byers wrote in the syllabus that SCM 518 would be “one of the most important and useful courses you will take in this program.” After taking it, it’s hard to disagree.

What was your favorite MBA event or tradition at your business school? One of my favorite events at W. P. Carey was the MBA Golf Scramble. The event paired students with executive mentors for a round of golf, which created a relaxed setting where conversations about leadership, career decisions, and professional growth could happen more naturally.

What made the event valuable for me was the opportunity to discuss real workplace challenges with experienced business leaders. In one conversation, I described a situation where I had to work under intense time pressure and difficult management styles. My mentor shared advice that stuck with me: Focus on the content of the message rather than the tone it is delivered in. That perspective helped me separate useful feedback from emotional reactions and think more clearly about how to improve my performance.

That kind of exchange is what the golf scramble reflected about W. P. Carey more broadly. The school takes seriously the idea that meaningful mentorship happens outside the classroom. The Executive Connections program embodies that. It pairs every full-time MBA student with an executive mentor for the entire 21-month program, with the goal of developing leadership skills through access to people who have real leadership experience. The Golf Scramble was one expression of that. The broader point is that W. P. Carey builds structures that make those conversations possible and then lets the conversations happen naturally.

Looking back over your MBA experience, what is the one thing you’d do differently and why? If I could do one thing differently, I would have invested in relationships earlier in the program. I started the MBA about a decade after finishing college, so when the program began, my instinct was to focus on assignments, keep up with the readings, and make sure my work was done well. The pace of the first year made that easy to justify. There was always another case, model, or presentation to prepare for.

Over time, I realized that the real value of the MBA was not just the coursework, it was the people in the program. The most useful lessons came from conversations after class, during group projects, or at events with executive mentors. A teacher who had worked in private equity would explain how they thought about a deal. Someone from consulting would break down how they approached a challenging business problem. Those conversations often changed how I thought about decisions more than the textbook examples did.

If I could go back, I would treat relationship-building the way I treated my coursework. That would mean more early coffee chats with classmates, more time talking with executive mentors after events, and more curiosity about the paths other people had taken. The assignments end when the quarter ends. The relationships are what will continue beyond the program.

What was the most impactful case study you had in business school and what was the biggest lesson you learned from it? The most impactful case I encountered in business school was Lincoln Electric. The company built a compensation system, piece-rate pay plus large annual bonuses tied directly to company performance, that aligned employees with the business in a way most companies only dream of. It worked remarkably well for decades.

The case made me consider the relationship between culture and performance. Lincoln Electric did not rely on culture as an abstract concept. Rather, it designed a system where the incentives did the work. The case reframed how I think about organizational design. Shared values matter, but the structure built around them matters just as much.

The second lesson I learned from the case was how strong systems are not always transferrable. When Lincoln tried to export their model internationally, it struggled. The system that worked so well in one context did not transfer automatically to others. That tension between a model that clearly works in one place and fails to work elsewhere is something I now consider when approaching problems that involve scaling or replication. Great systems are usually context dependent. It is important to know when to adapt rather than assuming success will transfer.

What business leader do you admire most? The business leader I admire most is Brian Armstrong. Armstrong co-founded Coinbase in 2012, when cryptocurrency was still a fringe idea. At that time, most people dismissed digital assets entirely. Armstrong left a stable job at Airbnb to build infrastructure for an emerging financial system. That decision signaled something I admire: a willingness to pursue an idea early, before consensus forms, and to think in terms of decades instead of quarters.

I also respect Armstrong’s willingness to make difficult decisions to protect the company’s focus. In 2020, during a period of intense national debate following the murder of George Floyd, Armstrong announced that Coinbase would become a mission-focused company centered on building an open financial system. He said the company would not take public positions on issues unrelated to that mission and offered generous severance to employees who disagreed with the approach. The decision was controversial and drew significant criticism, but Armstrong held firm in his belief that clarity of purpose was necessary for the company to succeed.

What I applaud most is Armstrong’s combination of long-term thinking and a willingness to make unpopular decisions. In fast-moving industries, it is easy for leaders to optimize for short-term approval. Armstrong’s leadership shows that maintaining a clear mission, and making hard choices to protect it, can create conditions for long-term growth as we have seen at Coinbase.

What is one way that your business school has integrated AI into your programming? What insights did you gain from using AI? W. P. Carey created an AI concentration for the MBA that is focused on applying AI to real business problems, not just understanding it conceptually. In SCM 519: Quantitative Risk Management, I built a Microsoft Copilot agent to analyze delayed shipment decisions across a global dataset of more than 30,000 orders. The agent worked from a supply chain dataset I cleaned and engineered, a policy framework I wrote to define decision rules, and reference data on contracted shipping rates and tariff exposure.

The biggest lesson I learned through the AI concentration was ultimately not about AI. It was that the quality of the output depended almost entirely on the work done before the model was involved: how clearly the problem was defined, how well the data was structured, and how precisely the decision rules were written. Get those things right and the agent works remarkably effectively. Get them wrong, and it will not work at all.

That lesson reframed how I think about AI as a business tool. The power is not in the model alone. It is in how you structure the problem. Which, it turns out, is the same skill that makes someone effective without AI. The difference is AI adds leverage.

Which MBA classmate do you most admire? The MBA classmate I admire most is Dean Tappen. I came into the program to add financial skills to my analytics background and shift to a career where I can utilize analytics in a finance setting. I did not have significant financial modeling experience at the beginning of the program. I partnered with Dean in one of the early finance classes, and he challenged me to think more deeply about how the numbers connect to the broader business decision. Dean had a strong understanding of the material, but what made the biggest impression was his willingness to help others work through problems rather than providing answers. He raises the level of discussion in the room while also making those around him better, which is exactly the kind of peer you hope to have in an MBA program.

What are the top two items on your professional bucket list? The top two items on my professional bucket list are to start a company and to serve on the board of an organization that focuses on expanding educational opportunities for students.

Throughout the MBA experience, I have been drawn to identifying complex business problems and thinking about how technology and creative business models can be used to solve them. I do not know what the venture will look like yet, but I know that I want to start or help scale a company in the future. The process of building something from scratch is something that I am excited to pursue.

I would also like to serve on the board of an organization that focuses on expanding educational opportunities for students. I recently joined the advisory board of a local non-profit, the Challenge Foundation, that works to help high-potential students from under-resourced backgrounds succeed in college and career. From my work at the Challenge Foundation and my background as a 6th- and 8th-grade foundational math skills teacher, I’ve seen how mentorship, access to high-quality educational experiences, and strong support systems can dramatically impact a student’s trajectory. Long term, I want to contribute my business experience and network to create more of these opportunities for the next generation of students.

What made Jewell such an invaluable addition to the Class of 2026?

“Jewell Wilson is that rare student who pairs extraordinary intellectual ability with maturity, initiative, and practical execution. He has taken my most rigorous courses and excelled in all of them, not just mastering the material but extending it. In 26 years of teaching MBA students, Jewell ranks among the very best I have encountered. It has been both a privilege and a joy to teach and work with him.

When I recently needed to extract data from a particularly stubborn website (a task that had frustrated both a professional data engineer and a colleague trained in Information Systems), Jewell quietly analyzed the site’s structure and, within 30 minutes, delivered a clean, fully usable Excel dataset. Jewell doesn’t just solve problems; he solves the ones other experts walk away from.

What distinguishes him even further is his intellectual drive. If I mention a topic as being too advanced or inaccessible for the class, Jewell often researches it in real time and incorporates it into his own work before the lecture concludes. His intellectual ceiling is extraordinarily high, and he continues raising it.

Equally impressive is his commitment to others. While I move around the classroom helping students wrestle with complex quantitative models, I routinely look over to find Jewell doing the same – patiently, clearly, and effectively. As my teaching assistant, many students actively sought him out for his clarity and generosity. He elevates the performance of everyone around him.

Jewell Wilson has been an invaluable addition to the Class of 2026, consistently strengthening both the structures that support our students and the community. Over the past academic year in his Graduate Assistant role, he has distinguished himself not only through technical excellence but through the way he strengthens the entire W. P. Carey MBA community around him.

Jewell took the initiative to redevelop our AI-based matching algorithm to improve the Graduate Assistantship, Teaching Assistantship, and faculty matching processes, addressing significant logic gaps and technical limitations in the previous model that often required time-intensive manual matching. This innovation was more than a technical project. It was a systems-level contribution that improved efficiency, reduced oversight gaps, and enhanced alignment between student strengths and institutional needs. His meticulous attention to detail, rigorous logic development, and ability to identify blind spots we had previously missed will significantly strengthen our operations processes moving forward.

What makes Jewell truly invaluable, however, is the people-centered approach he takes. In addition to his role as a Graduate Assistant, he is a trusted and generous resource for his classmates, offering guidance on career pathways, technical challenges, academic rigor, and personal well-being. His instinct is always to ask how a decision will impact others. In redeveloping the matching algorithm, his primary goal was to ensure each student was placed in a role that both leveraged their existing strengths and intentionally challenged them to grow, while also meaningfully supporting faculty and staff.

Jewell combines analytical rigor, intellectual curiosity, empathy, and service-minded leadership in a way that intentionally shapes the culture of the Class of 2026. He lives out the Carey Code in both principle and practice, consistently demonstrating excellence, integrity, collaboration, and a deep commitment to lifting others. He does not simply participate. He improves, supports, and elevates the community. That lasting impact is what makes him such an invaluable member of his graduating class.”

Reynold Byers, Ph.D., Clinical Professor of Supply Chain Management

Natalie Zermeno, Full-time MBA Program Manager

DON’T MISS: MBAS TO WATCH: CLASS OF 2026

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