Nick Zumwalde

Kelley School of Business at Indiana University

“I’m an energetic guy who loves meeting people and learning about the world.”

Hometown: Minneapolis, MN

Fun fact about yourself: I was recruited to be on a reality TV show but turned the opportunity down and decided to go to business school instead.

Undergraduate School and Degree: University of Minnesota with degrees in Economics and Political Science

Where was the last place you worked before enrolling in business school? Financial Analyst at U.S. Bank

Where did you intern during the summer of 2025? Post Consumer Brands in Lakeville, MN

Where will you be working after graduation? Associate Brand Manager at General Mills

Community Work and Leadership Roles in Business School: Hoosier Host Co-Chair. As a Hoosier Host Co-Chair I give tours, meet with prospective students and help run admissions events. It has been amazing to meet so many prospective students and see them later arrive on campus as students.

Which academic or extracurricular achievement are you most proud of during business school? I had the opportunity to work with Nestle on the Hot Pockets brand. From the first meeting, my group could tell Nestle had real questions and high expectations. I learned an absolute ton from the experience and to this day stop by the Hot Pockets section of the grocery store to see what the Hot Pockets team have been up to.

What achievement are you most proud of in your professional career? My very first job out of undergrad was a temporary contract role at a tech company. I took it upon myself to learn how the accounting software worked, dug into the system, and discovered tens of thousands of dollars of missed billing. I didn’t tell anybody for a week because I assumed I had made a mistake somewhere. Eventually, I worked up the courage to ask my manager about it. It turned out I had discovered something nobody in the finance department had. A month later, they offered me a full-time role which kicked off my career. The experience taught me to push myself outside my comfort zone and to trust myself even when I am unsure.

Why did you choose this business school? The most important thing to me when picking a business school was to find the kindest, tightest knit student body I could and Kelley fit that perfectly. I reached out to a few students and could feel how much they loved the Kelley community and how close they were to their classmates. When you get accepted to Kelley, you get added to a group chat and the excitement and energy of the other accepted students set the school apart.

Who was your favorite MBA professor? My favorite professor was Keith Niedermeier. As part of the Consumer Marketing Academy, he road tripped across the Midwest with us, visiting companies. His insight was always interesting, and he often had some nugget about how a corporate decision was made or how a product came to be. He made sure I walked into my internship confident in my marketing skills despite being a career switcher.

What was your favorite course as an MBA? My favorite course was Power, Personal Influence and Effective Negotiation. Professor Kolovou finds ways to get us out of our seats every class. One time, she had half the class leave the room and gave a group of students in the room $100 worth of candy. She then sat back and told us to negotiate our way back into the room. The negotiations she sets up are a fun topic of conversation across the program. Each one has special rules, but she is always happy to let us break them if we come to her with a good enough argument.

What was your favorite MBA event or tradition at your business school? My favorite tradition was the alumni tailgate. We had alumni fly in from around the country to hang out with our class and celebrate the amazing year IU Football was having. My classmate, who is a former chef, worked the grill while an alum who used to be a DJ set the music. It was awesome to see students and alums equally excited to meet each other and celebrate Indiana.

Looking back over your MBA experience, what is the one thing you’d do differently and why? I made a ton of friends, improved as a person, and landed my dream job, so there is not much I would do differently. But if I could do it all over again, I would stop and take more deep breaths. Earning an MBA can feel overwhelming at times, but it truly is a fun experience. Only a fraction of applicants experience a full-time MBA program and it is important to remember to be grateful.

What was the most impactful case study you had in business school and what was the biggest lesson you learned from it? In the third week of orientation, our professors gave us a short presentation about AirBnB. They told us to develop a growth strategy and present it in three days for a cash prize. With no real business education, our core team had to get to work. I learned the key to business is to be scrappy and work as a team. We didn’t have the tools or the frameworks we now have, but we did our best and grew a lot as people and as a team. You can have the best strategy in the world, but if you don’t have relationships with your team and the ability to execute, your strategy isn’t going to succeed.

What did you love most about your business school’s town? Bloomington is one of the things that makes Kelley so special. Every alum who comes back has a giant smile on their face because they get to be back in Bloomington. Every student in every program at IU was aware of what a special place Bloomington is and how much history exists in the town. I ran into classmates and professors all over town and these interactions serve to bring us all closer together.

What business leader do you admire most? The business leader I admire the most is Allison Ellsworth, the co-founder and chief brand officer of Poppi. She recognized a need in the market, developed her own product, and has built Poppi into a massive success. Her ability to have her finger on the pulse of America is incredibly impressive and she has shown time and time again that her marketing skills are amazing. I can’t wait to see what she does next.

What is one way that your business school has integrated AI into your programming? What insights did you gain from using AI? AI is becoming a larger part of the curriculum every year. We have open dialogue with professors on when and where we can use AI to make sure we get experience for our future careers, while making sure we learn the important business concepts we came here to learn. Our professors regularly meet to discuss AI developments and how best to integrate it into the core curriculum.

Which MBA classmate do you most admire? Sydney Loughran manages to balance academics, extracurriculars, and being social while flying around the country as a professional frisbee player. She does all this while being an incredibly kind person. We both had brand marketing internships at different companies in the in the pet food industry, and it was humbling going to work every day knowing the caliber of person I was competing with.

What are the top two items on your professional bucket list? The number one item on my bucket list is to launch a new product. If I can launch something that brings joy to people across the country all the work will be worth it. The other item on my bucket list is to be on site at a shoot for a commercial. I think it would be super cool to be part of that process.

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

“Nick’s enthusiasm for Kelley was evident from the moment he stepped on campus. Before classes even started, he transmitted his excitement at being a part of the MBA program to faculty, staff and classmates during our Me, Inc. professional development and orientation program. Nick’s leadership as a co-chair of our Hoosier Hosts program has been a crucial part of our recruiting efforts this year. He has met with countless prospective students during campus visits and virtual round tables, volunteering to share his time and experience as well as his love of Kelley, IU and Bloomington.”

Jim Holmen
Director of Admissions and Financial Aid
Full-time +Flex MBA Program

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