Kellogg Chronicles: How Kellogg Prepared Me For Google Product Management

My journey at Google began in New York City’s vibrant Chelsea Market, pushing through crowds of tourists to find a quiet elevator entrance. Stepping onto the floor above, I found an environment that felt less like a traditional corporate campus and more like an inviting, energetic design lounge, complete with micro-kitchens stocked with fresh fruit and espresso.

More than the setting, what stood out to me was the culture. Working in Google’s NYC office gave me the opportunity to collaborate on technology products alongside exceptionally talented, diverse teams. What resonated with me most was how different perspectives shape decisions, from product discussions within a team to feedback from the customers.

My summer at Google as a Product Management intern was filled with meetings with engineers working on AI infrastructure, contributing to strategy docs, planning the roadmap for a new AI project, and participating in a Google AI summit created exclusively for interns. However, stepping into this role required a foundation built over years of technical experience and business understanding.

WHY I PURSUED AN MBA

Before arriving at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, I spent years working as a software engineer in Silicon Valley, focused on delivery rather than generation of ideas. While I loved the analytical rhythm of building systems, I kept gravitating toward upstream questions during sprint reviews:

Why are we prioritizing this feature over another? How does this technical decision create value for our users and align with strategic business goals?

I realized that, while writing code could be done by AI, these decisions still needed a deeply human understanding of people and organizations. This prompted me to pursue an MBA.

CHOOSING KELLOGG

Kellogg’s emphasis on cross-functional leadership was instrumental in helping me shift my focus from software execution toward strategic purposes.

Working on team initiatives with classmates from brand marketing, healthcare, and investment banking challenged me to move past technical terminology. I learned to translate complex architectural and technical tradeoffs into clear business outcomes and user value. Ultimately, the MBA provided the strategic mindset and collaborative approach needed to lead diverse teams effectively.

Kellogg’s MBAi curriculum including specialized courses such as Tech Product Management and MBAi Marketing, highlighted how modern AI tools can help reveal meaningful customer insights, an essential capability for product leaders. Additionally, participating in organizations like the Kellogg AI Club gave me the opportunity to interview alumni leading AI initiatives, gaining firsthand perspectives on AI ethics and the evolving technology landscape.

Armed with these strategic tools and insights from Kellogg, I stepped into my summer at Google ready to put theory into practice.

MY SUMMER AT GOOGLE

From my very first week, Google’s welcoming and open culture stood out. My manager and host mentor took extra care to introduce me to cross-functional partners, ensuring I felt supported, valued, and well-equipped to navigate the vast organization right from day one.

Additionally, each intern also got a mentor who’d been in their shoes: a former MBA intern who’d gone on to join Google full-time. This initiative enabled me to get advice from members who weren’t a direct part of my team and helped me grow my network beyond my immediate team and geography.

Joining the server platform team, I had the opportunity to dive into key developer-facing initiatives. My focus over the summer was helping establish evaluation benchmarks and workflows for developer tools, bridging technical requirements with strategic user needs. Working closely with research engineers, product designers, and platform leads taught me how to drive consensus across diverse perspectives while keeping the user experience central to every design decision.

Beyond technical execution, my biggest takeaway was learning how to lead with empathy and clarity in an environment of healthy ambiguity. Regular one-on-one check-ins with senior leaders and peer mentors provided constructive feedback that accelerated my professional growth, helping me refine how I communicate complex product decisions and partner across engineering teams.

Google mirrored Kellogg’s open culture: managers and mentors were willing to take calls with interns regularly and provide advice and guidance.

WHAT KELLOGG TAUGHT ME

Looking back, the instincts that guided me through the ambiguity of my summer internship were cultivated directly in Kellogg classrooms:

Navigating Ambiguity Through Teamwork: The multidisciplinary group projects at Kellogg mirror the real dynamics of product teams. Navigating competing priorities with peers from consulting, brand strategy, and finance trained me to synthesize differing perspectives into a single, cohesive product vision.

Translating Deep Tech Into Strategic Narrative: Kellogg trained me to look past technical specs and articulate business value. Being able to bridge the language of research engineers and senior leadership was essential when pitching my summer deliverables during final review presentations.

Learning Through Community and Mentorship: Connecting classroom learning directly with faculty insights made a noticeable difference. Learning from professors like Nora Boneham (Tech Product Management) and Josh D’Arcy (Data Intensive Systems) provided real-world context and guidance that directly informed my daily work during the internship. In addition, mock interview sessions with second-year Kellogg Tech Club members and supportive outreach from Kellogg alumni at Google helped me build confidence and a strong network throughout the summer.

ADVICE TO PROSPECTIVE STUDENTS

For anyone considering an MBA to pivot into product management or tech leadership, keep two principles in mind:

Leverage Your Core Strengths While Broadening Your Horizon: If you come from an engineering background, your technical fluency is a massive asset. Use business school to build connective leadership skills: executive presence, strategic framing, and empathy-driven team management.

Embrace Ambiguity: The best learning happens when there is no predetermined playbook. Treat every business school case, team dynamic, and open-ended project as a sandbox to test your decision-making and build executive resilience.

My summer confirmed the bet I made by choosing an MBA at Kellogg. As an engineer, I would wait to be invited in rooms where decisions were made and wait to be asked to lead. Through Kellogg and my Google internship, I learned to lead by influence instead.

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Sneha Basu is an MBA candidate in the Kellogg School of Management’s MBAi program and a leader of the Kellogg AI Club. She holds a bachelor’s degree in computer engineering from Purdue University and has experience in software engineering and product management.

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