Tyler Weger

Carnegie Mellon University’s Tepper School of Business

“Brashly confident, honest, and inexhaustibly curious.”

Hometown: San Carlos, CA

Fun Fact About Yourself: Played bass guitar in a traveling garage band as a part-time job while pursuing my undergraduate degree.

Undergraduate School and Major: Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, Political Science

Most Recent Employer and Job Title: General Manager at Goride Bicycles.

Aside from your classmates, what was the key part of Carnegie Mellon’s MBA programming that led you to choose this business school and why was it so important to you? Carnegie Mellon has a historically significant connection to technology, and a famously quant rigorous curriculum, with opportunities for hands-on coding.

What course, club or activity excites you the most at Carnegie Mellon? I am looking forward to joining the Business Technologies, Marketing, and Operation Management clubs. I see direct participation with my peers as the surest way to gain an unfiltered insight into the technology industry, and what is needed to succeed.

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 want to work on how I professional present myself, and fit within a corporate structure.

Describe your biggest accomplishment in your career so far? Oversaw all aspects of the daily operation of $4M/year family-owned bike shop located in the San Francisco Bay Area. We were awarded Top 50 North American Dealer from Cannondale and Giant from 2015-2020.

How did COVID-19 change your perspective on your career and your life in general? COVID-19 highlighted vividly the strengths and weaknesses present in small businesses. At Goride Bicycles, we were able to pivot quickly when regulations were set and had one of our most profitable years ever. However, due to inefficiencies present in the supply chain, access to products has completely collapsed and many businesses are going to be left with nothing to sell over the next few years.

What led you to pursue an MBA at this point and what do you hope to do after graduation? It was after talking with close friends who had gone down the MBA path with success and reading every book I could find on the subject, I decided to pursue product management. During my time as a general manager, I grew our business to around four million dollars by promoting continued retail growth, and by proactively pushing for engagement in many grass-root sales    projects with vendors like Adobe and Google. In the last three years, I have also pursued an associate degree in Computer Science to familiarize myself with programming methods. I decided it was time to leverage my leadership, sales, and programming knowledge to create new user solutions on a much larger scope.

What other MBA programs did you apply to? Indiana University, UC Davis, UC Berkley, University of Washington.

What advice would you give to help potential applicants gain admission into Carnegie Mellon’s MBA program? Push past any sense of personal doubt, or imposter syndrome tied to prestige, and objectively reflect on what you can improve about yourself. Then take steps to improve, and shoot your shot.

DON’T MISS: MEET CARNEGIE MELLON TEPPER’S MBA CLASS OF 2023