In October, the Kilts Center for Marketing hosted
a talk with Ann Mukherjee, ’94, Global CMO at SC Johnson & Son. As I sat in
a room full of my fellow students, watching Ann, take the stage, I was ready to
hear a story of a career journey, successes in different roles, and marketing
at SC Johnson & Son. What I took away, though, was much more meaningful—the
inspiration to be a strategic storyteller and the courage to be an authentic
leader, unafraid of failure.
Chicago Booth has a longstanding tradition of bringing in leaders to share insights and experiences. Last week, the Chicago Booth Distinguished Speaker Series invited the community to a fireside chat with legendary investor and Chicago Booth’s namesake, David Booth, ‘71, as well as Professor and Nobel Laureate Eugene “Gene” Fama. Dean Rajan provided a captivating introduction and Bloomberg columnist, Barry Ritholz, moderated the conversation, which provided an entertaining and illuminating deep dive on the nature of Booth and Fama’s relationship, as well as their thoughts on the evolution of investing over the years.
“Tell Your Story” is a regular series that features one of our Booth community members. In his or her own words, the contributor details their path to Booth and other interesting personal highlights.
Where are you originally from? And what did you do priorto Booth? I grew up in Henan Province, China. Prior to Booth, I was a product developer and manager at UBS Asset Management in Hong Kong. I led cross-functional projects to develop fund products, generated new product ideas, and researched the asset management landscape in China.
Last week, a subset of Booth’s Private Equity Group ventured to the West Coast on the Bay Area Trek, during which the group met with eight firms across a day each in San Francisco and the South Bay (Menlo Park and Palo Alto). The trek culminated in an informal happy hour where our group, host firms, and Bay Area alums in PE were invited to mingle, discuss the industry, reminisce about Booth, and build deeper connections. As the second-year student leader of the trek, I wanted to share my experience and provide some insights into the value of our trip.
Picture this: You’ve got a non-traditional background. Maybe you were a teacher, a non-profit operator, a PR associate. You’re about to start your first year at Booth with the goal of transitioning into a different career such as consulting, tech, or banking. How do you translate your skills to these new fields and present yourself in the best light? How do you manage the networking crop circles? How do you write a rock star resume?
Recruiting for your future career at Booth can certainly be an intimidating task. But Booth has a program in place that is easily accessible for every first year student no matter their background: Career Advisers. CAs, like me and David (see pic above), are second years who have volunteered to serve as career-oriented resources.
