There were many times when I sat through my classes at Booth and thought, what are the main lessons I will remember from this class? I’ve wondered which economic models and strategic frameworks will form my management toolkit as I progress in my career. Luckily, I didn’t need to wait very long to find out. As I go through my Product Management internship at Amazon, I already find myself relying on many lessons covered by my classes at Booth thus far.
For those of us who want to pursue careers in marketing and product management, Chicago Booth and the Kilts Center for Marketing prepare us for our summer internships, and ultimately our full-time positions. In this series, a couple of my classmates and I share how Booth helped us achieve success in our dream jobs.
Over last summer, I interned as a product manager at TripAdvisor on the Restaurants team. As this was my first professional experience in product management, I relied on many of the marketing skills I learned at Booth during my first year in order to have a successful internship.
Congratulations to everyone in the Class of 2018! We’re excited to be part of an outstanding class of Boothies who will be graduating tomorrow and going out into the world to make our mark. Our time at Booth has been amazing, full of new experiences and successes — from Nobel Prize winning faculty to our very own TBE teammate winning the Social New Venture Challenge!
Speaking of Nobel laureate professors, Richard Thaler will be our commencement speaker this year. We look forward to celebrating this major achievement with such an accomplished yet humble pillar of the Chicago Booth community. And we couldn’t be more proud to call ourselves the newest members of the Chicago Booth alumni network.
One of my goals when I was looking at MBA programs was to develop myself as a leader, and I chose Booth because I recognized the school’s focus on this goal as well. The indicator was that our sole mandatory class is Leadership Effectiveness and Development, better known as LEAD. Taught by second-year students, LEAD is our first class at Booth. It teaches you a range of important leadership skills, from first impressions to cross-cultural communications.
For me, what the LEAD course kick-started in my leadership development during my first quarter — Leadership Practicum truly helped round out as I finish up my second year.
In this second installment of our Booth through the decades series, we speak with Earl Van Zyl, ’07, who works in investment management in South Africa. Earl chose to pursue his MBA despite the observed differences in educational expectations between South Africa and the US. Whilst the chartered accounting qualification is a more popular and recognized post-graduate degree in his home country, Earl saw a unique need for and opportunity in pursuing the Booth MBA: here is his take on how his experience stands out from the rest.
