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FROM Haas Admissions Blog: A Walmart-to-Google Career Change |
Trading Furbies for Fruit Ninjas, Amy Thompson moved from a role as senior toy buyer with Walmart to manager at Google—during her first year in the Evening & Weekend Berkeley MBA Program. She now manages retail partnerships for Google Play, an Android platform for apps and digital media. Thompson’s move reflects a frequent occurrence at Berkeley-Haas: students who change careers while earning their degrees. In a survey of recent graduates of the Evening & Weekend Berkeley MBA Program, 32 percent of respondents reported changing careers. Those who did grew their salaries by, on average, 44 percent, from a mean base of $93,640 to $119,821. Thompson, MBA 15, had spent her career at Walmart. “I felt my work experience was strong, but wanted additional perspective on business,” she says of her decision to pursue her MBA. “At Walmart I really enjoyed having responsibility for everything from financial plans and budgets to how products are presented in stores,” she says, “but the business is obviously very established, so work was focused on incremental growth.” As Partner Manager, Thompson is a regional lead for Google Play gift cards, with a focus on launching business in new countries, which is what appealed to her. “I came in at the beginning stages, with a lot of structure to be built,” she says. In her first year she has overseen the Americas and launched the gift card business in Australia, New Zealand, and Mexico. This opportunity opened with a recruiter reaching out to Thompson via LinkedIn; it closed with support from her Berkeley MBA network. “Written recommendations are an important part of the Google hiring process,” she says. “If you have people at Google who recommend you, that goes a long way; two of my cohort mates did that for me.” “People in the Berkeley MBA Program are some of the best I’ve gotten to know over the course of my career,” says Thompson. “Through relationships at Haas, I’ve learned much about other industries that’s brought me to where I am today.” Thompson recently marked one year at Google. “When I took a step back and realized all that has happened, from completing my first year at Berkeley-Haas to launching three countries and building out my team at Google, it was incredible. If that’s just the past year, I can’t imagine what the next couple of years will hold.” |
FROM Haas Admissions Blog: Berkeley Solver Series |
At Haas, we often discuss taking advantage of the Berkeley community and collaborating with other graduate programs. This spring, Haas Technology Club (HTC) and the Foundry @ CITRIS, a Berkeley start-up incubator, decided to work together and kick-off the Berkeley Solver Series. The idea was to create a monthly event consisting of Haas MBAs and Foundry team members to increase collaboration between the two groups. A Foundry team would present a current challenge facing their start-up, and we would divide into teams comprised of members of both programs to brainstorm potential solutions. At the end of the event, the teams would present their solutions to the whole group. We kicked off our first session on April 15th at the Foundry’s Invention Studio on Berkeley’s campus, with 12 MBAs and 10 Foundry team members. The presenting team was Clairity, a start-up developing a personal air quality sensing device that wirelessly communicates with users’ smart devices. The app will use crowdsourced data from the portable sensors to generate real-time pollution maps of cities, allowing users to search for public venues or navigation routes with low exposure. Clairity asked the group to help them develop a business plan and monetization strategy for their product. Clairity team members Hannah Hagen and David Lu present their business challenge (Photo credit: Matt Wong) After Clairity presented their challenge, we broke out into five teams and brainstormed solutions for 45 minutes. Each team then had 5 minutes to present their high-level solutions, followed by Q&A. A team consisting of Foundry members and Haas MBAs presenting their solution (Photo credit: Matt Wong) The event was a success, providing the start-up with a number of ideas to bring their product to market. All participating members also received access to Foundry speakers at an upcoming VC panel. We look forward to building upon the first event and continuing the series in the fall! Contributed by Matt Wong on May 11, 2014 |
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