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Name: Heather Showstead
Graduation Date: 2009
Current Employer: Beacon Technologies
Current Job Title: Web Marketing Consultant
Read Her Success Story |
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Heather completed her Bryan MBA in 2009. Heather was part of the evening program and worked full time while earning her Bryan MBA. During her time in the program, Heather took advantage of the Experience Business Abroad program twice and was able to learn about business and culture in both Brazil and Germany.
How did you discover the Bryan MBA and why did you decide to come to UNCG to pursue your MBA?
I had attended UNCG for my undergraduate degree in Business Administration. I still lived in the area and had enjoyed my experience as an undergraduate.
For your professional development, how important were the opportunities to gain practical experience while you were in the program (for example, the internship program & the consulting project)?
Since I was already employed full time and had been for a few years, it was not as important to me as I'm sure it would be to those in the day program. However, I believe any opportunity to gain more real world experience is valuable. I would have taken advantage of a consulting project for sure.
What did you enjoy most about the Bryan MBA experience? What did you feel were the strengths of the program?
I enjoyed the people most. Both the professors and the other members of my class were all experienced and wonderful people with whom I formed lasting friendships and valuable professional connections. Secondly, the study abroad opportunities were amazing. I did not get the chance to participate in something like that as an undergrad so I greatly appreciated the experiences.
Looking back on the program & its cost, as an alumnus do you feel that your Bryan MBA was a good investment?
UNCG has an incredibly reasonable cost. I feel like it was worth the investment.
What advice do you have for a new student entering the program?
Make a plan and know what you want from the program. You can't just expect any MBA program to simply give you what you need. Everyone is different. Connect with others.
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Name: Jussi Ailisto
Graduation Date: May 2011
Current Employer: Hay Group
Current Job Title: Junior Consultant/Analyst
Read His Success Story |
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Jussi Ailisto completed his MBA from the Bryan School of Business and Economics in 2011. Jussi was part of the day program and came to the Bryan School as part of a partnership program with his home university in Finland. Since completing the program, Jussi has accepted a position as a Junior Consultant/Analyst with a company in his native country of Finland.
How did you discover the Bryan MBA and why did you decide to come to UNCG to pursue your MBA?
I have wanted to study in college/university in US since I was young, so at some level this opportunity was a dream come true for me. I felt that studying in US would really perk up my English and MBA degree would help me to achieve my career goals.
For your professional development, how important were the opportunities to gain practical experience while you were in the program (for example, the internship program & the consulting project)?
From the learning aspect, Capstone consulting project, intensive deadlines, group works, and numerous business cases were superb because of their practicality. As a student you have to really develop your group working skills, real life problem solving and self-management to success in the Bryan MBA program. For me, this was quite challenging at the start of the program because in Finland business studies are more theoretical and emphasize more self-study than working in groups with "real-life" business problems.
Career wise, MBA really opened a lot of doors as I applied for variety of positions after my graduation. It seems that Finnish companies appreciate international experience and the US MBA degree. For instance, I believe that my work related competences such as; working in groups in continually changing environments with a diversity of colleagues leaped during the MBA program.
What did you enjoy most about the Bryan MBA experience? What did you feel were the strengths of the program?
I think that some of the faculty members were brilliant in challenging us to think beyond the textbooks. Faculty members' passion to teach and continually improve the Bryan MBA program was admirable and most of the faculty members had both academic and professional experience, which led to a good mix of theoretical and practical knowledge.
How were the support services for international students at UNCG? Did you find UNCG to be an internationally friendly campus?
During my studies I had the opportunity to work as an intern in UNCG's International Programs Center and follow closely how well they take care of each international student, it's amazing. You feel welcome from the very first moment you set your feet on the NC ground. Before I came to NC I stressed about all the paperwork related to studying in UNCG, but people at the International Programs Center and in the Bryan MBA office took really good care of me.
Looking back on the program & its cost, as an alumnus do you feel that your Bryan MBA was a good investment?
Definitely, from my own experience I can tell that companies in Finland appreciate US MBAs among the job applicants. The Bryan MBA gave me the tools to build a successful career in international business.
What are your hobbies/interests outside of work?
I'm really into sports. UNCG offers a lot of activity for its students. For example, I enjoyed playing soccer for unofficial Bryan MBA team in intramural tournament. We also played indoor soccer, tennis, volleyball and so on. The campus gym is superb and overall sport facilities are excellent.
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Name: Tim Emery
Graduation Date: 1991
Current Employer: Aeroflex/Metelics
Current Job Title: Vice President of Sales & Marketing and Site General Manager
Read His Success Story |
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Tim Emery completed his Bryan MBA in 1991. Tim was part of the evening program and worked full time while earning his Bryan MBA. Since completing the program, Tim has been successful in positions both domestically and internationally.
How did you discover the Bryan MBA and why did you decide to come to UNCG to pursue your MBA?
Back in 1988 the Bryan MBA was the only program reasonably close to the RTP area which offered an evening MBA. At the time I was working for a robotics company in Cary and Dr. Lew Brown was consulting with us and he encouraged me to consider UNCG. Afterward I figured out that my evening MBA cost me 1,000 miles per credit hour, but it was certainly worth it.
What did you enjoy most about the Bryan MBA experience? What did you feel were the strengths of the program?
The rich reserve of professional experience in the class room significantly enhanced the discussions and the professors were open to interlacing the student's experiences into the material. This brought real time relevance to the material in class and significantly enhanced the learning experience.
Looking back on the program and its cost, as an alumnus do you feel that your Bryan MBA was a good investment?
The Bryan School was a great value and it has provided me with a great spring board into developing international business for a number of semiconductor companies over the past 20 years.
What advice do you have for a new student entering the program?
Form study groups early in the first year and strive to move together through the sequences of courses. In addition to forming lasting friendships, there is an opportunity to build lifelong professional relationships which can be of great utility throughout your career.
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Name: Sara Landreth
Graduation Date: May 2010
Internship(s) Held During MBA Program:
Department of State Intern, Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs, Madrid, Spain.
Current Employer: BB&T
Current Job Title: Employee Wellness Coordinator
Read Her Success Story |
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A week after finishing the first year of her Bryan MBA, Sara Landreth was off to Madrid, Spain for an internship with the Department of State where she worked for the Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs. She was one of only four selected to work in Madrid from a pool of over 6,000 applications.
Sara earned her bachelor's from UNCG where she graduated magna cum laude with a dual major in international business and economics and a minor in Spanish. She is a member of Beta Gamma Sigma and during her undergraduate studies she served on the Bryan School's Student Advisory Council.
"What I liked most about the Bryan MBA is that there are students from all over the world in the program. Classes are small and that allows us to engage in open discussions. I learned so much about business in other cultures from my interaction with my international classmates."
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Name: Nathan Lynch
Graduation Date: May 2009
Internship(s) Held During MBA Program:
Business Analyst, BMW Manufacturing, Greenville, SC and Operations/Supply Chain Intern at B/E Aerospace, Winston-Salem, NC
Current Employer:LabCorp, Greensboro, NC
Current Job Title: Project Analyst
Read His Success Story |
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Immediately after completing the first-year final exams, Nathan Lynch started an internship with the only BMW factory in the United States. Nathan worked in the areas of technology and business communications where his principal responsibility was writing business cases for BMW executives on the feasibility of integrating latest technologies into new models of BMW automobiles.
After completing his bachelor's degree at UNCG in 2004, Nathan worked for three years before deciding to come back to school to pursue his Bryan MBA as a full-time student. Despite receiving offers from top-ranked MBA programs in the Northeast, Nathan decided to stay home to pursue his Bryan MBA. "As far as the curriculum was concerned, the other MBA programs were not offering anything that I could not get from the Bryan MBA."
Nathan now works for LabCorp, one of the largest providers of medical laboratory tests and services in the country.
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Name: Kalpesh Padhye
Graduation Date: May 2009
Internship(s) Held During MBA Program: Business Development and Consulting Intern, Southside Business Technology Center (SBTC), Martinsville, VA
Current Employer: Frost & Sullivan in Mumbai, India
Current Job Title: Senior Research Analyst- Automation & Electronics
Read His Success Story |
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After completing his Bryan MBA, Kalpesh Padhye joined Frost & Sullivan's Mumbai office as a Senior Research Analyst for the global growth partnership company where he conducts market research and consulting projects for the automation and process control industry in South Asia and the Middle East.
Kalpesh graduated from the University of Mumbai with a bachelor's in electronic engineering. After two years with Siemens, he joined the Bryan MBA.
"I was looking for an MBA program that offered the flexibility to choose a field of concentration and that was within my budget. The Bryan MBA's structure along with a tuition waiver and fellowship made my decision to come to UNCG an easy one," says Kalpesh, who as a Bryan MBA student, received the Academic Excellence Award given to exceptional international students and was inducted into the Beta Gamma Sigma.
"The internship, consulting project, and other organizational projects were the best components of the Bryan MBA. These hands-on experiences allowed me to apply the tools and concepts learned in the MBA courses to real-world projects."
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Name: Alena Kharoshka
Graduation Date: May 2010
Internship(s) Held During MBA Program: B/E Aerospace
Current Employer: B/E Aerospace
Current Job Title: Manager
Read Her Success Story |
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By the end of her first year in the Bryan MBA program, Alena Kharoshka knew where she was going to be working when she graduated. She had just completed her summer internship with B/E Aerospace when they asked her how soon she could start working for them full-time. They had to settle for 20 hours a week until she completed her Bryan MBA, but since graduating in 2010, Alena has served as one of the youngest managers for the leading provider of aircraft seating.
"I wanted to experience graduate studies in the United States. The education system in the U.S. is very different from my country where it is extremely structured and there are over 100 students per class with nothing but lectures and final exams that count for one-hundred percent of the final grade. I had never worked on a team project until I joined the Bryan MBA. During my first week of classes in the Bryan MBA program I remember looking at the syllabi for my courses and thinking it would be impossible to complete all the assignments, but through team work and the openness and willingness of the professors to help us learn, the Bryan MBA has been a very awarding experience."
Alena is a Bryan Scholar and has worked as a teaching assistant for the Bryan School. "Alena is an incredibly kind and positive person and an academic superstar! It was a joy and honor to get to work with her," says Professor Eloise Hassell, who teaches business law at the Bryan School and had Alena as a teaching assistant during Alena's first year in the program.
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Name: Eric M Duehring
Graduation Date: May 1997
Current Employer: Rosetta Stone
Current Job Title: Senior Vice President and General Manager of Consumer Marketing and Sales
Read His Success Story |
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Eric Duehring is Senior Vice President and General Manager of Consumer Marketing and Sales for Rosetta Stone, a leading language software company.
After graduating from UNCG with his BS in economics and marketing management, Eric took a position at Kaiser Roth. After four years with Kaiser Roth, he returned to the Bryan School to pursue his Bryan MBA in the evening program.
Since graduating with his Bryan MBA, Eric has held a variety of roles within the field of marketing. Eric was the Leading Product Marketing Manager for Xbox working with Microsoft Games Studio, the Director of Marketing for Hanes and Champion, and rose to the position of Senior Vice President at AOL Time Warner.
In looking back on his choice to invest in a Bryan MBA, Eric reflected on the value of his degree and experience. "The Bryan MBA is an outstanding value. Great facilities, great professors, diverse and talented student body, all set in a very supportive community. My Bryan MBA has opened many doors by enabling me to apply and interview for new roles, but more importantly, the education I received is truly the foundation for my career."
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Name: Parina Muni
Graduation Date: May 2003
Current Employer: Circuit Sage
Current Job Title: Web Director
Read Her Success Story |
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Parina Muni is the web director of Circuit Sage in Southern California where she directs the development of web sites, online advertising and other web-based marketing technologies. In this role, Parina recruits, trains, and leads project teams. Her company has received numerous awards for their work in web site design.
While working on her Bryan MBA, Parina worked on-campus as the marketing coordinator for the University's Multicultural Center. Shortly after completing her Bryan MBA, Parina moved to Southern California where she joined Magic Technologies as a project manager. After two years, she was promoted to director of operations and controller. In this role, Parina oversaw the marketing, finance, and daily operations of the company.
Before moving to the U.S. from India to pursue her Bryan MBA at UNCG, Parina earned her bachelor's in architecture with a specialization in interior design and she founded a successful architectural firm with a staff of eighteen employees.
"I found UNCG and the Bryan MBA to be very international and multicultural. All the team projects have proven to be very useful to me in my current position where I regularly lead project teams that include people from Europe, Asia, and Latin America."
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Name: Raj Srikantan
Graduation Date: May 2001
Internship(s) Held During MBA Program: Center for Creative Leadership
Current Employer: Self Employed
Current Job Title: Life Coach in Orlando, Florida
Read His Success Story |
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"When I started looking into MBA programs, I applied and was accepted to some top programs, but then a friend who was living in Raleigh recommended the Bryan MBA to me. I did some research and came to the conclusion that the major difference between the Bryan MBA and the big MBA programs was not the quality of the faculty and curriculum but the cost. I was looking at accumulating a six figure debt in other programs. At UNCG I received a tuition waiver and graduate assistantship and was able to graduate relatively debt free."
During his two years in the Bryan MBA, Raj completed a full-time, summer internship with the Center for Creative Leadership, was inducted into Beta Gamma Sigma, and was awarded the Bryan Academic Excellence Medal for his performance in the program.
"Having worked with colleagues from top MBA programs, I feel very confident in saying that my Bryan MBA has given me the skills to compete against anyone. The Bryan MBA was full of intense, real-time case studies that I still reference today and two of my best assets, quantitative analysis and project management, were developed in the Bryan MBA."
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Name: Tom Bundros
Graduation Date: December 1980
Current Employer: Colonial Pipeline Company
Current Job Title: Chief Financial Officer
Read His Success Story |
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With over thirty years of experience in the Energy/Utility industry, and currently the CFO of Colonial Pipeline Company, Tom Bundros is a sterling example of the success one can achieve with a Bryan MBA.
"I still make use, every day, of the concepts and applications I learned while in the Bryan MBA program. It is not just knowing how to do a marginal analysis or a cost/benefit analysis based on a formula, in the Bryan MBA program you learn how to reach beyond the formulas and apply the concepts to improve your business. The Bryan MBA helped to focus those skills, allowed me to discover my passion for finance, and taught me techniques that have guided me throughout my career."
After graduating with his Bryan MBA, Tom worked as a financial analyst with Conoco for four years. He then joined The Southern Company, an energy utility with operations throughout the South. During his twelve years with The Southern Company, Tom rose to the position of marketing specialist within the firm's Finance function. In 1997, Tom joined Dalton Utilities and rose to Chief Financial Officer, managing assets totaling over a billion dollars.
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Name: Eugenie Marion
Graduation Date: May 2005
Internship(s) Held During MBA Program: JPMorgan Chase & Co.
Current Employer: JPMorgan Chase & Co.
Current Job Title: Associate Trust Officer
Read Her Success Story |
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After graduating with her Bryan MBA in 2005, Eugenie Marion moved to New York for an internship with J.P. Morgan in New York. Three months later, Eugenie, who was still just a twenty-three year old, was offered an analyst position with the global financial giant. Within two years she had moved from her first team, the Executive Wealth Group, to the Fiduciary Strategy Team where she worked directly with the company's upper management.
Eugenie contributes her success to a simple formula of hard work and perseverance. "Success is not based on where you went to school. It's about commitment, ethics, professionalism, and merit."
Eugenie grew up in a small village in France's Burgundy region where her family ran a boutique hotel and bistro. During her final year as a student at the Université Jean Moulin, Lyon III, Eugenie participated in a study abroad program that brought her to UNCG as an exchange student. "From the moment I arrived in Greensboro as an undergraduate exchange student, I knew I wanted to return to pursue my Bryan MBA."
Eugenie lived on-campus and worked as a teaching assistant during both years in the Bryan MBA. Two things about the program that impressed her were how approachable and friendly the professors were and that the assignments for all of her courses dealt with real business cases and projects.
"I loved the Bryan MBA. The classes were small and focused on real issues. We had a great composition of local American professionals and international students from all over the world. I would highly recommend the Bryan MBA to any international students considering an American MBA."
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