Hometown: West Hartford, CT
College: Boston College; Math & Economics
Pre-Business School: Advertising Techonology
Summer Internship: Strategic Partnerships at Google
Post-Anderson: I am returning to Google to work for the Strategic Partnerships team.
PRE-ANDERSON
Childhood dream job: I wanted to be a chef because Chef-Bo-R-Dee still has a nice ring to it :)
Why business school? Prior to business school, I had predominantly been working with small companies in the emerging digital advertising industry. I was excited by the industry—and still am as I am returning—but I knew that in order to be an effective manager, I needed to receive the rigorous and premier training that business school offers. I had also heard great stories and wanted the experience for myself :)
Why Anderson? Due to a schedule conflict, I was unable to attend A-Days when I was accepted into Anderson. A second year Anderson student and fellow BC alum noticed that I wasn't in attendance and called me. We spoke for over an hour and are still friends to this day (we just exchanged Happy Holiday texts). He was graduating and would not even be a classmate of mine but still took the time to speak with me and try to convince me to come to Anderson. This and every other touch point I had with the Anderson community was so open, positive and friendly. I knew that this was the community that I wanted to be a part of.
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ANDERSON
Anderson Activities & Leadership: Founding Fellow, Easton Technology Leadership Board; Anderson Venture Fellow; Management Development for Entrepreneurs (MDE) Fellow; Co-Director of the Entrepreneur Association (EA) Conference; VP, Emerging Technology - High Tech Business Association (HTBA); Director, New Media - Entertainment & Media Association (EMA)
Favorite class and why? Mayor Riordan's Leadership & Ethics class. The Mayor has an inspirational story and every class he brought in an influential person from the LA community as a guest speaker. One class a senior exec from Guitar Center brought in and let us pass around Eric Clapton's "Blackie" guitar...this was awesome! As an added bonus, the Mayor's add-lib is incredible.
Applied Management Research Project: Our AMR team is collaborating with the Einstein School of Medicine to create a sustainable business model for a breast cancer clinic in Hawassa, Ethiopia.
Favorite Anderson Event: Walking on the red carpet at the Cannes Film Festival in France. 11 Anderson students spent 5 days in Cannes last year. We also got to explore Monaco during the start of the Grand Prix and the Monte Carlo casino. It was quite an experience.
Best Anderson memory thus far: I love everything about Anderson, but one of the most fun weekends I had was the C4C weekend trip to Stanford. This is basically an Olympics for west coast b-schools. It's an incredible experience bonding with your classmates and meeting awesome people from the other business schools.
RECRUITING
What helped most in your interview preparation and career search? Personal branding - On a very high level, people are defined by what makes them different from everyone else in their competitive peer set. If you understand what your greatest and most unique asset is, you can define your personal brand to every employer, rather than let them classify you.
Hardest interview question you've been asked: Google's CPC dropped YoY, why? This was prior to a public announcement.
Why Technology? Working in technology (and at Google) gives me the opportunity to do interesting work on the forefront of innovation while also making a tremendous impact on the world.
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Parting words? Anderson has been a transformational experience for me. It was one of the best decisions I have ever made.
-Sandra Nguyen, Communications Manager, Parker Career Management Center
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