“I think things like the Entrepreneurship and Enterprise Development program are things you can take from and apply to any specialization or any type of business. Whether it’s one that you are starting on your own or going to work for somebody else.”
Cassandra (Nissi) Madigan (MBA ’18) emphasizes entrepreneurship comes in all shapes and sizes and can include the corporate environment. Originally from Massachusetts, Cassandra earned her undergraduate degree from Penn State. After graduation, she worked with her dad in their family business. She explains “My dad is an entrepreneur, so that love of starting businesses was kind of instilled in me at an early age.”
In 2016, Cassandra joined the Wisconsin School of Business full-time MBA program, deciding to career-swap and study brand and product management. The summer between her first and second year she interned with Boston Scientific, a medical device manufacturer. After her internship, she decided to join the Entrepreneurship and Enterprise Development program because she felt it would benefit her wherever she decided to go with her career. While entrepreneurship is an interest of hers, she realized she could gain from the program in the corporate world as well. “The team that I interned on was sort of like a startup within a larger company – we were a small team looking at a whitespace area. We had to be scrappy and were figuring out things as we went,” she says.
After her internship with Boston Scientific, Cassandra was offered a full-time position and started in a Marketing Strategy role in the Interventional Cardiology business. In this role she researched and completed new market assessments. Wanting to get brand management experience, Cassandra transferred to the downstream marketing side of the business where she has worked on multiple product launches, along with tracking clinical data and competitive products. Today, she is the Senior Global Product Manager for the SYNERGY Coronary Stent Portfolio and she is proud to work on a product that has helped millions of patients. She notes while coronary stents is a mature market, it is “very dynamic, globally – things are constantly changing and you have to stay agile. How you position your products and making sure you’re addressing customer needs is still really important.”
Reflecting back on her time at Wisconsin, Cassandra notes: “Take advantage of everything! You don’t get this opportunity very often to be able to hear from different companies that might open your eyes to different interests or paths.” She notes that while she was not targeting a specific industry when she applied to Wisconsin, she is grateful the program led her to a company like Boston Scientific. She also feels she can take learnings from the Entrepreneurship and Enterprise Development program and apply them wherever she goes in her career.
Cassandra specifically gave Weinert Applied Ventures in Entrepreneurship (WAVE) course a shoutout for enabling creativity and allowing her to apply what she was learning in other courses. “WAVE is great because you are dealing with ambiguity. In the “real world,” even when you have a defined role, everyone’s still learning as they go, so being able to be agile and adaptable is important in business.” For her practice venture, she mentions that actively doing market research and trying to figure out the “how” were her favorite parts of the whole process and that she learned many skills that she applies to her current role.
“Stay curious,” is the advice she gives to current business or entrepreneurship students. She explains the importance of continuously pushing ourselves out of our comfort zone. Finally, she says, “even if you don’t think you will have your own company someday, but you are interested in startups and new brands, I think the Weinert Center for Entrepreneurship is a great place to be a part of to help explore that further.”
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