This year we introduced a new speaker series called Marketing Leaders live, or MLlive for short. In its first semester we welcomed nine speakers to join us in the newly renovated Networking Lounge. It’s off to a great start!
The beginning: An idea from our students, alumni, and board.
The MLlive idea started in a brainstorm at our 2023 spring External Advisory Board and Hub Meeting. We’d asked the students, alumni, board members, faculty, and friends in attendance to share with us ideas on how the MLI, and specifically it’s three Hubs, can deliver value for their stakeholder group in four different categories: learning, community, awareness of the specialization, and career. We had over 100 ideas. After some sorting and analysis, we noticed common themes appearing in the ideas across the three Hubs and throughout the four categories: a strong desire for more opportunity to connect in a less structured setting, and a need to help students with understanding career paths better.
Our colleagues in the Weinert Center for Entrepreneurship provided the final thread of inspiration. Their Distinguished Entrepreneurs program has been bringing in local experts to share their stories over an informal, and informative, lunch for over X years. We met with them to understand their series and to get some best practices and then set to work on our new initiative.
Putting the wheels in motion
Honestly the hardest part of putting this together was finding a time that would work for the greatest number of students. Across just our MBA students we’re talking about 30 classes to schedule around. We also know a number of our students attend the Distinguished Entrepreneurs lunches, so we wanted to avoid conflict there. A Thursday afternoon spot, which overlapped the ending of some electives, and the start of others gave many students the opportunity to come and go in accordance with their busy schedules while also being a time completely free for many other students.
We put out the call to our alumni and networks for volunteers and the responses came flooding in. Avoiding exams, holidays, the board meeting, and our annual field trip meant that we had only eight spots this semester. Our goal was to fill those eight spots with a group of speakers who represented diverse career paths, industries, positions, and identities. And who could join us in person. It was difficult to narrow it down to just eight people though. We appreciate how many people raised their hands to help and we look forward to working with them in future semesters or finding different ways to showcase their career paths and marketing stories.
Speakers made it a success.
What truly makes MLlive a success is the speakers who have joined us, the stories they have shared and the nuggets of advice that have resonated with us and the students. A big additional round of applause to Beth Goeddel of Clasen Quality Chocolates, Brian Frances of Nature’s Fynd, Chelsea Johnson of PepsiCo, Josh Torres of Sargento, Linda Liu of Intuit, Margaret Whiting & Giulia Quattrone of General Mills, Melissa Siems of Syndio, and Rodrigo Stabio of Microsoft.
There were some themes that came up throughout the series that we want to share with you:
- Be curious. Be humble. But have a point of view and use your voice.
- When it comes to career paths and choices, it’s not black and white. There is no universally “good” or “bad”, everything will come down to the individual and the time and place. Find what is right for you at that moment in your career.
- There is a job out there for you to find happiness in. If you’re not in it, take a risk, switch things up and find the right one.
- Being a student is an incredibly unique experience. There are so many people who want to help students and so many resources available for students. There won’t be another time in your life like this. Take advantage of everything that you can.
It has been a great semester. We look forward to Spring semester and bringing more marketing leaders to students.
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