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Jenkins MBA Alumni ’20 Spotlight: An Unconventional Path

Danielle Brown earned a series of promotions over the first decade or so of her career. 

She eventually found herself with overseeing 170 people spread across three labs, plus responsibility for all aspects of those sites’ operations — finance, marketing and more. Brown was a highly trained scientist, but had little background in business.

Danielle Brown, Professional Online MBA Student

George Astridge used to sit in meetings at work with colleagues from accounting, finance, marketing and other departments in his role as a data analyst. He knew that sometimes he was missing the bigger picture.

“I’d be in a meeting with finance, and they’d be talking about things that were clearly fundamental business topics that I just didn’t understand. And then I’d be in a meeting with accounting, and they’d be talking about, you know, accruals and balance sheets, and I didn’t really understand that,” he says.

Astridge also saw job postings that often contained the phrases “MBA preferred” or “MBA required.”

For Brown, as her responsibilities grew, she took a couple of free online finance courses to fill in gaps in her knowledge and realized she enjoyed the topic.

“I really liked what I learned and thought, ‘Maybe I’ll explore doing an MBA,’” she says.

Choosing the Jenkins MBA

Brown looked at other business schools that her employer had relationships with. But when she looked closer to home, at NC State, where she had already earned a degree in veterinary medicine and a master’s degree in veterinary pathology, she liked what she found.

George Astridge, Professional Online Student

The program’s focus on science, technology and engineering related industries was especially attractive.

“I really liked it, especially that there’s two bioscience electives with a concentration, so I’m taking those,” she says.

Astridge had earned an undergraduate degree in geography from the University of Manchester in England. He took his data analyst approach to finding the right MBA program, building a spreadsheet to compare schools based on important factors.

He needed flexibility — a remote program he could do at his own pace, based on his work and family commitments. He also wanted a school that would have strong name recognition in Charlotte, where he was building his career.

From classroom to corporate

Though Brown and Astridge are only partway through the program, both say it has already helped them at work.

Brown says she often finds herself taking notes in class about things she wants to do or apply in her job.

Astridge notes that the MBA curriculum can be divided, in a sense, into two sections: core business classes and then specialized courses and electives. He has taken core classes first to bolster his business knowledge.

“Those were really useful from that connecting-the-dots perspective — especially strategy classes and things like that I didn’t have any exposure to beforehand,” Astridge says. “I’ve been able to apply the concepts from those core classes in my work as I’ve been taking those classes.”

As the MBA gives her a strong business background, Brown says she’s started to think about the possibility of a more global leadership role in her current company. 

But she didn’t go into the MBA program thinking about a promotion. She went into thinking about how it would provide an immediate return on investment. “How can I learn to really be the best that I can be in this job that I’m doing now.”

This post was originally published in Jenkins MBA News.