We asked W. P. Carey Alumni: How has your major impacted your career?
Here is what they shared:
- Business Courses Provided Transferrable Skills Needed for My Career
- My Degree Has Proven Invaluable to My International Retail Career
- A Foundation of Supply Chain Has Accelerated My Career
- Marketing 301 Helped Connect My Love of Psychology to Business and Marketing
- My Major Helped Me With My Investments
- MBA Prepared Me With a Greater Understanding of Business Operations and Metrics
- My Major is at the Core of What I Do
Business Courses Provided Transferable Skills Needed for My Career
You learn that life becomes an adventure after college – really never goes the way you planned. I got into Business Sustainability at ASU because I figured that a business degree combined with a forward-focused education in sustainability, which at the time was one of 2 schools in the nation to offer this education, would be a smart move. As much as the classes brought out my creativity and taught general business terms, it didn’t lead me to my career. What college did teach me was how to network, communicate, think outside of the box, and overcome challenges. I’m glad that while at ASU I started my own businesses and took risks, so that accompanied with my degree really helped.
Adel Belgaied, BA Business Sustainability ‘12, PIVIT
My Degree Has Proven Invaluable to My International Retail Career
The MSIM degree from W. P. Carey has proven invaluable to me during my international retail career spanning over 25 years. The technical and functional skill sets that I learned during the graduate program were extremely relevant to data and insight-rich sectors such as retail and understanding consumer preferences.
Karan Khurana, MSIM ‘02, Metro AG
A Foundation of Supply Chain Has Accelerated My Career
My role of Director of Sourcing is relevant to both my undergraduate degree as well as my MBA. I was fortunate to be a part of ASU’s top-ranked supply chain program which helped me build my foundational knowledge of supply chain management. A purchasing class taught by Dr. Choi inspired me to explore a career in sourcing as it used a lot of real-life examples of both companies that made significant mistakes managing their supply chains/sourcing strategy to ones that have built world-class supply chains. The supply chain disruptions related to raw material availability, international logistics, and rising fuel costs that ensued during and now after COVID has really put supply chains to the test. Companies that have been successful have done so because of their supply chain agility and by creating strategic supplier relationships. This has been a large part of my role the last 3 years.
Bryan Leifel, BS Supply Chain Management ‘13 & MBA ‘21, H&H Group
Marketing 301 Helped Connect My Love of Psychology to Business and Marketing
As a Junior at W. P. Carey, I knew I wanted to have a career in business but I had no idea what field. I took several other business classes and none of them hit home to me until stepping into a packed 300 person lecture hall at Marketing 301. The professor constantly brought relevant speakers to class such as a Chief Marketing Officer of a Fortune 500 company and I absolutely loved how they incorporated real-world experiences. They helped me connect my love of psychology to business with marketing and my mind exploded with opportunities. For example, they described how different color packaging changes the mentality of a consumer.
Right after graduating in 2010, I got a job at GoDaddy and then at Google as an Adwords Agency Account Manager. Since then, I have managed over $30 million of paid ads for over 300 different clients. I absolutely love marketing and being a media buyer for the last decade and I attribute my success to that Marketing 301 class.
Jeremy Katz, BS Marketing ‘10, Marketing Crypto
My Major Helped Me With My Investments
My current career is in enterprise tech sales. (Highly lucrative and great work/life balance). I invest most of my money into apartment buildings in the Midwest. My major didn’t have anything to do with tech sales – I “fell into it” doing a summer internship junior year. Where my major did help me was the ability to build financial models, understand financial accounting, and how to value assets. I also got my first commercial real estate internship via a professor I met.
Mohit Asthana, BS Finance ‘17, Compstak
MBA Prepared Me With a Greater Understanding of Business Operations and Metrics
After starting my career in architecture, I thought I would pursue my Master of Architecture until I found I had no understanding of the business of architecture. I decided to instead pursue my MBA at W.P. Carey. This path has led me on a different career path that focuses on global organization instead of a project and single team level within an architectural firm. My MBA prepared me with a greater understanding of business operations and metrics; as well as organizational development and strategy.
Shelley Ranney, MBA ‘05, Todd & Associates, Inc.
My Major is at the Core of What I Do
I went to college for marketing and I run a business so marketing is at the core of what I always need to do in order to keep the business successful. In business, you often need to wear many hats. But the more successful you are, the more you can outsource the hats you don’t want to wear to others!
Matthew Coast, BA Marketing ‘12, Matthew Coast International, Inc
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