Please share your immediate and long-term career goals. How will earn an MBA at Kenan-Flagler Business School benefit you, both personally and professionally, on your journey toward achieving these goals? Limit your response to 500 words.
Bridging a Gap to Success
It has been just a little over ten years since I graduated from Texas Tech University as a Petroleum Engineer. As I walked up the stage to receive my diploma, my professional plans seemed as if they were written in stone. At least, that’s what it felt like to me. “Where do you think you’ll be in 5 years?” my manager asked me after a year on the job. After giving him my most obvious response, “I’ll be an Engineer Manager or Lead Project Engineer,” he replied with something that stuck with me. “If you think you know, you have very little imagination.” It turns out he was right.
After six years at my current job as the VP of Drilling and continuously working to build the set of skills needed for my role, I never expected to be where I am today. Professionally, an MBA will be the key to bridging my knowledge gap from engineering operations to finance and ensure I have a deeper understanding of my company’s financial risks as we grow. I would love to be part of a group of MBA candidates with different backgrounds, ethically and professionally, with whom to share our career experiences, ways to understand and solve problems, and, more importantly, how to be a leader in our specific professional fields. This exchange is invaluable in forming our character. As an immigrant in The United States, and son of a Latina with an incredible personality, I understand how different us humans are and how far apart our approach to a specific situation can be.
Following graduation from the MBA program, I have two main goals in my future. Initially, an international job assignment where I can continue to nurture my understanding of different cultures, ways of doing business, and compare different approaches to financial structures. The internet gives us the ability to share knowledge and ideas, but the way we look at “Business” can significantly differ across borders. My next goal is to build a hub that connects engineer entrepreneurs with private investors using a platform that provides the tools necessary to build businesses from scratch and help them reach their goals. In the meantime, my most immediate goal is to continue to lead my team in making the right choices and being a mentor for future leaders. The MBA degree from the University of North Carolina will be crucial in helping me bridge that gap to success.