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Future Alumni Entering the Network
Leticia Castellanos
While working as a regional brand coordinator
for Novartis Pharmaceuticals, it became clear to Leticia Castellanos,
MBA ’05, that her undergraduate marketing degree would only go so
far. While coordinating product launches throughout Latin America,
she met often with CEOs and national Novartis directors. “We were
having conversations related not only to marketing, but to the
financial situations of the company in those countries,” she says.
This desire to gain a better understanding of the financial aspects
of business to complement her skills in marketing inspired
Castellanos to pursue her MBA.
Unlike many married people who decide to leave their job and go back to school, Castellanos did not have to face the delicate negotiations that sometimes accompany an announcement of these intentions. Her husband Rodrigo, who was also working in marketing, was ready to go back to school as well. In Mexico City, the two barely got to see each other, because they both traveled frequently with their companies. Now, as McCombs students, the two cross paths everyday. For the most part, Castellanos says she enjoys going to school with her spouse. “It’s not fun when we’re both stressed out, but we each understand why the other is studying so much.”
After graduation, Castellanos plans to work in the United States before returning to Mexico. “Two years is not long enough to understand how business is done in other countries,” says Castellanos, who just concluded her term as president of the Hispanic Graduate Business Association. “I think it’s important to stay here for a few more years to have the whole business experience.”
Philip Bouillette
After spending five years as a commercial banker for ABN AMRO in Chicago, Philip Bouillette, MBA ’05, knew
investment banking was in his future. Bouillette, who earned his BS from Indiana University’s Kelley School
of Business, had never lived anywhere other than the East Coast or the Midwest.
But since his commercial clients often brought him to Houston and Dallas, Bouillette became more familiar with the McCombs School’s reputation. “I liked the cohort system and team-oriented aspect of the program, as opposed to some of the other programs that were individual-focused and cutthroat,” he remembers.
Initially, Bouillette was attracted to the specialization in energy finance, but after arriving at McCombs, his interest turned to general corporate finance and private equity.
Last year, Bouillette served as president of the Graduate Finance Association, which created a new Plus Program Academy last spring by inviting consultants to train students in financial modeling. “McCombs offers so many opportunities outside of the classroom,” he says. “I wanted to give back to the school.” The Graduate Finance Association’s Plus Academy is now a two-and-a-half day intensive training program that serves more than 90 students each semester.
His architect fiancée, Kara Fiene, also is involved with the McCombs community. The two are vice presidents of the Spouse and Significant Others Network. Meeting 400 people and forming several close bonds via the network made the transition to Austin much easier for both of them.
Bouillette reports, with some sadness, that he plans to move back to Chicago after graduation. He will work in the investment banking group of Deutsche Bank Securities Inc., where he interned last summer.
“Moving away from the Texas community is disappointing, but I’m going to sow another seed for our alumni network in Chicago,” he says. “There’s no reason why we can’t get more people to Chicago—except for the weather, of course.”
Michael Smith
When Michael Smith, a University of Oklahoma alumnus, told his parents about his plans to earn his MBA at
The University of Texas at Austin, they initially thought he was joking. Although he still cheers for
Sooners football, Smith says that his decision to choose McCombs has made him the object of much undue
scorn and criticism during the games.
While this was a consideration during his application process, it was trumped by other concerns. Smith, MBA ’05, knew he wanted a high-quality energy finance program. “When I looked at Texas without having set foot on the campus, I was impressed by what the faculty had accomplished and the ties they had to the industry,” he says.
But once he arrived at McCombs, Smith found it was the people that set the school apart. “The relationships that I’ve been able to build here, with peers and the faculty, have been phenomenal,” he says. “You can’t beat the accessibility of professors, Dean Gau and all the folks in the program office.”
The open-door policy was invaluable this fall, when management professor Stewart Miller helped Smith think through his full-time job offers. “I was able to leverage his experience in the industry to develop a framework I could use to make my decision,” Smith reveals. “It was 30 to 45 minutes of his time, but it made a huge difference.”
Eventually, Smith decided to accept an offer from ExxonMobil, where he interned last summer. “The internship helped to confirm my belief in energy and my belief in ExxonMobil,” he explains.
In the extracurricular sphere, as president of the Black Graduate Business Association, Smith makes time to share his belief in McCombs with prospective MBA students. “Every week that I come to school, I know that they care about us here at McCombs,” Smith says. “The deans and professors are doing all they can, and we’re doing all we can as students, to make this the best public MBA program in the country.”
Frank Llosa
As an undergraduate at UC-Berkeley, Frank Llosa, MBA ’05, earned a bachelor’s degree in mechanical
engineering. He promptly put his degree to work, as a lead system design engineer for General Electric and
a global product support engineer for Applied Materials.
Qualitative work always appealed to Llosa. But eventually, he realized that his ideal career would also include strategy and management. “I like to work with external partners,” he explains. This big-picture perspective may be partially attributed to his peripatetic upbringing. Born in Spain, Llosa lived in Brazil, Peru and Russia before settling in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Accordingly, Llosa decided to facilitate his career shift by pursuing an MBA in management here at the McCombs School of Business. He was attracted to McCombs, he says, because of “the collaborative learning environment” he saw here. Llosa collaborates with his classmates as a vice president of the Excellence in Operations group and member of the McCombs Admissions Committee, among other activities.
The collaborative spirit at McCombs, said Llosa, is not mutually exclusive with the competitive drive that is prevalent among MBAs—and which itself is put to good use at McCombs. He is president of the Soccer Club, which this year fought off teams from Kellogg and Harvard in the Texas Winter Classic, a soccer tournament for graduate business students hosted annually in Austin. In the championship round, the McCombs team capitulated to Duke, but Llosa has only good memories of the experience. “It’s one fun way to channel competition!” he notes.
Another good way to channel competition is, of course, competition. In November, Llosa, along with fellow MBAs Diego Dyer, Richard Valdez and Alberto Van Oordt, placed third in Carnegie Mellon’s International Operations Management Case Competition.
Heather Densmore
While working as a senior consultant for Deloitte Consulting, Heather Densmore, MBA ’06, decided she wanted
to trade her on-the-go lifestyle for a more stable routine. Having ventured back into school this year, the
former nomad is concentrating in real estate finance and revels in the opportunity to be an extra-curricular
enthusiast.
Densmore serves as the co-president of the Graduate Women in Business and on the McCombs Admissions Committee. She also teaches the occasional salsa dancing lesson. But what has brought her the most attention around campus was her journalistic debut with BusinessWeek. Every two months, she posted a tell-all journal entry on the magazine’s Web site that illuminates the McCombs experience for prospective MBAs.
Explaining that she used the magazine’s B-School Life section during her own b-school search, Densmore says that she wanted to give other prospective students insight into why she chose McCombs.
“I keep telling all of my friends and family, this is the best decision I’ve made in the past five years,” Densmore says. “I’m learning more than I even thought I could absorb in a few short months.”
Writing the journals is easy, she added, because her experience at McCombs has so far been positive. And to keep that trend going, Densmore often has the good luck to see professors on their best behavior. “My statistics professor said, ‘I’d better be careful what I say in class. I don’t want to end up in BusinessWeek,’” she recalls.
Besides representing McCombs nationally via the BusinessWeek Web site, Densmore is one of four Forté Foundation MBA scholars at McCombs. The scholars lead information sessions for undergraduate women and encourage them to pursue MBAs. “I want to have an influence on the types of students that come to McCombs down the road,” she says.
