Before Wharton I had 15 years experience, including senior software engineer at TRW Business Intelligence Systems and later at Catapult Entertainment, Inc., and director of research and development at Morgan Interactive, before joining AOL as an interactive media developer. I moved steadily along the management career track at AOL, ultimately leading the development portfolio for the Internet service business. When starting the Wharton program, I was looking to expand my role at AOL and potentially lead the operations department of the company. In 10 years, I'd planned to take the knowledge I’d gained in both my career and at Wharton and be leading my own company. My goals changed during the program, and I decided to maintain my current management level at AOL and focus on achieving some of my personal goals while starting my own business initiatives.

Best of the best
The Wharton professors are the best of the best. In addition to their academic expertise, many professors are engaged in consulting work and bring their real-world experiences and insights into the classroom. They’re also very accessible, and a number of them said we should feel free to e-mail them in the future. In fact, Professor Netessine helped me implement some operations management techniques at work while studying them during the program.

Classroom-to-work applications
I have a better perspective on accounting and financial decisions, and I can help my department better understand those decisions. For example, I worked on a project to change the way that we reserve development funds to cover contingencies. We previously averaged out estimates versus the actual charges at the end of projects, but there are actually better methods to reserve money. The company now saves money because we're not holding back reserves when we could be doing development, and we're not committing to projects for which we do not have the funds.

Student, executive, and new mom
I’m a single mom; my son was born in the second semester of the program. To juggle it all, I tried to set aside blocks of time to focus on school. I found that multi-tasking, doing a little bit of schoolwork, didn't work for me. I really needed to switch my train of thought from school to work to my personal life. This meant not getting a lot of sleep!

The value of experienced classmates
It's amazing the number of cases we discussed in which you'd find that someone had worked with the company. We got a real-world perspective on the things that we were studying, rather than learning about them in the abstract. In fact, sometimes the best learning was when we were socializing in the evening. Hearing about what was going on in other people's work situations and in their lives was very valuable. And I used those times to bounce ideas off others about work situations.

Career impact
Wharton is a very recognizable name and has an amazing network of alumni. I have been able to reach out to alumni and I have gotten a great response each time. Participating in the Wharton MBA for Executives program was definitely a great decision!