Student Profile: Devine Service

Kate McGill '08
Co-leader Christian Fellowship
Summer Internship: Exxon-Mobil

I’m from a small town called Devine, Texas. It’s south of San Antonio, with about 4,000 people. Everyone knows everybody. It’s kind of a country upbringing, where religion is really important. I went to Baylor University, which is still one of the most important things in my life. It's a Christian school, and it's very much focused on educating the whole student. When you come in as a freshman, you are taught about the importance about leading a balanced life.

I came to Yale from two years at the Points of Light Foundation, through an AmeriCorps-Vista position. I coordinated interfaith volunteer projects at the national level. I'm not the best soft-skills person, when it comes to social service. I wouldn't be the best person for teaching a kid to read or to sit with the elderly person needing companionship. But I'm really good at the administrative side, sort of facilitating, stuff like that. Working in a very large nonprofit I was able to appreciate efficiencies and become really frustrated by inefficiencies. I saw a lot of inefficiencies. And I saw how someone with an MBA could really help solve the inefficiencies. I was especially interested in Yale because I wanted to keep the option open of going to work for a nonprofit agency after school, and because of the loan forgiveness program. They have, by far, the best loan forgiveness program, and I thought it would be good have that option.

I’m in the Christian Fellowship here. It's not a professional club. It's really just about Christians at the School of Management who want to engage with each other in ways that help us strengthen and maintain our spiritual walk while going through this hectic, stressful two-year time. There are weekly gatherings and Bible study. We planned a very successful Christian MBA conference in February and I'll be — along with the two co-leaders — organizing that for next year and we've already started on it. The conference is called the Believers in Business Conference. There were a ton of people who came from the Ivy Leagues: Penn, Wharton, Dartmouth, Columbia. There are people who feel the same way as me and my classmates do all throughout the Northeast and the country. And the speakers were fantastic. The chairman of PepsiCo had an extensive discussion with students about what it has meant for him to be a believer in Christ and a top executive for one of the biggest companies in the world. It was really inspiring.

My summer internship is at Exxon-Mobil, doing finance in the treasurer’s office. I’m not sure why they hired me since I had absolutely no finance experience when I came to SOM. I think I was just energetic and enthusiastic enough that they figured, Why not? If it works, it would be a really great company to have a career with. I like the idea of working in an industry that’s important to everyone on the face of the planet and contributing a little bit to what it means to work for something that’s that broad in scope. And it’s in Texas, which would be fantastic.

Interviewed on April 16, 2007.