Student Profile: An Engaged Community

Heather Thompson ’10
Co-leader: Women In Management
Summer Internship: First Book Marketplace

Before coming to SOM, I was a research associate at an economic consulting firm that provides financial and economic analysis in support of litigation. I wanted to redirect my career to something that was more closely involved with helping people.

SOM was a natural choice for me. When I told my colleagues that I was planning to get an MBA and what I wanted to do with my future, a lot of them said, "You’re applying to Yale, right?" I thought the integrated curriculum would broaden my perspective and give me the tools that I would need to think about the really big picture, to structure my thinking in a way that would be valuable to my organization.

The curriculum was very helpful as I was preparing for my interview at First Book, which is a nonprofit that provides books to children in need. I was able to think about all the different perspectives and stakeholders that would affect this organization. For each of the projects I would be working on, I was able to identify the ways in which the curriculum would help me to frame the problem and create a tangible deliverable. They told me later that they had wanted to hire me on the spot.
 
I’ve been thrilled with my classmates, and how engaged everybody is, how passionate they are about what they’ve done in the past, what they’re doing here at school, what they’re planning to do. Next year I’ll be one of the co-leaders of the Women in Management Club. WIM tries to provide an environment for women to be successful in management, a field where women are underrepresented. I think women can find a community at SOM where they can have a voice and a lot of opportunities to succeed and lead.

Interviewed on April 22, 2009.