Student Profile: Multiple Lenses

Mollie Crudden '12
Marketing chair, Internship Fund
Post-MBA position: Unilever

Yale SOM was the perfect fit for me. Students here are really embraced and accepted for what they bring and who they are, and they're eager to learn from each other. One of the best things about SOM is the core curriculum. It provides you with not only the tools to understand different disciplines, but to appreciate how they work together. Every single class connects with the others. The program helped me understand how I can pursue my passion for sustainability in a new way.

After the core, I took one of my favorite courses through the Center for Customer Insights. We worked on a project for a real client, Sears Canada. They wanted us to come up with a promotion campaign to get people to upgrade their old washers and dryers to new, energy-efficient models. It gave me the chance to apply the lessons from my core courses to a consumer issue involving sustainability.

I also worked with the Yale Sustainability Office on a campus-wide project to launch a green workplace certification, and that exposed me to the incredible resources of the Yale community. It made me feel part of something bigger and really connected to the history of the university.

At the same time, I took an elective called Interpersonal Dynamics, where we honed our ability to work in groups and to work with different kinds of people. In a globalized world, facing complex problems, so much hinges on being able to understand where people are coming from and bring them together to build support for an agenda. At SOM, we're taught to view things through multiple lenses, and that makes all the difference.

Interviewed April 2012.