Biography
Maya’s time as a campaigner sharpened her political instincts, leading to a role at the Senate Education Committee in Washington DC. But the slow-moving nature of politics convinced her to pursue a different career avenue. “While I loved being in that space, I felt like there was a lot of red tape, a lot of bureaucracy,” she says. “I just wanted to feel the effects of what I was giving to the work.”
Seeking greater impact, she moved to New York City: first to L’Oreal, where she led a corporate social responsibility program, then to consulting firm Medici, where she leveraged DEI to drive innovation.
Never one to stand still, after four years Maya decided she needed to take action to make the next leap up the career ladder: “I decided that I wanted to broaden my skill set. And so that's how I came to the decision that I wanted to go to business school.”
Opting to pursue an MBA, Maya considered a number of options, though her head was turned after a chat with a student at Goizueta. She heard about the tight-knit nature of the school’s smaller cohort and liked the idea of getting a more personal experience. “He completely reframed how I thought about my business school experience,” she says.
The Goizueta MBA turned out to be the perfect program for Maya to enhance her business skills. Maya enjoyed Goizueta’s focus on practical, group-based learning, which helped develop her teamwork skills and allowed her to learn from others who came from different cultural and professional backgrounds. “I had a really just phenomenal group of people who were excited to learn. They were excited to do the work, they wanted us to do well, and I learned from each of these individuals,” she explains.
After a summer internship with Accenture convinced Maya that consulting wasn’t the right path for her, a chat with a visiting executive proved to be the spark for the next stage of her career.
Marvin Ellison is the CEO of Fortune 500 company Lowe’s and a graduate of Goizueta’s Executive MBA program. When he returned to the school for a fireside chat, Maya was asked to welcome him to campus. At the end of his visit, Ellison struck up a conversation with Maya about her career goals. It proved to be life changing.
The very next day, Lowe’s VP of human resources got in touch about finding a role for her at the company. This helped her land a role as brand strategy manager for the firm. For Maya, it reaffirmed the value of a strong MBA network. “It still blows my mind,” recalls Maya. “And that's something that people often talk about—that it's your network that's going to get you your next role.”
But she maintains it wasn’t just the Goizueta connection that helped her progress into a new career path. Those early crash courses in business during the MBA meant she was more than ready for a job at a Fortune 500 company. “Emory and Goizueta prepared me for this role. I know how to put my slides together, I know how to present, I know how to talk to executive leadership. I know how to do the data analysis. I had no imposter syndrome,” Maya says.
Although Maya’s chat with the CEO of Lowe’s seems like a chance encounter, it came about because of the work she had done during Goizueta’s IMPACT project—a strategic problem-solving course requiring students to collaborate on consulting projects for real companies.
Maya and her team worked with Lowe’s during the project. Their excellent performance ultimately resulted in her being selected as student liaison for Ellison's visit.
Maya feels this is an example of how being proactive is one of the best ways of maximizing your MBA experience. “Go to those sessions. Show up. Don't just sit back and chill. Ask questions. Raise your hand. Talk to your professors. You can’t just expect things to land on your lap,” she says. “How you land in a big company is that you're a good student, you're a good person, and you let people know what your intentions are. Just be very explicit about what you hope to achieve, and it'll eventually follow you. You'll get there.”